Today is strange to me...I'm going to Toronto tomorrow.

Toronto! Another country!

I haven't traveled before without extensive thinking about every aspect of my trip...going on a trip is like casting a spell. I obsess over my airfare, obsess over my hotel accomodations, obsess over guide books and maps and plans about what I will do when I am there. I linger in chatrooms beforehand meeting guys to hang out with and perhaps get undressed with when visiting, I make up ideas about what the location will look like, what I will look like in that location, how that location will change me in some fundamental way. The trip will complete me somehow, that is what I think before I go.

Tomorrow is not like that at all. Last month I bought a ticket on hotwired; I'm staying with my friend Alex. He has prepared an itenerary, I just have to show up and let it happen. So in my mind, it isn't actually happening. I can't even think of it as a four-day weekend, no work on Friday or Monday. I have bought a few things for Alex and a totemic box of chocolates for his mom; it isn't that I have done no preparation.

I keep saying this to Alex, "this isn't real to me. It won't be real until I am there." I'm just attending. I'm glad to be attending. But I haven't cast that spell...I haven't looked up a single address on Yahoo Maps, I haven't figured out how I'm getting from the airport to where I'm staying, I haven't sussed out how I'll fill up the long Sunday afternoon (we are catching a theater matinee). It isn't at all that I wish I was making those decisions, it's nice to skip them and I'm thrilled to have a kind face and a warm embrace to meet me at baggage claim. I'm thrilled to spend a long weekend with my beloved friend.

But this is new territory. I've never been met at the airport.

Let's hear it for new territory.

Speaking of which, Water Polo. I like to swim (self serving link to my story about Welles Park Pool). I learned to swim three years ago this winter. On Wednesday nights there is water polo at Welles Park at 9 p.m. after Adult Lap Swim ends.

Here is the thing about most of the water polo players on Wednesday. They are 1)adorable 2)kinda fat. Mostly young guys, these are not the sinewey "swimmer's build" guys but very well fed lads with firm, well-supported pecs, butts and bellies spilling out of their lycra. So there's that--these are cute guys, athletic but not, you know, skinny.

Alex plays two sports, Volleyball and Baseball, in gay leagues, both of which he loves and both of which give him a team.

A team.

It's a workplace cliche', being a team. I don't know that I've been on a team before. God knows I've never been on any sort of sports team except for one ill-considered t-ball endeavor as a kid. Chicago improv groups organize into groups they call Teams but the one team I played on was more like little self-contained fiefdoms, not a team.

The past few years I've been doing more and more things that I don't know much about doing but I want to learn. The swimming, hip-hop, journalism, all that. And this seemed like the next step...figure out water polo.

"So are you guys, uh, a team?" I asked a young gentleman last night in the locker room. He explained to me that it was more like pickup basketball...whoever shows up gets to play.

Last night, I plugged "Learn Water Polo Chicago" into Google and came up with information about Chicago Riptide which not only is willing to teach the skills of water polo; they are a gay team!!!

I sent an email; I want to learn water polo and coincidentally, I'm gay too, how does this work?

Heard back. The team captain has invited me to attend a practice and suggested that I attend lap swim beforehand. He himself swims for an hour before the team practice/scrimmage.

I'm heading out of town tomorrow so I said not tonight, next week, errands to run and all that. But I went to swim tonight at my own pool, not the pool where The Riptide does their thing.

Water polo is kind of like soccer in that it mainly means you run(swim) back and forth for a long-ass time. Endurance. More so than speed, accuracy, all that. Endurance.

I have been swimming a while, I can swim a decent distance in 40 minutes. I can put away a good chunk of a mile in 40 minutes. But what does it mean to swim CONSTANTLY for 40 minutes? In professional water polo pools (it's a european thing apparently) there is no shallow end; players are meant to tread water the whole time.

Tonight I found out what it means to swim constantly for 40 minutes. I hasten to point out that the last 10 minutes was only using a kickboard, not doing a crawl stroke, and I still thought I was going to die.

So this is next. Before being on a team, before being a beginner with a team, I have to be a beginner with swimming on and on and on.

Part of me hates being a beginner. Beginning...ugh. A lot to learn, not enough time to learn it, and everyone is annoyed at your ignorance.

Another part of me is really liking being a beginner. A guy in my office just retired after 35 years. 35 years, that's older than me, that means that every single moment of my life Ray was here, doing his job. He never got promoted, he kept that job for 35 years. When I started nursery school? Ray was there. When I learned algebra? Ray was right there doing the same thing. When I got my first checking account?

You see my point.

He retired at 63 so he was 28 when he started at the office. 35 years of striving to not learn anything new. Man oh man did email piss him off. Attachments. Entire days would go by when he wouldn't even turn on his computer...think of that. Imagine going a day without turning on your computer.

I don't want to be that guy. Ever. And I'm sure it sucked to learn about double clicking and directories and the internet and all that. It sucks to be a beginner. We make children suffer through it, we make them continue, tell them they shouldn't be quitters. Adults, especially older adults, get special dispensation. They are old dogs, unable to learn new tricks.

But still.

So yeah, I will be done with my next term of school by Memorial Day. And I want to be strong enough, to have enough endurance to learn how to play water polo. February, March, April, May that's four months, around 16 weeks.