I'm writing about my duty toward my community, and its duty back to me. As was the case with Gavrila Princip, one shot can start a war. My local pool's heater going on the blink was the shot that started my civic campaign this morning.

We have one public pool in our entire city of 86,000 people. While that's a bad enough commentary on a North San Diego County town, there is no master's swim team here, and the lap swim opens at oh-dark-thirty in the morning and closes just after dawn. You've got to really have the swimming bug bad to ply your avocation inside the City of Vista.

The pool is at the "Wave Park," and includes a water slide and stuff like that. My wife and I went down to the Wave Park last month at noon, all excited, because last Fall the city announced––via its printed recreational calendar––that noon lap-swim would be instituted. Imagine us being stupid enough to rely on a city's promise. Upon arrival we were told, "Oh, we decided not to do that."

So, I steeled myself for the early morning swim. Changed around the schedule. Sucked it up. Set the alarm. Went down there this morning. Nope. No swimming. Pool heater's broken. The heater's fuse apparently didn't blow, as it should've. My fuse probably shouldn't have blown, but it did. As the pool was cooling down, I was heating up.

I drove to City Hall, strode into the city manager's office, and went off. (Unfortunately the city manager was not there, so I let fly on another nice chap, the Administrative Services Director, with administrative assistants poking their heads around corners to see what all the commotion was about.

Then I went home and wrote and sent them all the following email:

I’m in a foul mood today, as those down at City Hall found out earlier this morning. I tried to go swimming in the City of Vista. Mission impossible, as it turns out. Why? The heater’s broken in the City’s only public pool. It’ll "hopefully," says the Wave Park manager, "Be up by next Monday." This is the sole facility in this town of 86,000 people set aside for adults to swim (and to accomplish any swimming, one must be the early bird––on any day it is impossible to swim in a public pool in this town after 8AM).

"No big deal," you might say. "Swimmers do not represent a bloc of voters that are statistically relevant at the voting booth." Perhaps that’s true. But the lack of swimming facilities is emblematic of a bigger problem in Vista––a town with many (newer) residents that aspire to live in an upscale, positive, recreationally vibrant setting. Unfortunately, this town is run by a government that thinks most of its voters are either retired and housebound, or rednecks and illegals. (None of these demographic constructs apparently recreate).

If I want to run or hike on trails, I must go to neighboring Escondido, or Encinitas, or Solana Beach, or Carlsbad. If I want to ride my bike I can roll the dice and ride down Vista Way, or I can take the preferred cyclist’s route, through Warmlands Avenue, dodging any of the ten-thousand potholes the City chooses not to fix because, after all, they’re just cyclists, right?

Marathon? Go to Carlsbad. Triathlon? Go to Oceanside. Nature hike? Go to Escondido’s Daley Ranch, or San Marcos’ Discovery Hills, or… (you get the picture). Bike tour? Poway. 5k or 10k? Carlsbad, or, really, any town but Vista.

Why do all these other cities feel that it’s important to allow for weekend group recreational events––and thru-ways and set-asides for regular recreation to occur––yet Vista doesn’t?

Bike lanes? Hiking or horseback trails? That can be had in any city adjacent to Vista. While San Marcos mandates such infrastructure in new development, Vista will give any warm body a building permit to erect whatever he wants, with no thought about building in a recreational thru-way. City planning is an oxymoron in this town. Even a sidewalk is rare in Vista.

"Vista offers an absoluteperfect, mild Mediterranean climate," it boasts. That’s all well and good, but I can only assume that its government thinks all its residents are redneck trailer trash who’d rather sit in front of the TV and watch WWF than go outside and experience this fine climate.

So here it is. Fix the pool, and front-burner the broken heater. Furthermore, open the pool at noon as well for those adults who want to swim. If efforts to attract midday swimmers have failed in the past, I submit that it is because you haven’t effectively marketed the pool to adults. How robust are your marketing efforts now? Your Water Park’s website informs us of "Waterpark Hours for 1999." You have a map to the Water Park that shows streets no longer in existence.

Really, is it that adults in Vista don’t swim? No, it’s that we’ve accommodated our routines to the sorry fact that we live in a hick town, and we all go to a neighboring city to swim.

Do not forget, by the way, that the City owns the Wave Water Park. That means that I and my neighbors pay for it. So––as one of the Water Park’s 86,000 investors, I recommend that the city either sell it to an enterprise that does know how to market this property, or open it up for use during a decent hour.

I am not just here to criticize. I am here to offer my help as well. Your adjacent neighbor to the west, Oceanside, decided to enlist my help in putting on a triathlon in its town in 1997. Now it is the site of the only Ironman race in America west of the Mississippi. It fills its field of competitors almost a year in advance and brings several millions of dollars into its community. Why not something like that for Vista?

There are two things you need to do to start things rolling, and in your efforts I can be your biggest ally or your constant pain in the backside. Number one: Open the pool up at noon. If your Wave Park manager can’t effectively market the availability of the noon swim, I’ll be glad to help, on my own time, with my own money. But really, it’s very likely to become a bigger issue if you don’t. You can’t extract my tax dollars to run the facility, and then deny me the opportunity to use it. Besides, it is a civic embarrassment to not have any facility in which your residents can swim other than 6AM – 8AM weekdays.

Second, form a trails committee. If you want to know how to do it, call another of your adjacent neighbors––San Marcos. Craig Seargent-Beach runs its trails committee, and anyone poking around Twin Oaks Valley and Discovery Hills can see what that city has accomplished. I’ll be happy to serve on your trails committee if and when you decide to get one going. You have an opportunity to form recreational thru-ways now. After you’ve allowed everyone to build a second home in their backyards, as you’re now doing, the opportunity will be lost.

Finally, may I again reiterate that I’m ashamed to see all cities adjacent to Vista pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, endeavoring to turn themselves into something better for those of use who’d like to recreate outdoors. I’m ashamed because instead of leading, the response of certain of our elected on the phone to see whether "this" initiative or "that" is acceptable to some loud-mouth restaurant owner who happens to have the ear of a couple of newspaper reporters. May I offer myself as a counterbalancing force. This letter is going to you; to two of the city council members who, I understand, share my view that our city ought to be more recreationally vibrant; to a hundred-thousand or so of my best friends on www.slowtwitch.com––one of my websites––and to the North County Times. Those who are concerned about vocal restaurant owners can take solace in the knowledge that my mouth is just as loud.

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and make this town a model for those who not only live in North America’s perfect climate, but who wish to enjoy it. I am at your service.

All politics is local. So's triathlon. We may travel to exotic locales to race, but 98% of the swimming, cycling and running we do is right outside our door. Now I'm a civic activist. I'll tell you how it goes.

CIVIC UPDATE 3/27/01

It's always a surprise what resonates with Slowtwitch readers. I'll spend weeks researching and writing a piece that I'm sure is Pulitzer material, and I get a big ho-hum from you all. Then I spend an hour crafting an email to the City of Vista, stick it up on Slowtwitch as an afterthought, and you all rise up out of your chairs and cry huzzah! and write letters, and send me brochures of your own cities' pool programs, and vow to take up the challenge yourselves. I'm now the Cesar Chavez of municipal pool users.

So I thought it only right to give you an update.

I've reached detente with my city. I've agreed to forego being an arsehole for the time being, and have become the volunteer marketing coordinator for adult lap swimming. I shall be doing this over the next few weeks, in an attempt to fill up the morning swim with morning swimmers. I've also vowed to have a noon swim, or the functional equivalent, or else I go berserk again. They know this, and are prepared––with armed security, no doubt.

I also donated a pool clock to the city, with the stipulation that if anything happens to it, it must be immediately replaced out of city funds. The clock will not be universally applauded. For some, it will explode the fiction under which they've been living. It is the one municipal entity upon which one can rely for the cold, unadorned truth.

I'm going to look into the whole masters team thing. Being a member of one is the easy part. Starting one is a little tougher. I've got to find a coach who'll be willing to work for seventy-five cents and hour. That seems difficult on its face, until I remember that I'm working for no cents an hour. In fact, I'm out of pocket, when you consider $400 for a clock. May I also say, upon receiving this clock, that––although it is a nice clock and all that––these pool clock people need some competition.