Different strokes…
…for different folks.
Very different:
What does it feel like when you first get into the water? It burns. It feels like you’re on fire. But in temperatures like this, you don’t die of the cold. You drown. Within the first five seconds your body goes into shock; it’s very difficult to breathe. The only thing I can do is count every stroke, “One. Two. Breathe. Three. Four. Breathe.” It doesn’t get any better after that. As the cold envelops you, it gnaws at your muscles and they start seizing up. Stretching one arm in front of the other gets harder and harder because you’re shivering – everything feels strained. I’m only wearing Speedos, goggles and a cap; I don’t grease my body for insulation like long-distance sea swimmers usually do, because if a seal or a killer whale goes for me, my team could struggle to drag me to safety.
You might say he’s crazy, but he’s certainly tough.
Different strokes, indeed. Goodness.
I think I’ll just take a stand on Crazy
A chilling experience. 🙂
Had he failed to complete his swim, his body would have been nicely preserved. They could have just put him in the freezer for the trip home to be buried.
I once swam across a small, alpine lake in Colorado. Water temp was maybe forty degrees F. I thought it would be fun! It wasn’t. 🙁 Never contemplated that again.
Egad! We humans are always looking for new ways to set records or get attention.
Elephant seals, (Leopard seals are worse), and courting terminal hypothermia; what could go wrong? Sort of like a base jumping with a secondhand chute. I can’t imagine the shrinkage involved.
“I am willing to do it all again. When I did my swim only 2% of these islands were fully protected from the overfishing that threatens to tip the balance of this delicate ecosystem, which is already experiencing some of the fastest climate change on the planet. Now it’s 23%. But that means 77% is still vulnerable and I won’t stop until the entire region is safe.”
Pugh is one of those who needs a ‘noble’ cause to give his life meaning. The more extreme the difficulty in achieving that ‘meaning’… the greater the degree of inner emptiness.
Since “he won’t stop until the entire region” is ‘protected’ from “some of the fastest climate change on the planet” (where’s the industrialization in Antarctica?) clearly he has a death wish and his days are numbered. He’s another “Steve Irwin” and like him at some point, he’ll either have a brief encounter with one of those denizens of the deep or his body will collapse from the incremental strain he’s putting on it.
Om said,
> I can’t imagine the shrinkage involved. <
LMAO
“The whole expedition took four weeks of travelling from my home in South Africa for just 19 minutes in the water.”
From South Africa reminds me of Spalding Gray, in his great monologue Swimming to Cambodia (the making of the film Killing Fields). He talks of some other actor, from South Africa, who was swimming the Asian waters and warning others of danger. Dangers this other actor was able to handle because … he was from South Africa.
I don’t quite want to see Killing Fields again, a powerful genocide movie which outrages me, but maybe Gray again.