This is where I spend my time

There's a reason why I don't do as much hiking and biking as I thought I would when I came to Los Angeles for the winter.  In two words:  outdoor pool.  I don't have that in Canada, so I feel I have to make use of every nice day here to swim, and as previously discussed, the days are mostly nice.

My apartment complex has a great pool.  You have to pay an extra $39 a month to use it, but I don't find that very annoying since I'm sure it helps to keep the crowds down.  During the week it's usually not too crowded, and weekend evenings are generally OK too.

It's heated, pretty much everything is in California.  It's half-olympic sized, so you can swim lengths.  Oh, and there are actually two large pools, one for laps and one for free swim.  It has a wonderful hot tub too, and one things about hot tubs down here... they're HOT!  I'm on the verge of slipping into unconsiousness within 5 minutes, but still, it's lovely for the first 4.5 minutes.

I find that with a heated pool, that as long as the air temperature is somewhere above 60F (15C) it's fine for swimming.  Which means most days are fine for swimming, if it's not raining.  I swam once here in the rain and found it a bit wet... I know, I know...

Here are some photos below, I didn't take these, I borrowed them from the apartment's website (shhh... don't tell!).

Below is the free swim pool, with the corner of the hot tub (they call them "spas" here) seen at the right.

 

Both pools have these little cabanas for shade, although most folks seem to lounge in the sun:

  

This is the lap pool, but without the lane dividers in (I guess they figured it makes a more aesthetic shot without them).  It has five lanes and a smaller undivided section too, where people can just bounce around and pool walk and stuff.

  

Another view of the free swim pool.  Not bad, eh?  I find it very resort-like by my standards.  It's heaven for a Canadian who likes to swim.