Dad’s Porsche: Porsches in the pool
Given it’s summertime in North America and most of the continent seems to be actively cooking, we (like many others) are engaged in the annual rite of spending as much time as possible near water, while also not developing skin cancer. For the kids, this takes the form of summer swim team.
If you don’t have kids in the age range between 5–18 and/or you don’t live near or have access to a swimming pool, you’d be forgiven for not knowing about summer swim team. Part social activity, part athletic competition, summer swim team gets kids in the water, and parents in the car. It is a full-bore, community-wide effort on the pool deck, and doing every other job that is required to make a swim meet happen, while kids stand confusedly waiting on blocks wondering “is it my turn? This is backstroke, right?”
Summer swim team is also optimized to maximize the entropy in summer schedules. Each morning on a weekday has a practice. Every Wednsday there is a meet that is guaranteed to run well past bedtime. Weekends are the only reprieve. By the time Monday morning rolls around, one generally feels good about the decision to do swim team again. And the wheel turns.
Spending as much time as I have been around the pool these last few weeks, the question occurred: what kind of swimmer would a 911 be? It’s certainly fast, but has never been the fastest car on the road. It looks fast standing still. Although it is an engineered primarily to drive, it performs well across a variety of disciplines. It’s also very reliable.
This kind of all-around excellence is the province of the middle-distance medley swimmers. Maybe they aren’t the fastest in any single stroke, but they swim all of them well enough to win relays or Individual Medleys (otherwise known as IMs). They are flexible, adaptable, and reliable.
This last Wednesday, our meet was cancelled due to lightning in the area. As disappointing as it was for the kids, there’s always an element of relief for us parents. Since the meet was cancelled early, there was also more daylight than I had anticipated. Rather than take the highway home, I decided to take the slightly longer backroad route.
As the tachometer climbed past 5000 RPMs for the first time in weeks, I was reminded that whether its butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, or freestyle, the 911 is a car for all seasons and roads.
