Latest uncomfortable experience: 2-mile open ocean swim. There’s an easy way to verify if you’ve just completed an uncomfortable experience: the desire to not do it again. I’d put the open ocean swim in this bucket, for sure. It’s one thing to paddle around and snorkel under clear water to look at cute clownfish like in Turks and Caicos. It’s certainly another thing to maneuver past the surf, swim through slippery kelp beds, dodge birds and sharks, and get yourself from point a to point b in a few hours before sunset. This was a particularly uncomfortable experience for me because I’m not a swimmer (I can count on both hands how often I’ve swum in the ocean as an adult) and want nothing to do with the dark and murky waters of the Pacific Ocean.
First, I did make sure I had the right gear. I had a wetsuit, tinted goggles, cap, earplugs, and a blow-up neon “floaty” that doubles as dry storage as well as a beacon for people and boats to spot you. You can also rest on the floaty, which I did a number of times, and it had a belt so I was able to loop a water bottle around it as well. Second, I picked a hot, busy day on the beach so I knew surfers, kayakers, and lifeguards would be out and about. Something about other humans floating about, even from pretty far away, made the whole ordeal less scary. Also, beforehand, I told myself repeatedly that hundreds if not thousands of people a day go into the ocean FOR FUN in La Jolla. Maybe this would be fun!
I got on the beach around 2 pm on Friday over by Scripps pier in La Jolla. It’s an easy landmark from the water, and La Jolla cove is about 1.5 miles away. I’d go from the pier to the cove and then back in towards the beach. It doesn’t “look” far when you stand at the beach and look south towards the cover, but I have flown plenty of helicopter flights over the area to know how far indeed it was.
I got into the water which was at first a relief: I was already sweating in my black wetsuit and the water wasn’t cold by any means but at least it was refreshing. I soon got past the waves and out to the end of the pier. This was my first mistake: thinking that that was the hard part to just get past the waves. Out at the end of the pier, I could see surfers more towards the shore and lots of people on the beach. It was quiet and calm, and because of my earplugs, I could just hear the swooshing of my own arms in the water. That was a bit disturbing. Here I was, with probably 40 feet of water under me, and all I could detect were my own movements.
I’d like to tell you that I found a blissful state of meditation out there just doing one stroke after another (thanks for the tip, Jen!!) but that was not achieved. I think you get in that state once your base operations are under control, and mine was not. I was occupied by three rotating thoughts. The first was, “what the hell is in here?” I was never that “I want to be a marine biologist when I grow up” kid. As soon as I found out that dolphins lived in saltwater, I was out. Saltwater, to me, always tasted like seal piss, and who wants that in the body. So, on top of the taste of seawater, marine life was a concern. I know logically the chances of getting attacked by a shark (there are Great Whites spotted in La Jolla on occasion) is ridiculously rare, but I could not overcome the duality that I was in “the shark’s house.” Worse, and this is really the worse, guys: I’m pretty sure I saw one, a shark, that is. Resting on my floaty for a minute after about one hour out there, I was peering out at the ocean and saw something about 50 yards away with a large, white belly flop and lash out over the water. To my knowledge, that ain’t a seal. Then it flopped about again, and I just about lost it, swimming as hastily as I could away from the white floppy thing. Perhaps it was a massive stingray. Whatever it was, it was out there with me, and that’s a troubling thought.
My second rotating thought was, “DAMN. This is a long-distance.” I remember in middle school when I thought running a mile was the most horrid activity ever. Now I run every day and did 50 miles in an ultramarathon once. I bet this is the same with swimming: you just have to build up your distance. I did no training for this and was just suffering the consequences of that, which is fine as that’s the point of being uncomfortable. I was certainly tired, and my neck was getting a rash from my repetitive glances back at the shore to make sure I wasn’t off course.
Between these two thoughts, I had occasional blissful ones like, “wow. It’s really beautiful out today,” or “Wow. I am floating in this overwhelmingly huge ocean like a speck of sand,” but those were not my main ones. That’s a function of being focused on the goal to get back on the sand. I did after about 2.5 hours. Overall, this was a great physical test with a side heaping of a psychological one. I will not be back in the shark’s house anytime soon.