Probably the coolest gift I got this year was this thing called
SportZJam, a very thoughful gift from my girlfriend. I wasn't sure what to make of it when I first got it, but basically it lets you listen to music while you swim. I'm not a great swimmer and it doesn't help that it's mind-numbingly boring. With running or cycling, there is at least stuff to look at if not an MP3 player to spice it up a bit. There are a few other waterproof setups on the market (
Swimman, and
SwiMP3 mostly) but they're all pretty pricey and are just waterproof MP3 players that look like goggles or whatever. I don't really need another player to worry about putting music onto, etc. So this thing gets around that by having two pieces: a transmitter (it's a walkie talkie actually) that you just plug into your existing MP3 player on safe, dry, land, and a reciever (about the size of a matchbox) that clips to the back of your goggles and has waterproof headphones coming out of it. It's not exactly hi-fi listening but hey, you're not really needing that either. I gave it the shakedown cruise on Monday and was very pleased. The range is supposed to be 1/4 mile but I haven't tested that range quite yet, I just had it right by the pool but would rather not have my MP3 player that close to all the water. Today I tried leaving the transmitter in my locker and just bringing the reciever (the locker room is right next to the pool) but had some battery life issues (on the MP3 player) that aborted the experiment. I'll try again later this week. We'll see how durable it is but my first test run was pretty successful and made the swimming much more enjoyable.