Back in my teenage years the pool at the local aquatic club was "L"-shaped. One leg was 25 yds long, the other leg 25 m. Many of the pools we visited had the same setup. Even so, for swim team, all of our meets were in "yards".
--- On Sat, 12/6/08, Pat Naughtin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Pat Naughtin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [USMA:42145] Re: Swimming pool going metric (partially) To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 7:25 PM On 2008/12/07, at 9:13 AM, Mark Bollinger wrote: I am new to this list, but I thought you might find this interesting. This is from my local YMCA in North Carolina. Mark Making the Flip The Finley indoor pool is making a flip from yards to meters. Through the end of December swimmers will swim the length of the pool on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (yards) and the width of the pool on Tuesday and Thursday (meters). The switch allows the YMCA to accommodate all members. “Swim team, tri athletes and some lap swimmers measure their distance in meters rather than yards,” says Finley Aquatics Director, Carla Martin. “By switching up the pool, we can meet this demand on certain days of the week.” The Finley indoor pool measures 25 yards long (locker room end to starting blocks) and 25 meters across (life guard area to family programs wing interior window). Lap swimmers who swim 36 laps will either travel 1.02 miles long or 1.118 miles wide. The flip also provides swim lesson participants with a more comfortable depth, the water fitness classes with a bit more room and consistent measurements for the YMCA’s association-wide swim team. The Aquatics department hopes this change will benefit everyone in the long run. Please note the flip days change in January. The January through May schedule is as follows: Yards: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Meters: Wednesday and Thursday Dear Mark, Many thanks for sharing this story. Is there no end to human ingenuity and creativity? At first, I found this story to be so profoundly funny that I almost literally rolled on the floor laughing, but then I thought that it must be one of those urban legends that soon travel around the world as an internet joke. However, I confirmed that it was real when I checked the web page at: http://www.ymcatriangle.org/A.E._Finley_YMCA/A85CEF6B108D4475914A3D055E47C0CC.aspx By the way, thinking back a bit into the history of this pool, I wonder how the design engineer got approval for a pool design that was metric in one direction and that used old pre-metric measures in the other direction. There must have been some 'fun' approval meetings! Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
