My son, Matthew, who is barely 6, can tell you without a moment’s hesitation the precise height of the Washington Monument: 555 feet. So I cannot understand why it took three phone calls to three adults (a desk clerk, a concierge and an attendant in the fitness room) to determine that the length of the swimming pool at Los Angeles Four Seasons Hotel (admittedly not a national monument) is 50 feet.
I am serious about my swimming. But why mince words: I’m a woman possessed. I have swum in pools while they were being filled, while they were being drained, while they were being cleaned, while rain was sheeting into them. I was almost late for my wedding–the vows probably should have read for wetter, for worse–and for the births of my children, so insistent was I on getting in my laps.
For a dedicated swimmer, being on the road is far more often hell than high water. Hotel clerks who have a saints patience in their dealings with finicky guests who want to be close to (or far from) the elevators, who must (or must not) be on a low floor/a high floor/a smoking floor appear ready to summon a nice, large net when I start in with my basic exploratory questions. How long is the pool? How deep? What shape (just try to do laps in an oval pool)? How warm? How busy? What time does it open (important information when you’re trying to avoid children, who tend to be early risers and who tend to be more interested in water displacement than cardiovascular fitness)? What time does it close? Are there lights for night workouts? Are there lanes set aside for lap swimming?
Sure, it would be a lot simpler to just shut up and take up the treadmill or stationary bike, staples of most hotel gyms, but for me swimming is not merely about fitness. There is nothing like knifing through water to shake off jet lag and to smooth off the edges of a rough day.
Once upon a time, I was a sweet, trusting soul, inquiring simply as to the presence of a pool. Naively, I counted on the clerk to come clean with such pertinent information as “Yes, we have a pool but it was drained last month,” or “Yes, we have a pool but it isn’t even big enough for an aerobically inclined fly,” or “Yes, we have a pool but we’re too cheap to heat it. Right now, we’re using it as a wine cooler.” Now, after being sandbagged one too many times, I probe like Perry Mason.
My cross-examination is particularly–and justifiably–intense on the matter of pool size. Hotel clerks use the word “Olympic” in much the same knee-jerk way restaurants use the term “fresh-baked” and car dealerships “grand opening.” One hundred sixty-five feet, the length of a true Olympic pool; 40 feet, the average length of a back-yard pool; 2 feet, the average length of a back-yard birdbath–it’s all the same to them.
Mind you, there is no such imprecision when it comes to the links. I have yet to see a hotel that advertises 18 holes and offers only 11. Of course, when it comes to golf, one is dealing with a clientele that is armed with clubs.
There is nothing like the zeal of a convert. Though I did time at an assortment of camps in my native Michigan, my youthful attitude about swimming was that unless someone laid shore-to-shore carpeting on the bottom of the lake and could come up with a reliable heating system, I wanted no part of it. Years later during graduate school at the University of Michigan, where I was introduced to goggles and where the large number of pools would have made it a swell place to hold an Esther Williams retrospective, I underwent what can best be described as a sea change.
I planned my class and work schedule around the hours of the venerable Margaret Bell Pool and the then-new facility on distant North Campus, which often meant a predawn wake-up. A few years ago when I was planning a business trip to Ann Arbor, I made a large, hasty contribution to the alumni association to ensure that I’d be successful in pleading my case for a guest pass to the pool.
In Manhattan where I live, my obsession requires membership at three swim clubs with complementary hours of operation. Obviously, I have no such luxury when traveling on business. I’m lucky to find one pool per city that meets my exacting specifications. And when I do find that special ce-ment pond (as the Beverly Hillbillies cunningly called it) away from home, one with which I think I can form a serious, committed relationship, too often it turns out to be just one of those flings. Take the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel, an exquisite 75 feet of clean, climate-controlled, carefully chlorinated blue–until its then-owner, Ivan Boesky, of insider trading fame, hacked off nine feet to expand the deck area and add a cafe. Personally, I think they tossed him in the slammer for the wrong crime.
My husband, Michael, had his suspicions about me before we were married. He couldn’t exactly miss the soggy bathing suits dangling from every doorknob in my apartment. But, concerned about the dampening effect it might have on my marriage, I refrained from swimming during our honeymoon in Paris and London. Yet, like a recovering alcoholic who knows where a bottle is stashed, I was fully aware I had the option of the Piscine Deligny (watch out for wayward breast-strokers) in the former, the Grosvenor House (indoor, rectangle, 66 feet, 82 degrees), in the latter.
I was far less concerned about my husband’s sensibilities when we took our first post-honeymoon trip. I believe Michael was by then inured to my little quirk, possibly because he knew our marriage was no longer under warranty. In any case, he raised no objections when I planned a 10-day trip to Maine based solely on the location of hotels with Kaufman-sanctioned pools. I was so giddy with triumph at finding appropriate lodgings that were nicely spaced from one another, swimmer-friendly and close to such points of interest as Acadia National Park and L.L. Bean that I didn’t push for particulars when told that the 75-foot pool at the Blackpoint Inn was solar-heated. As a result, I swam for three days in 59-degree water, a fine state of affairs if you’re a penguin.
I have a sneaking sympathy for confirmed smokers who plan their daily itinerary around the places that will let them light up. I listen intently as friends tell of their trips to exotic outposts and talk about the sullen splendor of the Amazon rain forests, the majesty of the pyramids, the peerless splendor of the Taj Mahal, the spiritual renewal that comes from trekking in Nepal. I listen politely, oohing and ahhing in all the right places, wondering when I can ask the question that’s uppermost in my mind: “Tell me,” I say casually, “did you notice if they had a pool?”
