Look who's here! Remember Ken Longo?? |
DISCLAIMER: Open-water swimming is inherently dangerous. Open-water swimmers risk drowning, hypothermia, hyperthermia, heart attacks, panic attacks, cramping, jelly fish stings, fish bites, boat or jet-ski collisions, collisions with floating or submerged objects (including other swimmers), and other calamities that can be injurious, disabling or fatal! The "West Neck Pod" is an informal association of open-water swimmers who swim "outside the lines" with no lifeguard protection, it has no formal membership, organizational structure or legal identity, and its participants, including the author of this blog, make no representations and assume no liability with respect to its group open-water swims. All swimmers who participate in West Neck Pod group open-water swims do so at their own risk. Be careful out there!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
2011 to 2012: Swimming from One Year Into the Next...
Saturday, December 24, 2011
HO-HO-HOLY CRAP, IT'S COLD SWIMMING ON CHRISTMAS EVE!!
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
The West Neck "Polar Pod" Is Seven Strong for Saturday's Swim!
Gae, demonstrating proper pre-swim headgear |
After the swim, warming up in our cars... |
Thursday, December 1, 2011
"Yes, Virginia, There Is Still Open-Water Swimming in December!"
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Last Swim of November??
Saturday, November 26, 2011
"Indian Summer" Comes to West Neck Beach
Tomorrow's weather is predicted to be a little cooler and cloudier but otherwise much the same as today -- so we'll continue to take advantage of these unseasonable conditions and grab one more November swim...See you in the Salt tomorrow (Sunday) at 11:30!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving -- With a Dash of Salt!
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Bye-bye, buoys....!
Our chores done, we turned our attention to the whitecapped waves breaking on the beach and the wind howling across the water, which made the air feel vastly colder than the thermometer indicated. The idea of swimming in those conditions seemed harrowing and potentially crazy, and we ducked into the lee of the wind behind the bathhouse as we weighed our options: We could forgo today’s swim altogether and try for tomorrow, which was forecast to be even warmer...or, since we were already here, and it was a gorgeous, albeit windy, sunny day, we could suck it up, suit up, and get in the water and swim! After considerable hemming and hawing, we chose the latter – and numerous shrieks and nine strokes later were still regretting our decision as the icy water sliced through our wetsuits and stung our faces, hands and feet. Our faces bright red from the cold, we wondered aloud if we could do this...and then, as we took our tenth, determined stroke through the icy waves, we felt the tectonic shift that has marked every one of our late-season swims so far, as we uniformly proclaimed, "You know, it’s not so bad!," and put our faces down and just kept swimming...Rob Todd, who'd finally yielded to my importuning and put on the insulated booties I kept offering him, quickly outpaced Annmarie and I, his cozy-toesies fueling a sprint to the North Buoy and back on a long, meandering course "way out there" that had me fretting for his safety while Annmarie and I more or less hugged the shoreline in front of the beach. Hopefully Rob got a good long last look at the north buoy, because, like the Pod-Sandal-Station, both it and the south buoy were gone from the water by Tuesday, along with the rest of the boat moorings, leaving the harbor empty and vast....but with no more danger of Rob tearing the top of his head open on a mooring ball like he did last year!
Sunday kept its promise of even warmer weather, and Annmarie and I returned to West Neck Beach for an even more amazing and exhilarating and invigorating late-morning swim as Joye, Carole and Kathy (and the dogs!) watched from the beach. Adopting some of the suggestions of Cold-Warrior Rob Martell, whose recent HUMS blogpost on cold-water swimming is destined to be a Pod classic (http://hums.blogspot.com/2011/11/cold-water-swimming.html), we wore extra "compression" layers under our wetsuits, and were amazed at how much warmer our hands and feet felt with that extra protection for our cores (oh, and my "grande" soy chai tea latte from Starbucks also helped -- not to mention the encouragement from Liz Perlstein, whom I bumped into there!). We stayed in far longer than our initial squeals getting in would have suggested, exchanging exhilarated high-fives when we eventually tore ourselves from the water with a now familiar reluctance that grows more intense with each successive late-season swim....The water is cold, and getting colder, and our open-water swims grow increasingly symbolic as their length and distance wane....
But we're not ready to give it up yet, and with Thanksgiving approaching, what could be more symbolic than a Thanksgiving Day Open-Water Swim to express our gratitude for an open-water season that continues to thrill and inspire us! So, this year our Thanksgiving "Turkey-Trot" will take us to the beach, across the sand and into the water for an 11:00 (in the water!) open-water swim at West Neck Beach! Late-season regular Gae Polisner, who bowed out for the last two swims, is apparently thinking about joining us -- maybe you will, too! See you in the Salt! -- and Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Late-Season Swims "Cold Comfort" for Pod Members!
I haven’t been back to the Y since, and despite the sometimes heart-stopping coldness of the open water, it still feels more pleasant to me than a return to that box of hot water that we call a pool. It seems that the thing that has changed the most in me – and in more than a few of my fellow Pod members – is that I am no longer merely a "swimmer." I am now, first, foremost, and forever, an "open-water swimmer," and I am compelled to keep swimming, and to extend the boundaries of my open-water season as far as possible before I am forced to go back to the pool – if, indeed, I even can. That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, I’ll see you in the Salt!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
On "Wimps" and "Wusses" and the West Neck Pod....
Whether you stopped swimming in early September, when the water temperature dropped below 70, or in early October when it dropped below 60, or are still swimming when it's dropped to below 50, you are still doing something that most people -- even most swimmers -- find unimaginable. So for all the good-natured teasing about wusses and wimps, I want to go on record as saying that there are no wimps or wusses in the West Neck Pod, and you are ALL my heroes, every day, every time! See you in the Salt!
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Taking the forecast with a grain of Salt...
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
100 Days of Open-Water Swimming
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This season, it occurred to me to count how many "just one more" open-water swims my season actually encompassed. Inspired by downhill skiiers' concept of a "perfect" skiing season of 100 days, I decided to make that my goal for 2011, and started counting with my first swim on May 27th. Today, October 22nd, was Swim #100 -- marking the completion of my "Perfect 100-Day Open-Water Swimming Season"! Bonnie, Gae, Karen, Rob Ripp, Rob Todd, and Tim Sullivan joined me in the water, while Ken and Joye tracked us from the beach as we made our way from South Buoy to North. Our tentative plans for a "Big Swim Across the Harbor" were quashed by the persistent westerly wind and whitecapped waves, but the chilly, 58-degree water temperature and 46 degree air temperature were otherwise no deterrent to this determined pod-let of other "outies," who were equally determined to see me achieve my 100th swim. With the unusual and even dramatic weather of this season -- from Hurricane Irene to the rain-drenched August to the precipitous cold of early September, followed by October's relentless westerly wind, that swim was never a certainty, and I think we all were a little relieved that I made it! Of course, now that I have, that doesn't mean my open-water swimming season is over! Tomorrow will be a day off for me (as I embark on my first-ever "Ziplining Adventure"), but I'll be back in the Salt next week -- weather permitting! ...By the way, although I seem to have been the only Pod member consciously counting swimming days, rumored sightings suggest that the evanescent "Pod-Father" Rob Martell has substantially exceeded the 100 number -- and he will certainly take the prize for longest open-water season, as his first swim was posted on May 15th and, as history suggests, he will continue to swim into December....!
Next season....counting mileage?? See you in the Salt!
* Thanks to Newsday, whose October 16th "Long Island Section" cover inspired the adaptation above, and to Kathy Wickham, who "Photoshopped" it into existence!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
"The Tempest" meets "The Ides of October"...
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Columbus Day Road Trip a "Swimming" Success...!
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Heading Into the Post-Season...
This morning the air temperature had warmed up again to 56 degrees by 8:00, and the water temperature was still a tolerable though chilly 60-64 degrees, but only Gae, Annmarie, Bonnie, Sue, Joye, Liz and I, along with Rob Ripp (the sole representative of his gender!) were there to enjoy a blissful Causeway swim in clear, still water under a windless, cloudless, impossibly blue sky.
For those of us who continue to swim in the open water in September and October and even November (and, for our crazy Canadian, Rob Martell, in December!), the Fall is unquestionably the best time for open-water swimming, and it just keeps getting better and better! Aside from the astonishing crispness and clarity of the water, the exquisite oblique light, the dramatic kaleidoscopic skies, the emptiness of the vast horizon, and the stillness and quiet of the nearly deserted beach and harbor, we embrace the bittersweet awareness that each swim might be the season’s last. So every stroke in this late-season is precious, as we try to burn every image and sensation into our memories, to sustain us through the long, Saltless winter. For me, this season’s memories will include some "firsts": the Pod’s several exhilarating forays south to "The New Beach," choreographed "circle-dances" and a beer-toast out at the South Buoy, an armada of orange "floaty-bags" trailing behind a sea of swimmers; and (I hope) some "lasts": Bonnie’s breast cancer, Joye’s broken ankle, Chris Vasallo’s neck surgery, and Frank Fiore’s bike accident....But, this is only October 9th, I still have 8 more days of open-water swimming to achieve my "perfect" 100-Day Open-Water Swimming Season (and beyond!), and there are plenty more memories to be made before we say goodbye to this 2011 open-water season. Next on the list: The West Neck Pod’s first-ever Columbus Day "Road Trip" to Long Beach in Sag Harbor – honoring the "explorer" in all of us....See you tomorrow in the East-End Salt!
Friday, September 23, 2011
"The Mists of Huntington..."
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