What It’s Like Owning a Wetsuit II
The neoprene doesn’t thicken but the plot does
Now that I have stopped putting the thing on backwards my wetsuit life is really taking shape. My wetsuit journey is all I imagined and more. It’s amazing that these things exist. They really work. People are like “wow you’re swimming in a cold lake in December” and I certainly don’t want to dissuade people from being impressed with me but I do have to give credit to the wetsuit. It’s pretty snug in there.
And yet although wetsuits do work it’s interesting the ways that they don’t totally work. They haven’t figured out a way to get a little zip-up crotch door so you can pee, sort of like dirty lingerie, but functional. I know, you can pee in the suit. I have peed in it. I am not against it, but I like to have the option of wearing my wetsuit home if it’s just too cold to get it off at the dock and I want to just peel the top down and hightail it home.
What else is wrong with wetsuits? They leak at the back, and the wrists can leak, especially if you have delicate dainty feminine wrists, as I do.
To this end, I have updated my gear. I got a pair of gloves that I can pull up to better seal off my arms. I got some booties that go all the way up my ankles and similarly seal up my legs. I can see why people really can get really into perfecting their wetsuits and chasing a dream of just being immune from the cold.
I have this idea that if my wetsuit was dialed in enough I could just drive up to the lake in the middle of January at midnight if I wanted. Now, please understand I am way too much of a baby to actually do something like that — a tree branch would snap and an owl would hoot and I would start crying. But that’s the fantasy.
My new gloves, in particular, really kick ass. They are from a company called Synergy and not only are my hands completely warm in them, the shape and texture of them make my stroke more powerful. I am a machine with my new gloves. That is an exaggeration. I guess I will say I feel like a machine at odd moments.
My wetsuit removal technique has improved. I never oiled myself up — seems like a lot of bother, thought if anyone does this, that’s great, I am just bad at …doing things — but now that I’ve taken the thing on and off maybe twenty times the process moves along much faster. How fond I am of my wetsuit. Now I just need a special hook for it, that I can install on the wall right over the grate heater that says “WETSUIT.” I thought such a thing might already exist, indeed, it does not. Perhaps someone should invent it. Perhaps that someone is me.
