Wednesday. Essay/short story of the day comes from the archives of New Yorker: With nothing but a swimsuit, an endurance swimmer decides to swim through parts of the Northwest Passage, traveling from Greenland to Alaska. An incredible story. Well put exercise on our to-do lists after the holidays. Meanwhile, we can get a thrill from vicariously reading along. Just teasing. When I was in my twenties, I decided to tackle waterways that had never been swum, and crossed the Strait of Magellan, went around the Cape of Good Hope, and swam between various Aleutian Islands. In 1987, I swam the Bering Strait, from the United States to the Soviet Union, and seven years later I swam through the Gulf of Aqaba, from Egypt to Israel and Jordan. Then I became interested in the limits of endurance. I wanted to know whether my body could tolerate extreme cold. In 2002, wearing only a swimsuit, I swam for more than a mile in Antarctic waters of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. In the Arctic, water can be two or three degrees colder; still, I wanted to swim portions of the Northwest Passage, travelling from Greenland to Alaska, using Roald Amundsen’s account of his journey as a guide. newyorker/magazine/2008/04/21/a-dip-in-the-cold
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 13:16:27 +0000