Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Cause Linked to Lakes ... please, no!

Last year I posted a topic concerning a parasite that lived in southern waters that you probably want to avoid at all costs (very nasty). Now it's the northern lakes' turn.

It seems that there have been some clusters of ALS(Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), more commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease, identified around a lake in New Hampshire. Scientists believe it is linked to Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) blooms. This article goes into pretty good depth using terms a layperson can understand.

BTW, this makes me very sad.

At Least I Wasn't Called a Perv!

I promised to share some stories about my lake swimming up in Wisconsin a couple weeks back. Each summer I go up there and spend time on a lake on which my grandparents owned a summer cottage. My mom and her brother share it now. It happens to be next to a Girl Scout camp and one can see their dock and swim area from the pier sitting just off the cottage lake front. I always thought that was cool when I was a teen but now it's just sort of yeah, yeah, there's a Girl Scout Camp next door. We do appreciate their campfire singing at night. Back to me. It's become my habit in recent years to swim all over that lake, but to do so, I must go early in the AM or late in the evening when the power boats are not permitted to go over 5 MPH. Despite the hour, it's always a great time with no interruptions aside from a crane flying overhead or a fish I've startled (or startled me). The last morning this year I was doing laps between the island in the center of the lake and our pier - about 540 meters round trip. Anyway, I was on my third or fourth lap when I spied something out of the corner of my eye. It was a boat and it was very close. I kept swimming knowing that my motion would draw more attention than anything else and tried to keep my distance. Nevertheless, the boat drew closer. Soon it was about fifteen yards off my left shoulder. I stopped to look up to get their attention, but before I could, I saw through my fogged up goggles about fifteen yellow dots and more boats. It seemed like I was surrounded. I pulled up my goggles and found I had swum into a group of girls from the Scout camp (the yellow dots were bathing caps) who had decided to take a supervised swim out to the island - this lake is "my space", I thought (ha ha). Besides that silly thought my next inclination was personal survival. Knowing the sensitivity of that organization toward men (my cousins like to sneak over and fish on their private lake and always get yelled at as if they are predators or something - they're not, they just like virgin bass) pulled my goggles back down and took off as as fast as I could. I was in the water first, I'm sure they saw me, but you never know. I'd hate for them to think I came upon them with some creepy design in mind! And here I was wearing my Speedo. Now that I think of it, maybe they did think I was a perv! Aack!

Home Again

You may have noted a sad lack of posts over the past several weeks. Never fear dear reader, you were always on my mind. I was up in the great north (Wisconsin), doing some serious lake swimming. Lots to write about which you'll see in coming posts. Check back soon!