Triathlons with crappy swims

I get it, there are lots of very active towns out there that want to hold triathlons, and I also get that there are a lot of triathletes out there that just want to race but I have to say that I have to draw the line at swimming in a muck filled "reservoir." I use "reservoir" loosely because I have swam in some nice reservoirs and the one that I am referring to is not nice (I know this only from stories not first hand). My girls friends are trying to get me to travel to "wine country" in Washington state to compete in the "Onion Man", I understand that this is an awesome triathlon (with the exception of the swim) and a little wine tasting afterward sounds great, BUT and that is a big BUT from what I have gathered the swim is atrocious, as in the gals last year were concerned about giardia after they got out of the water and my brother-in-law said he stood in ankle deep muck waiting for the cannon to go off. I am definitely going to have to pass on this one! Let me just throw this out there however, aside from the swim (and I am a huge swimming wimp) that doesn't seem to bother about 90% of the people in the race I understand this race to be outstanding; they sell out every year and I guess the community is awesome!

On a completely different topic, I got new riding pants which I love, love love! Terry is an awesome brand and I am so excited to have some new pads to sit on! Two of the pairs are capris and are a slick type of material, a little tight when putting them on but the compression feels great when riding! Next, I got two new pairs of shorts, one shorter than the other, especially good for those long rides indoors :-) Finally, I have added arm warmers to my arsenal, we will see if I ever use them, my sister picked them up for me and from what I understand they are fabulous to have. I talked to a lady in Kona while vacationing last year and she told me that there is no such thing as a riding jersey with long sleeves, you just use arm warmers. I would expect a statement like that from somebody in Kona where the weather is beautiful and warm year round, in the great white north where I live, not only do we wear long sleeves when riding, we wear a couple of layers of long sleeves, hats, gloves and long riding pants; we also pray that the snow plows have hit the trails be fore we do-oh dear I need to go back to Kona!!