Dante’s Freezer

I didn’t think a swim was gonna happen today. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was calling for a 50% chance of rain this morning and even if there was no rain, there would be a fair amount of current from 10 knot winds. After yesterday, I was feeling done with cold for the next 24 hours and figured I’d just hit the elliptical machine.

Well I wake up and the ground is dry (to be clear, I slept inside) and there is no rain forecasted until later in the evening. Over the next couple hours of meditating and random chores, I could feel the tractor beam from the beach. Part of me absolutely did not want to go but the opposition prevailed.

I left at 7:30 so I could finish up in time to shower off at the parking lot and head to church. Nothing quite like a cold shower in the outside air after an hour in 57 degree water. This followed by showing up at church looking like you are being slain in the spirit as soon as you walk in the door.

I get to the beach and it is breezy out. As I walk down the stairs, the main thing I notice is that there are patches of beautiful turquois water out on the ocean. Overall, the water looks pretty clear. It is mostly cloudy out with a few peek-a-boo views of blue sky.

When I reach the beach the water is just lovely. It is a light and bright green. I think I might see a few swimmers in the distance heading north (perhaps the usual Sunday morning bunch) but I don’t see anyone else in the water.

I get in the water and today I try to walk from the initial trench at the shore to the sand just past. It does seem like this sand has been getting closer to shore over the past week or so. The water reaches shoulder high but I make it to the shin deep sand. I walk past some of the breaking waves. The waves have been coming down a bit in size every day for the last few days and today it is pretty small - 3 to 4 feet.

Soon I start to swim. It feels just as cold as yesterday but no ice cream headache today. The water is clear and I’m heading against this current. Holy smokes it is cold but this water is so beautiful. Both yesterday and today I notice that my feet and lower legs feel particularly cold. Again, I don’t feel like I am suffering but I also don’t feel that warm glow today that usually surrounds me through the first half of the swim. I try to imagine myself exhaling warmth from a furnace. The results are disapointing.

My new goggles are fogging up which my old goggles never did. I can see well enough to navigate but I’m really thinking of buying the same pair I had before.

On the way back up north about half way up the beach I see something just out past me. I think it might be a kayaker but when I stop to take a look it is a big Pelican sitting just a couple feet from me. I have never seen one sitting still and up close. It really looks amazing. It is quite large and so much color around its beak. I grab my camera and, of course, it flies off just as I am powering it up.

I just love the clouds, light and water here. I try to relax my body and mind as I make my way through the cold. I try to enter into the intensity of the cold that seems to brute force its way into my pores. I keep reminding myself that I am fine. It’s not like I feel like I am losing consciousness or like any of my senses are impeded. I’m just cold. I’m not even cold in the sense of “Oh my God I am so cold!” I just feel like there is something on the other side of my skin that is really super cold in a wrong kind of a way. Besides, I’m almost done.

As I make my final turn and head into the current and it feels like I am going nowhere, I remind myself how I felt the same yesterday and then lo and behold, I’m back to shore. Well I’m on dry land as I write this so it looks like the same has transpired today.

When I get back to the beach, I towel off, put on some layers and head up the stairs. I know I am just gonna towel off and dress all over again in a couple minutes but it’s when you exit the water that your core temperature drops again as the blood returns to your extremities. I just can’t bring myself to trunk it up the stairs.

At the car, everything feels like it requires twice the effort - opening the lock box with my keys, arranging my clothes and then there is the cold shower. Actually that is not so bad as I had imagined. My imagination did do a pretty good job of making it seem horrific - a sort of Dante’s freezer.

I’m changing into my clothes inside the stall of the men’s bathroom. This is usually a delicate process where I make sure absolutely as little as possible comes into contact with the floor. Today I just don’t have the dexterity or the will. I throw caution to the wind as I toss my trunks right on the bathroom floor. I tell myself this is not gross. This is survival.

Eventually I make it to Starbucks and have the best coffee EVER.