This pool is the worst. It's impossible to relax and enjoy the water when you've got a bunch of teenage lifeguards telling you where you can and cannot stand in the water, while overlooking the loud and boisterous kids that are roughhousing nearby.
I'm still trying to rationalize why I pay so much in taxes to the county and still have to pay for things like the public pools (Pools in DC, however, are free).
When we first arrived, we decided to hop into the lap lanes and join the few other (grown) people floundering around there.
(Pool Etiquette Note: As someone who used to be fiercely protective of lap lanes when swimming was my primary source of exercise, I made sure that there were no lap swimmers in there before we got in).
There were a bunch of kids in the shallow area and we weren't interested in being repeatedly splashed by kids doing cannonballs. No one was swimming laps so we thought it was fine to just tread water and chat. The pool manager comes up and tells us that he's supposed to keep the lap lanes clear for lap swimmers, but that while we don't have to leave, he's needs us to "move a little more".
HUH?
So, we relocated to the deep end to resume our treading, but we were hardly in the water for 2 minutes before one of the lifeguards told us that we "can't swim in deep end."
HUH?!?
So we move the 18 inches or so to the other side of the rope to the shallow end of the pool, full of kids doing cannonballs.
*sigh*
Just when we started to make ourselves comfortable, they blew the whistle and ordered everyone out of the pool. When I was growing up, that used to mean 15 minutes of adult swim, where everyone over 18 could hang out in the pool for a precious few minutes without having to worry about screaming, squirming, splashing kids.
Not here.
At this pool, it meant EVERYONE getting out and sitting for 20 minutes in 90+ degree heat, staring at a perfectly good pool and wondering when in the hell they were gonna let people back in. My boyfriend went to ask one of the lifeguards (super-skinny Asian chick with an attitude) when they were going to let people back in. I'm not sure what her reply was, but I did not like the attitude that this little girl displayed when an adult asked her a question.
The sad part is that this facility is really nice. The pool was clean and the deck was spacious (although they could have used an extra kid or 2 on staff to clean up the sunflower seed shells and snack wrappers during the 20+ minutes that we were sitting around waiting for them to let us back in the pool). In addition to the pool, there is also a splash park here, complete with two water slides. The locker rooms don't smell like they are leaking sewage, and I didn't see any evidence of those freakishly huge pool roaches. Cleanest pool locker room I've ever seen. Overall, the facility is really nice, especially for a neighborhood pool, but with the "pool gestapo" on deck, it's really hard to have a good time. read more