With an ache for normalcy, I dared to go swimming in the abandoned pool at the Sheraton where excited locals regularly shot up the glass dome ceiling of our location in celebration and sometimes took aim at each other in our fancy lobby that once entertained high society.

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But now and again I would go out to the old swimming hole, the place everybody called the Twenty Two, and spend half an hour or so in the water, not really swimming so much as hanging there, suspended in the rumor of coolness that rose from the depths below.

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"I've climbed rocks and gone swimming with sharks, but I won't go bungee jumping, and I've never liked roller coasters because those things aren't in my control, " says John F.

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"I was very pleased as I know I am in good shape and now have something else in swimming to have a go at, " he said.

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Sometimes if I finish in time I can take my son either to swimming or Tae Kwan Do and my daughter may have a basketball game, so I go to that.

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