This past week, when my wife and I went to Portsmouth, we swam in the hotel pool one day. Unlike Jeannine, I'm not a great swimmer, but I like to splash around a bit, and I find swimming on my back relaxing.
Until, that is, I bonked my head on the edge of the pool, because I had misjudged where it was and how quickly I was approaching it. As I winced and rubbed the bump on my head, I started thinking that it would be very helpful if there were guidelines painted on the ceiling -- basically just an outline of the pool itself, lined up directly over the pool. That way, when someone was swimming on their back, they could just look up and quickly get a "cue" as to how close they were to the edge of the pool, thus potentially staving off a painful bump.
There could even be a "warning" line, perhaps in red or yellow, set inside the pool's outline some distance away, maybe five feet, so as to give a preliminary proximity warning. Here's a quick illustration of the kind of ceiling graphic I'm thinking of:
Now, not having spent a lot of time in hotel pools, I concede that this may in fact be something that is already done. But in the few hotel pools I have been in, I've not seen it. -- PL
4 comments:
This is actually a pretty great idea, though I imagine it serves a greater purpose up in your neck of the woods where most hotel pools are likely indoors, due to the cold. In Florida, you'd be reasonably hard pressed to find an indoor pool anywhere!
As a competitive swimmer, I can tell you that in most large pools there should be something called a "Backstroke Turn Indicator," or more simply a "Backstroke Flag" string. This is essentially a string strung across the pool with colored flags hanging off of it so that when doing the backstroke you can see that you are approximately 10 yrds away from the wall. There are usally 2 sets of strings, one at each end of the lane. You then can plan how many strokes (usually 2 or 3 maybe) before you need to turn on your belly to approach the wall. This is how all of those Olympic swimmers you see can "tell" its time to turn and seem to do so fluidly and without much of a break in stroke.
I do agree that you don't often see this in hotel pools (probably because most people are doing laps). If you'd like to see an example of the flag line, check here: http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/344905/344905,1258583241,1/stock-photo-indoor-swimming-pool-with-lane-lines-and-backstroke-flags-41209351.jpg
"Adam Riches said...
This is actually a pretty great idea, though I imagine it serves a greater purpose up in your neck of the woods where most hotel pools are likely indoors, due to the cold. In Florida, you'd be reasonably hard pressed to find an indoor pool anywhere!"
That's a good point, Adam -- and now that you made it, I recall seeing a lot of outdoor hotel pools when I've traveled in the southern states. -- PL
Here is Ohio, we kind of have it weird with pools. We have the public pools outside, but there are also indoor public pools. I do happen to know however, that apartment place pools do have a sort of marker system. I had to paint the stupid little white triangles when I worked maintenance. It could have been just that place I worked at, but.. i do recall seeing some sort of marker in most of the pools I've been in. Maybe we Ohioans are just a bit accident prone lol, I dunno.
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