Skinny Dippin'

Bloomington, Indiana is the home of Indiana University, where I attended college. It is also the home of limestone deposits which are mined and used to construct many of the buildings on the campus. The area is peppered with abandoned quarries in secluded areas making them perfect locations for that most popular of all collegiate sports – skinny dippin'. It took some doing, but one hot spring day I talked my girlfriend into going for, shall we say, Olympic Gold.

A buddy had told me where the place was and cautioned it was hard to get to. I followed his directions down a path that he had mistakenly called a road as tree branches reached out and scraped the sides of my old but faithful '63 Chevy. Finally we came to a clearing and saw the quarry in all its magnificence. I guess you could say I drove my Chevy to the levee.

We got out, inspected the place for interlopers and, finding none, took the plunge, sans attire, into the really, really cold water. We sort of got used to it as we swam out to a debris pile forming an island several yards off shore.

Just as we got there I saw a van pull up to a place maybe 100 yards away from where we had come in.  Maybe a half dozen kids got out and started to set up things for their own little party. I was then reminded I had promised this place was so remote no one else could find it. I offered to swim back and get our clothes and bring hers back. No dice. She didn't want to wear wet clothes. So we decided to head back and put on a show for our new neighbors.

Just as we started back, however, the whole gang pulled up stakes hopped back in the van and left. So, without embarrassing incident, we swam back, dried off (we did think to bring towels) and got dressed. I told her I wanted to find out how that van got into the place without having to come through the jungle route we took. So we hiked down to that area and found a "normal" road which led right up to the place. I made a mental note to speak to my buddy about the directions he gave me.

We discovered something else at the spot and at the same time figured out why the other group had left. There was a "no swimming" sign warning that the water was contaminated, polluted and unsafe to the max. Bummer.

There was no way to drive down to the "normal" road so through much maneuvering I turned my behemoth of a car around and re-negotiated the jungle path.

Back in town we stopped for some ice cream at the "Big Wheel," a local greasy spoon that was for some reason a favorite of the college kids.

We ordered the ice cream and cokes and sat there for a while decompressing and reliving the adventure – which, of course was all my fault. That's OK. At that point I would have said it was definitely worth the trouble.

That's when the rash started to show up. It didn't affect me too much but she got pretty splotchy on her arms and legs… and, I assume, elsewhere. 

I felt responsible and insisted on taking her to the health center. There, we went through the whole story and the staff wanted to know what precisely was in the water, but we, of course couldn't say. I told them we just read the sign and got out of there. At that point the lecherous offending boyfriend whose rash had subsided was thrown out.

In spite of the cold water, lack of privacy and rash, the relationship survived… for a while, anyway.