I swam at Zuma today and it was the most amazingly beautiful day at a Southern California beach. Zuma is known for rip tides and nasty currents, so I chose to wear my zoomers in case I got into trouble. The surf was small- 1.5-3' when I got in the water and pretty glassy, but boy there was strong SW swell. I chose to swim up the coast and that was pretty fast! I started at tower 9 and swam up past tower 13, a little over .5 mile away. The swim back took a long time partly because of the swell, and also because I would hit areas of rip current and it would be like swimming on a treadmill. It was pretty funny, I would take about 25 strokes and look over and see the same lifeguard tower in the same spot. That's where the fins came in handy, I decided to kick out of there, but I did notice my calves were almost cramping when I got in from wearing the fins so long. (Even though I didn't kick much.) The really cool thing was I could hear dolphins underwater. I couldn't see them until I was on the shore, there was a big pod of about eight animals swimming 500 yards off shore. That was sweet!

Alas, I was swimming alone, and did not have the opportunity to grab anyones' "package."