Last summer after graduating from my 4 years’ studies in Trade and Commerce, I decided to make my dream true and focus on swimming for at least one year. What I want to find out in this time is, if I can go further in swimming than “only” Swiss National Championships or if I just love this sport and have fund with a couple of workouts a week.

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Already on my first weekend down in Islamorada with The Race Club, after a 4 weeks summer break (“tradition” in Switzerland after the Swiss National Championships held in July), and after only 3 easy workouts, I went to Miami for the Open Water Speedo Swim meet on Saturday, August 27, 2005, together with Anthony Irvin.

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Do you remember the Olympic Games 2000 in Sydney? Well, I do. I remember a great and thrilling 50m Freestyle race won by two American guys, Gary Hall Jr. and Anthony Ervin, both in 21,98s!

And exactly with this Anthony Ervin I spent my first 2 weeks down in Islamorada. Let me try to be honest with you. When I first saw Anthony, I thought something like “Wow, this is him, this guy won the Olympic Games!?!”

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When Anthony left Islamorada, I moved to the Race Club house. As Gary left the house for a trip to the Bahamas with his grand-father and Bebe left for spending some time in San Diego, I was home alone.

This first day alone, I tried to get more familiar with the place where I spend my time. I went out with the Jeep to explore a bit of the Keys. When I came back in the early evening, I was still alone at the Race Club house. But not for long. Only a few minutes after I found a comfortable position on the couch and a good movie on TV, Michelle Engelsman came through the door.

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There’s one thing, both of us (Michelle and I) always wanted to do. Swimming with dolphins. So we started to check the facilities we have in the Keys. After checking all possibilities, we decided to go to Dolphins Plus to have our swim.

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Several things need to be explained so that you can follow this little “adventure”. Let me start with Mangrove Mike’s. This is a restaurant in Islamorada where Michelle and I (and most swimmers from The Race Club) use to have a good breakfast after the morning session. And as the name tells it, Mike is the owner of this restaurant.

So one morning like almost every morning after our morning session, we are having our breakfast at Mangrove Mike’s sitting at a table near the wall. And on this wall like on most walls in Mangrove Mike’s restaurant, you can see pictures of Mike and his friends and their catches from the fishing trips.

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When I decided to come to Islamorada, the only thing my mom told me was that at this time of the year, Florida was having hurricane season.

Never really thought about something like that and never really been scared of it, I didn’t even thinking about going through one of this tropical storms or hurricanes. But I did it twice and everybody told me that this is a great story. So I want to tell you the stories about these two hurricanes (storms).

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I really never thought that something like this would happen to me. But life goes its own way and it happened. Since last week, I’m not longer a stranger for the Islamorada District Sheriff!

I already told you that I went out with the Jeep to get familiar with the Keys environment and this time I got familiar with the American law. So let me start with a short lesson in American law.

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Not a long time ago I was sitting on the coach and Michelle came through the door. And during these 3 weeks Michelle spent here in Islamorada, things were getting started

If you have followed my diary entries so far, you already know a lot of the things Michelle and I were doing together here in Islamorada. But yes, it was all about fun. Swimming with the dolphins, fishing with Mangrove Mike’s, going out with the boats to snorkel or watch the sunset. But that’s only one side of our Race Club life, don’t think that all days had been relaxed like these. We also did a lot of serious work!

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