We live on the East (Cold) Coast now - and things are different here.
I grew up in the Bay Area. Many of my friends had swimming pools in their yard, each high school had an outdoor pool, and many cities had public, outdoor, pools. I saw things like indoor pools in movies and thought they were somewhat odd. Why have a pool indoors when you can swim ourdoors all the time?
Then I moved to southern California where, once again, all the great pools were out-of-doors. We swam whenever we wanted without problem. Sometimes the first jump might seem cold, but it would always warm up.
Dan and I went swimming at Princeton for the first time last weekend. Finding the pool felt like descriptions I've read of the dungeons in European castles. We went indoors at ground level to present our IDs. Up half a flight of stairs to the main gym, then down 1.5 flights to the lock rooms. Go back through the cavernous lockers quite a ways, change, leave the locker rooms. Turn right, go down a triangular stair case, through some doors, down another stair case. A few more doors and stairs and finally you are there. You go into the (sub-basement, by now) pool. After the darkness of the staircases, the pool area is beautiful and open. The roof is 3-floors above with an entire floor of windows letting in natural light. We hope to become regulars.
People also seem to have a different opinion about the role of traffic lights. Since, at least in Princeton, no sensors are installed, people become upset with the lights and figure, "Darn it, I saw the light while it was green - that means it was my turn to go and I should take it now." What are you going to do? We can (and do) honk, but everyone is beginning from stopped, so what can you do if that car is the fourth to go since the light turned red?
I grew up in the Bay Area. Many of my friends had swimming pools in their yard, each high school had an outdoor pool, and many cities had public, outdoor, pools. I saw things like indoor pools in movies and thought they were somewhat odd. Why have a pool indoors when you can swim ourdoors all the time?
Then I moved to southern California where, once again, all the great pools were out-of-doors. We swam whenever we wanted without problem. Sometimes the first jump might seem cold, but it would always warm up.
Dan and I went swimming at Princeton for the first time last weekend. Finding the pool felt like descriptions I've read of the dungeons in European castles. We went indoors at ground level to present our IDs. Up half a flight of stairs to the main gym, then down 1.5 flights to the lock rooms. Go back through the cavernous lockers quite a ways, change, leave the locker rooms. Turn right, go down a triangular stair case, through some doors, down another stair case. A few more doors and stairs and finally you are there. You go into the (sub-basement, by now) pool. After the darkness of the staircases, the pool area is beautiful and open. The roof is 3-floors above with an entire floor of windows letting in natural light. We hope to become regulars.
People also seem to have a different opinion about the role of traffic lights. Since, at least in Princeton, no sensors are installed, people become upset with the lights and figure, "Darn it, I saw the light while it was green - that means it was my turn to go and I should take it now." What are you going to do? We can (and do) honk, but everyone is beginning from stopped, so what can you do if that car is the fourth to go since the light turned red?
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