Monument to Lynn Kubasek

Cathi informed me recently, "We should name your pool, you spend so much time in it.  What should we name it?"  I'm not into naming objects, as it just doesn't make sense to me.  Pets, fine. Non living objects?  Not so much.

But in the process of thinking of forcing myself to come up with names, I remembered Lynn Kubasek and the kind of person she was.  I first heard of Lynn via Steven Munatones' openwatersource.com video in April 2011.  Here's the original experience.

Here's the full interview that captured my attention:



When I watched her tell her story and love for swimming, I fell in love with that down to earth sweet personality and had to meet her in person.  I was quite star-struck when I attended Jamie Patrick's swim camp and was able to swim along side her and spend the week at swim camp with her and many other open water legends.

Lynn came out to Salt Lake and raced the Antelope Island to Blackrock races in 2014, and shared in the adventure of swimming an open water marathon distance in the Great Salt Lake!

Then when my time came to swim Catalina, she made an effort to be my observer, which she did.  Her presence there was very reassuring and comforting. And when I finished the swim and got back to the boat she was there to hand me a burrito and make sure that I was comfortable and cared for.

She compiled her own video log of that swim she observed: https://youtu.be/BuJd1Gvz2Dg

When I heard of her cancer diagnosis it was only a few weeks until I heard that she had passed away. My father died of the same type of cancer.
Some of the dearest people in the world are taken far too early from this disease!

When Kelly Gneiting made his Anacapa attempt, Lynn also was the observer for that swim and I was able to spend time with her on that trip as well.

One thing she did during swim camp was bring a Wilson volleyball and put goggles on it and take pictures of it in the open water at some of her swims. Her Facebook page often had other pics of Wilson at various open water locations. It was pretty entertaining to me.

So I'm happy to now have a monument dedicated to her to permanently in my endless pool, to float alongside me in the current & eddies and every time it bumps into me it will push me to keep on going.  Love you Lynn!