I wake up and I’m feeling even better this morning than yesterday. Still not at full capacity but I feel like I’m trending in the right direction. However, I’ve got some weird thing going on in my left quadricep. I started feeling it on yesterday’s run and maybe I should have skipped the quad weight machines yesterday. So I feel like a run is not in the cards today and hoping this won’t impact a swim either.

I’m off to the beach before 10:15. The water looks more smooth than it was yesterday. It certainly doesn’t hurt that I’m over an hour earlier out the door today. Speaking of the door, it sure did feel damn cold as I exited the door but then I was also in the shade. It’s about 57 degrees out right now and it’s forecasted to be a 70 degree high today. Boy those 70 degrees just can’t come soon enough!

It’s a lovely day as I enter the Strand parking lot. It’s a more sun shiny day today than it was yesterday. The horizon is filled with a sort of greyish haze but it is blue sky all over here on the shore. I head down the stairs and it is a mid tide when I reach the sand. Really not much in tide change today. It was a 2 foot low a couple hours ago and heading to a 3 foot high in a couple hours. Then a 1.5 low this evening. I’m glad we are out of the 6+ high tides we had a couple weeks ago. I blame the moon.

I put my feet in the water and it feels the same as yesterday. I was delighted this morning to find that the Camp Pendleton buoy that was reporting 55 yesterday was up to a sultry 56 today. However there is probably about 20 miles between me and that buoy right now. Man I have got to get a thermometer. I hear they are reasonably priced. I don’t know what is preventing me from getting one. It’s not like there is some supply chain anomaly that has emptied the nation’s thermometer inventory. Instead of writing this post I could be shopping Amazon right now.

I walk around a small group of shoreside fishermen to avoid their fishing lines and then head for the rocks to stash my backpack. I’m going through the usual mind games that I play with myself here. I am seconds from entering the water. Is this at all similar to being aware you are going to die in a matter of moments? I can’t believe this is actually happening. Should I just go back? Of course not.

My goggles are strapped to my head so I am committed. I walk into the water. It is beautiful - no surprise there. I get close to the edge of the white water and a larger set of waves rolls in. These are bigger than what was here yesterday and I enjoy diving underneath them. I rise back up after the first and the next one is curling and I try to grab and position my camera but alas I am just milliseconds too late and it’s a shot of the underside of the wave. Regardless, I saw what I saw with my eyes and stared right into the mouth of the wave’s tube. You will have to just trust me that it looked great.

Well I’m headed south now and it feels like my body adapts to the water a little more quickly today. However my breathing is still slightly impaired by lingering congestion. I can hear myself breathe. Happily, I can’t feel any pain in my quadricep. I stop to clear the fog from my goggles and I’m taken by the reflection of the sun on the water as it forms a path from myself out to the horizon. Is it asking me to swim to the horizon? I can only wonder what it is that I would find there. Probably a new horizon.

A little further and my eyes are drawn to this single stalk of kelp rising from the ocean floor. The water surrounding it is this rich rich blue and the leaves off the vine catch the light penetrating the water’s surface. There is just so much great stuff to see out here and most can never imagine what it is that is out here. This is of course why I must take these pictures.

I wonder if I will be able to pull off a full swim today. I really do want to but I just won’t know until later in the swim. About 30 minutes in is when I will have a much better idea.

I reach the south end of the beach and the water and waves are doing really cool things. The waves are bigger today. They are crashing onto the rocks at the base of the headlands and then they roll back down the rock and create this wake that travels in the opposite direction of the next wave. Just as that next wave crests, it meets the oncoming wake and instantly its crest rises a few feet straight up into the air before it breaks. It looks super cool. I don’t realize until after the set of waves pass that I should try to get a video but with the cold and all I just don’t feel like I should linger here any longer. Time to move on.

North, north, north I swim and all the while I meditate upon and explore the boundaries of the cold. My hands feel pretty good the whole way out. These are my canaries in the coal mine. Once I feel them start to lose dexterity, that is a good sign of hypothermia’s onset.

Like yesterday, the north bound trip is rougher but it is smoother for sure than it was yesterday. There are moments when I feel the cold spike almost like those waves meeting the backflow of the previous wave. As this happens I try to concentrate on the cold and meet it deep inside my core and accept it for what it is and then I feel myself relax and the lip of that rising crest recedes.

I’m getting closer and closer to that northern cliff that is a barren golden brown just beneath the Ritz. I get to the kelp forest that starts half way up the beach. I watch the vines pass beneath me. Soon I am convinced I can do this. It is damn cold but I can feel my hands fully. I try to just melt into the cold and meet it right where it is. Eventually those bathrooms are not far at all. I’m only a few minutes away.

Here I am and perfectly aligned at the north end of the beach. I look south. Was I really all the way down there? Well back I go but not all the way this time. I just have to make it about another 10 minutes now. I can do this. Not that I have a choice.

The estates at the top of the bluff seem to stand still and and then suddenly advance all at once. It feels like time flows in sputters and spurts right here. I watch the ocean floor come closer and closer. I make a sharp left turn when it is time and head to the beach. I can see a wave break behind me and I let myself become consumed by the white water and watch it cancel out the sky and surround me. A few more strokes and I am standing.

I grab my pack and head up the stairs. I put everything that I have within me into getting up to the top. Waves of cold flow through me. I have left the ocean but I still feel it inside of me. I’m trying to look normal because there are people here. I have to remain composed.