NORTH CAROLINA
- Asheville
YMCA
SGOL Link
B+
2 indoor 25 yard pools, clocks, equipment
boards, pull buoys.
What's not to love, people? Why must you embrace negativity?
I love Asheville- too bad the comedy club closed. A small town with a nice YMCA, several independent coffee houses and a bunch of left-wing Bush hating audience members. It was heaven while it lasted.
- Charlotte
Harris
YMCA
SGOL Link
B-
25 meters, six lanes, pace clock,
boards, pull buoys.
Lotto kids in the summertime and the
water is warm. (86 degrees).
Signs for the top three parking spaces say
they are reserved for expectant mothers. The rest of the lot is saved for those
of us who use birth control and don't want to contribute to the overpopulation
problem. The staff is unfailingly nice and they referred to me as "you all"
even though there was just one of me. The shower head gave off a spray of geiser-like
strength and I swirled around under it for twenty minutes.
- Marion Deihl Recreation Center
SGOL Link
C+
Nice deskstaff, friendly lifeguards,
25 meters, six lanes, synchronized paceclocks at each end, kickboards, pulling
gear and it's only 2 dollars.
Only two lap lanes were open- the
other four were taken up by aqua basketball playing brats. Oh and the water
is a senior citizenesque warm; high eighties, I'd say.
The ancient locker room means dressing
in front of fun house mirrors. Move one inch to the left, and you gain forty
pounds. Move to the right, and you look like Karen Carpenter the day before
she died. Of course, I found the second reflection to be most accurate. Both
this pool and the Harris Y had backstroke flags at the shallow end only. Coincidentally,
I discovered this fact each time by cracking my skull open on a backstroke
flip.
-
Mecklenburg County
Aquatic Center
SGOL Link
A
indoors, fifty meters, 79 degrees,
many many paceclocks, lots of equipment. Only three dollars.
It was closed for JO's during much
of my stay. I was forced into the aforementioned 86 degree pools for nearly
a whole week.
Oh baby. This pool makes me blush, it
is so fine. Deep water, lane ropes and a bulkhead make for some smooth swimming.
The lifeguards stay on top of the kids, so it's unlikely that a water polo
ball will be thrown at your head. I had my own lane and the water was so crisp
and cool, I actually sprinted. Yes, it's true. Me and turnover in the same
sentence.
The colorful
murals painted above the deep end are three panels wide. The middle panel
features male divers in a Greg Louganisesque pike. It is flanked by two identical
panels of female divers, and these ladies are each approximately 2/10 of a
second away from a violent belly flop. I winced whenever I looked up.
- Nag's Head
Outerbanks
YMCA
D+
25 meters, six lanes, pace clock, boards, pull buoys.
Pull out your wallet, swimmers, and bend over because you are about to take it up the ass.
As any YMCA member knows, the AWAY sticker guarantees either a free workout or at least a cheap one. Except in Nag's Head. If you come during the summertime, (and when else would you go to a beach resort), it's $15.00 per workout, or $47.50 for the week.
It's free during the winter.
"It's to protect our members," explained an obese front desk lackey. She waved a flabby arm to the pool behind her, which was jam-packed with two members.
"Protect them from what?" I asked.
"Overcrowding."
You wish, honey. If there's any overcrowding happening at this Y, it's around the refridgerator in the employee lunchroom, which itself must be overcrowded with donuts and Muscle-Tone-Be-Gone pills. My boyfriend, who works at the YMCA in New York, pulled out his credit card after I slammed the front door behind me and paid for a week of swims. Not once in six days did I wait for any machine or even have to share a lane.
Whores! Scam Artists! Whores!
Excuse me.
I do feel compelled to promote the Master's team. A new aquatic director, Eugene, had just taken over when my boyfriend and I visited the coastal ruin that is Nag's Head, and he was really nice. He swam for the Dutch Olympic team in 84, and he went to ASU, in Tempe. The cover charge is not his idea, so don't blame him. And after you finish projectile vomiting on the YMCA administrative staff, you'll find that the brand new lap pool is perfect.
- Raleigh
Central YMCA
B+
25 yards, rarely crowded, pace clock,
lane ropes, boards, pull buoys.
Warm Y water, four lanes.
This pool gets higher marks than it should because it's convenient- a minute's
walk from the Brownstone Hotel, which has worked out a deal- three bucks for
a workout. Also, the shower heads are fabuuuuu.
Like most Y's, the Raleigh Central lives to vex me. One Friday, I downloaded
a particularly nasty workout from SwimInfo's site. I came to the Y fully prepared
to swim at least half of it. Imagine my dismay as I walked out to the deck
to find the pool drained for an annual cleaning. Well, you will have to imagine
it as I was as happy as a clam. The point is, I could have been dismayed,
and if I were the type of person who'd wanted to do a hard workout that day,
I would have been really pissed.
- Pullen
Aquatic Center
A
50 meters, indoors, lane ropes,
kickboards, wide lanes, liberal hours, three dollar cover charge.
Carloads of kids on the weekends,
one paceclock was working.
Well, dear reader, if you don't know how
I feel about kids, let me paraphrase opinions expressed elsewhere on this
site. Children should be kept in kennels until they are old enough to drive
themselves to the doctor. The exception are the children who work for Nike.
These are good children whose Dickensian wages and long hours make an excellent
running shoe affordable for Laurie. Anyway, this otherwise perfect pool attracts
hordes of silly children. The lifeguards, however, are on top of them.
