If you are a fan of the band “Live” you are probably familiar with their 1994 hit song “Lightning Crashes” (youtube link to the song, so turn your speakers down if you are at work), which peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I am a member of Gen X, which by definition means that I have been fan Nirvana, Doc Martins and all things flannel, and I am also a big fan of Live. It has been a while since I broke out Throwing Copper or Mental Jewelry (though Throwing Copper was far more successful on a commercial level, I think Mental Jewelry is the superior album and worth a purchase), which was a great blast from the past, so I owe a “thank you” to Friday’s weather.
You must be asking yourself, what does Live have to do with a triathlon? That is an excellent question.
If you recall, Friday was a mercurial weather day in New Rochelle, raining early, clearing up into a beautiful day and then turning back to thunderstorms in the later part of the afternoon. As you can imagine, rain is not ideal weather for bicycling or running, so I went to New York Sports Club to swim. The NYSC pool is indoors and, as you may have gathered from my previous columns, I need to put a lot of time into improving my swim. I arrived at the gym, pleasantly surprised to see that there was an open swimming lane, and jumped right in. I swam a warm up lap and then followed up with a brisk two-lap follow up. I was about to head out on another two-lap sprint when I was politely asked to exit the pool by a member of the NYSC staff. “There’s lightning,” I was told.
I got out of the pool and then politely explained to the staff member the concepts of outside and inside, and pointed out that the lightning was outside and we were inside. There happens to be a huge window that is right next to the pool, and it was intimated that the lightning could go through the window and hit the pool. Another swimmer was far more reticent that I was to leave the pool, giving the NYSC staff a good piece of her mind, calling the rule “extremely customer unfriendly,” and questionined how a brand new building could be dangerous in a lightning storm. One staff member forwarded the explanation that NYSC’s policy to evacuate the pool is in case of a blackout – but, there was plenty of natural light from the outside streaming through the tremendous (lightning-penetrable) window, so that didn’t seem to be an overly convincing reason. Then a senior staff member, who seemed very confident, explained that electricity, even in a modern building, could travel through the pipes and into the pool.
I have to be honest – if some high school-aged staff member had made the statement in a high pitch voice, I would have laughed out loud, right to his face. I wasn’t buying any of the explanations; I chalked up the pool’s closing to some over-zealous lawyers and a highly-restrictive insurance policy. Regardless, I knew I wasn’t getting my fourth lap in, so I headed over to Costco to do a mega-shopping. While I was frustrated about my workout, I knew I had my next blog topic. So after unloading my Costco shopping, I logged online to confirm the fact that the staff at NYSC was full of garbage and that the world, in fact, is run by hyper-protective lawyers.
Lo and behold, in less than a minute of searching the internet I found this, in the New York Times no less. Who would have thunk it? Apparently, I owe someone an apology.
