Cold Refuge (2023) Movie Script
Anybody jumping your
way back?
Alright.
Alright, moving.
What do you think of these swimmers?
Well, like it is too cold outside.
I'm just good with like, fishing. That's it.
I wouldn't do that myself.
Um, I know for a fact that there are sharks in the bay.
I'm kind of scared.
Come on,
that's great.
White. Oh my god. Holy.
No way you can escape this place.
It's Johns. It's Johns.
Oh my god. Seal a frenzy.
That was a seal. Holy seal. Holy.
You probably came from the bay.
What'd you think of that, Casey?
That's the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
I've been swimming in the bay about half my life,
but I've never been able to explain why.
When I tell people it feels fantastic.
You feel like you've been reborn. They don't believe me.
So I asked some swimmer friends to tell me their stories.
Most people think it's completely nuts
to jump into cold water with predators who could kill you.
But these adverse conditions in the bay are nothing compared
to the adversities some
of the swimmers face in their own lives.
That's what these stories are about.
The first one starts with an accident.
I got accepted into medical school at
University of Louisville.
I was working at the time for my, my dad's company,
which is a excavation company.
I was laying sewer pipe and, uh, had a trench collapse on.
It
looked like a very safe ditch
or else I wouldn't have been in there.
You know, I grew up in ditches all my life.
Looked safe to my brother, looked safe to my dad.
But, um, you know, as it turns out, it, it wasn't
A, Basically a big chunk of clay broke off
and rode down on me.
Luckily, it was not more dirt than it was
or else I would've been killed.
Most trenching accidents, people don't live.
So yeah, that was a big change.
Of course, you know, it paralyzed me from the waist down.
How old were you? I was 24.
Everything changes when you, uh, lose half your body,
there's a huge learning curve.
Um, you know, to doing everything.
You have to, I mean, you have to learn how
to be a human again, because everything,
pretty much everything you've known
before is different, you know, with few exceptions.
You know, you have to learn how to, uh, pee, poop,
uh, navigate all in different circumstances.
Um, they're drastically different and,
and hard to swallow, you know?
So I wouldn't say that it's, uh,
an easy learning curve,
but one that's made a lot easier with, you know,
having a experienced, uh, guide or sherpa
or whatever you wanna call it.
I am a really slow swimmer, so I, I mostly just come here
and swim around in Aquatic Park the other day.
However, I came across this guy
who just looked like a normal guy.
He started explaining to me how tides work
and then he starts spouting off all these numbers.
Everything's a number to him.
Every reference,
uh, you know, I said, where, where are you swimming today?
He, he said, well, I'm probably gonna go to Fort Mason.
And he said, oh, are you gonna, you're gonna jump off?
He goes, yeah, no, I dive off. I don't jump, I dive off.
So I thought that was pretty damn interesting.
I'd been wanting to do Fort Mason,
but wasn't for sure how I would do it,
you know, from the wheelchair.
You know, first of all, I'm scared.
He says it's 16 feet at its max.
But I know that the more I look away from that fear,
the better chance there is of something going wrong.
So you have to face the fear.
I like that aspect of it.
'cause it, it carries over into other aspects of life.
Uh, you know, anything else that you get afraid of,
you can just keep that in mind
that the first thing you gotta do is face it.
You know,
I've had all these things running through my head, like the,
all the unknowns, but all that went away when I ran into nab
because, you know, he's been doing this forever.
So I think he said he's jumped off
of Fort Mason over 300 times.
It was great to be able to have freedom again.
Of all the things that I've done athletically
or just in life when I meet somebody,
I generally don't like talking about being a doctor.
I don't like to talk about medical school
'cause I don't like that attention for whatever reason.
Even skiing, I like to be humble about it,
but this cold water stuff,
I always like just bring it up out of nowhere.
I can't help but bask in that glory
that they give me when I tell 'em.
That was a flying flood. Yeah.
How was it? It was really fast.
Uh, nailed that one.
Yeah. That's what's the most fun.
Felt like we were there for a little bit.
We're like doing a pile on every stroke.
There's some jellyfish out there. Jelly. Yeah. Good size.
One kind of brownish bread.
Yeah, a big old jellyfish.
Geez, I don't think I was gonna make it.
How often do you do it, Ned?
I think I've done a couple hundred from Fort Mason.
Maybe not. I did 16 and 15 days once. Really? Yeah.
Uh, I've done a bunch of night swims from Fort Mason.
Cool. All right. You bet you guys better go get warmed up.
Yeah,
Well that'd be so cool if I could somehow
swim Alcatraz one day
For Najee.
The story centers around an insult
For
I get in the water normally about four 30 in the morning.
Sometimes I'll swim until the sun comes up.
Other times I'll have
to like cut it a little bit short because I have to go to work.
I never swam until I was about 40,
and there's a reason for that.
When I was 13, I got my very first job at Scripps
Institute of Oceanography.
It was a summer job that I got
and I was working with a marine
biologist Monday.
He asked me if I wanted to go out on a boat.
Yeah, sure, that'd be great.
We're going out about 20
or so miles off the coast of San Diego, and he
and some others who were skilled fishermen caught some aveor
and it was a really calm day on the water.
There was no wind, but it was really, really hot.
And one of the crew members on the boat took off his shirt
and he had on his trunks and he jumped in the water
and was just swimming around in there.
And I went off to the side
and was watching him, said, wow, this is fascinating.
Looking at him, you know, he's
feeling so comfortable out there.
He gets back on the boat
and I came up to him just awestruck.
I said, man, that's really great.
I says, can you teach me to do that?
And he says, oh kid, black people don't swim.
He laughed about it
and everyone else on the boat laughed about it
and the marine biologist laughed about it.
Even I laughed about it, but I was so
embarrassed that he didn't know how to swim,
that I never spoke about it for 30 years.
I didn't do anything about it for 30 years.
My father was in the Navy.
That doesn't mean that he knew how to swim.
My mom did not know how to swim.
So I didn't really have any reference point of a person
that looked like me that swam.
So I just assumed when people
said it was a white person sport.
Yeah, I mean, you're right. I don't see anybody else
who looks like me, so you must be right.
Um, what's the point?
Financially, we didn't have the money
to go and take swim lessons.
They didn't really have any programs that encouraged kids
of color to be able to learn how to swim.
They certainly had low income swim lessons,
but they weren't low enough income for us
For Corvin.
The story begins at birth.
Could you re-explain together? Okay.
Could you re-explain how the tether is
designed and how we swim together? Right.
So I the tether just a simple,
um, Shock cord.
Got it from REI.
The, the waist loop is to prevent the,
the tether from sliding down the leg.
And the thigh loop is to
keep the connecting tether further down the leg so that
my arm doesn't catch in the, when I do my stroke right.
It, it's got a free, uh, hand motion. Yeah.
Um, and this gives me the signal to, if,
if I go too far to the left and I know to force correct
and go back, uh, get closer to Daniel.
Uh, so it's all tactile for me because I don't see
or hear that te is my tactile form of communication.
Uh, so most people have like 170,
180 degree field division.
Right? When they look straight, they can see
180 degrees all around.
I can only see through a very small hole.
I can only see about five degrees,
central vision, tunnel vision.
So everything else is out of focus.
And the farther away it gets from my central vision,
the blurrier it gets.
And so I have to scan with my eyes to see the details
that I need to see, like faces,
arms, body.
But while I'm swimming, I rely totally on my guide.
If we have to make a a a stop, Daniel,
we'll do a double tap on, on on me.
And so I'll know to stop.
Um, and then we can, we can chat, we can talk
and then resume swimming after that.
Being both blind and deaf, it's all just by feel.
Just feeling a Daniel next
to me is the way I know which way to go.
Daniel would be on my right. I'll be on the left.
It requires that we synchronize, right?
We, we have to swim together.
As far as synchronizing the stroke, it's kind of hard
to do it to kind of maintain the same cadence.
Daniel has to pace himself to match my speed.
Generally all my guides are faster than I am.
Usher syndrome and rettino pigmentosa are
genetic conditions.
I know that my vision will, I'll be losing it,
but I still can push back, keep active.
For Lisa, the story begins at work.
I represent individuals whose benefits have been denied
health, insurance, benefits, disability, life insurance,
or retirement benefits.
For many people whose disability benefits have been
terminated, they don't have any way to make a living
with health insurance benefits.
Frequently we see it with people who have cancer.
For many of our clients, it could be life or death.
It's very stressful thinking about the difference
that you could make in somebody's life
and wanting to be that difference.
So it's a David versus Goliath moment
where you feel like you're fighting
for the little guy in the face of a huge corporation.
It is rewarding even though it's stressful.
I think I will keep working as long
as I can keep helping people
and I will keep swimming
because I do feel weighed down by a lot of fear and anxiety.
Swimming in the bay is a great stress reliever
and sometimes I say, what am I doing here?
And then I always remember, this is
who I am, this is what I do.
You are either swimming away from something
or swimming to something
and so are you swimming away from the things
that you wanna leave behind and swimming towards the future
or the person that you want to be.
I don't really know when I go in, I do know that
it's a search for happiness really, isn't it?
For Zena, the story begins with a diagnosis.
When they first discovered the lump in my right breast,
I had to fill out a zillion papers.
And every paper started with,
are you Ashkenazi Jew?
Yes, I have that blood,
but I've never been singled out for it.
That's probably why we live in this country, right?
I had the BRCA gene triple negative, which was kind of bad
because it needed way more treatment than any other type.
He said, the first chemo that you're gonna get,
it's gonna make all of your hair come out.
It'll come out in clumps.
You're not gonna be able to stop it.
I just suggest you get rid of it altogether,
like in one sitting.
So I started thinking Al my husband
and I, we started thinking Al is pretty awesome.
He is an artist and a designer like me, an illustrator,
but he is really good with his hands,
uses clippers on himself and he's cut his own hair.
And so I just dreamt up this like big silly party,
like funny hat
party, close to sunset.
He gave me a haircut with 70 of my closest friends.
I wasn't really interested in wigs,
but I just had this vision
that I would make a wig out of plants.
I decided that I wasn't gonna look in the mirror that day,
like with my non-existent hair,
but so many people came up to me and said, you're beautiful.
That by the time that I looked in the mirror the next
morning, I felt like this was the best
style decision I could have made.
I think both Al and I, we like having fun in our life,
especially during cancer.
I did punctuate it with fun group events and parties.
I feel that way about some of my personal art projects,
like the swim calendars.
I think that swimming with some danger, so you're kind
of relying on each other for your life
and swimming with some silliness
and swimming with nature
and with animals, it really adds up unexpectedly
to a lot of love.
Jim Bach was my most regular swim buddy.
He was maybe the third person
that I told when I got the diagnosis.
And one day it was a strong flood
and I thought, you know, my chemo
building is really not that far.
Why don't I just swim there?
To this day, I have never taken ownership of
that lump or that material.
I wasn't blind to the fact that I had a problem,
but I never felt like it was really in me.
We knew that we could emerge out of Pier 23 on the ladders,
so we would station al there
with some clean dry clothes and a towel.
I could easily keep walking and talking and getting chemo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Woohoo.
Another day in paradise. Another day.
Which to excel another day. We don't give up.
We don't give in, we don't give over.
If we made it here, hope again. South end.
The body shores of the great South end.
Woohoo.
For Danny and his daughter Emma.
The story centers around family.
Since my, uh, wife died,
I've had this problem clearing my throat.
Um, there's always something in my throat and my breathing,
and if I weren't swimming in the bay, I don't think
that I would be able to to get better.
I think about her all the time.
Whenever you're ready.
I started swimming when I was nine months old.
I swam before I walked
and I didn't know how special that was actually
until I had my own kid.
And my own kid has like a normal progression of swimming.
Both my mom and my dad swam.
So it's definitely a way for me to connect
with my mom now that she's passed.
She died three years ago and I think about her.
Every time I get in, I'd like to talk to her
and to be with her now much more
happily and with less deep sadness.
It's like at a certain point I was just going out there
and just sobbing.
When she was eight years old,
Emma swam across the golden gate.
Her mom was in the pilot boat
and her dad swam alongside her.
Neither parent could touch her
until she touched the other side.
Straight out him, she went through rock, baby baby,
The water's cold, 59 degrees,
weighing in at only 75 pounds.
She must contend with less than favorable weather
conditions, rough waters and erratic tides.
She, she's been training almost every day in the
below 60 degree water with her parents,
even though her father was with her this time.
Crossing the golden gate for Emma was a lot tougher than
her usual workout.
She's swung and borrowed time right now.
Come on Emma, go swim, Emma.
It's just over one mile from Fort Point to the Marin side
of the bridge this morning.
The tide was unpredictable
and at one point a huge ship crossed Emma's path
Go
Under The edge. So
clear up. Okay. I got
Really, all I wanted to do was just be close to her.
I really wanted to be in the water with her.
'cause when we train, the three of us swim together
and that's what I really liked.
But, um, I, I had to be in the boat
and so I was going through, I was jumping up
and down screaming.
We were going over to the other boat where that Bobby was
and saying, what should we do now?
What should we do now? You know,
kind of running interference.
Um, and, uh, and the pilot had to keep telling me, you know,
wave that flag, wave that flag.
He said, you're acting too much like a mother.
That's gotta be a tough thing to separate being a parent
and also being a coach to it.
So your daughter, because this is a very
specialized type of, uh,
Yeah. Hand. Well,
her dad is much more the coach,
and when she goes in with me, I'm kind of the,
um, comic relief.
Go. You're making history, baby.
You're
1 0 8, 29.
Bill, what time did you get 1 0 8, 9.
Mom, how do you feel about this whole
Thing? Oh, it's,
it's wonderful. Think What grade is she?
Uh, she's gonna be a fourth. Okay.
Emma was the youngest person
to ever swim across the golden Gate.
We always just, uh, we always say,
well attempt the impossible
because at least it's not boring.
So, and that, that's what,
and so I think she kind of always, she had that feeling
that it was okay to try things
and then if you don't make it, then that's fine,
but it to not try is what's really, that's a shame.
Um, several times I asked her, you know, uh,
it looked like she might be
borderline whether she could do it or not.
And I asked her, I told Emma, I love you.
Don't worry about anybody around you if you want to get out.
Now I still consider myself the proudest man of the,
in the world in relationship to my daughter.
And she said, no, daddy, I want to go.
Am I saying your name right? Maita Mankin.
Macchiarini. Mankin.
Macchiarini, man. Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm just not very good at this,
but I'll, I can, I'll, I'll do better if I can.
Now, how far was this swim you made? How? It
Was a mile and an eight.
That's pretty big. Didn't now this was,
now you're no longer eight years
old. I should point out. You're
No, I I turned nine on July 28th.
Well, happy ninth. And, uh, now, uh,
the water's very cold up there, isn't it?
I mean, we're talking the ocean here. This is cold stuff.
Does that bother you? Cold water?
No. That's one thing about the bay that doesn't bother
Me. No.
What what does bother you? What, uh,
In the ocean? Yeah,
What things that you're afraid of, things
that you're on that, well,
One day I was swimming along
and I felt this fishy thing
underneath my hand.
Fishy thing. Uhhuh? Yeah, it felt like a fish.
But my dad said it was a pa plastic bag and I,
and I screamed and it almost,
and it almost bring out the guy on the surfboard.
So, so a fear of plastic bags Was your
main, was your main concern?
Uh, now what, now are there, are there,
are there sharks up there?
I don't, I don't, I don't know. No, no.
Did you worry about that at all? Did you think about that?
Well, I tried not to.
Oh, well, I'm sorry to be bringing it up then.
She's laughing at me. She's laughing at now.
Your mother has an interesting profession.
She's, uh, she belongs, she works for Circus Red.
Yeah, the Pickle Family Circus. She's a clown.
My mom's ashes, were spread out by Alcatraz
and I'll ask her to protect me and I'll talk to her spirit.
Now I'm gonna put on my nun costume,
my Halloween costume.
The pregnant nun. I
know, I know, I know.
It's terrible. But to me it's funny. See the bump.
Step forward just a little tiny bit and we'll see.
Yeah, it's happening. Yeah. How many more months?
Uh, March. So six, six months.
This one's a baby boy. All right. What do you think?
Red hair. Hope so that Quinny moon gene come through.
Yeah, I hope so. I have to tell you my nun joke though.
Okay. You ready for my nun joke?
This is my grandfather's nun joke.
He says, you can kiss a nun, but don't get into the habit.
When I first started, I would show up here a lot of times
and, um, not actually go swimming.
It feels like a flirtation of death.
You get in there and everything slows.
Your mind slows, your body slows, your muscles are tight.
And, um, you know, that's, well that's
what happens when you die, isn't it?
I want that
because every time you go out there
and you don't die, you've survived.
And that means something.
Um, Nietzche said that Nietzsche said, to live is to suffer,
to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
So that's kind of the base swimming for you.
And then you merge outta that and go get it in the sauna
and DeShaw back to life.
Kind of like the wood frog.
That's quite a full day.
Najee first learned how to swim 30 years
after that racist insult when he was 43.
Inspired by Cullen Jones,
an African American swimmer in the Olympics.
By his mid fifties, he was ready to try his longest swim,
Dumbest idea I've ever had in
My life.
I spoke with my open water coach, uh,
Stuart McDougall recently,
and he suggested that I come down to Santa Monica
and swim from the Santa Monica Pier
to the Venice Beach Pier.
And that's like a distance of three miles
and then swim back, which would make it six miles.
I've never done that before.
Alright, nice.
Alright, so where are we gonna, we're gonna swim out
to the white wheat there. Yeah,
We'll swim out to the white buoy.
Oh look, check it out. There's dolphins out there
right up by the white buoy.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Two of them out there. Oh, there's a pair.
Wow. That's awesome.
You're coming.
This is not the cold over in San Francisco.
This is the ocean.
How do you feel? nj
A little nervous,
hopeful.
It all settles down in a while.
I always get like this, it doesn't matter
When I'm ever swimming, I always get nervous.
My whole reason for wanting to learn
to swim was to swim in open water.
It's the one place where I know I can go
where everything's equal.
I could have the freedom to go
where I want and how far I want.
And I always look at swimming as a life skill.
First, this sports second.
The water doesn't care what color you are.
You fall into that body of water, you don't know what to do.
You will drown. I don't care if you're white or black.
However, we do have a higher number of drowning deaths
amongst the black community.
Black children between the age of five
and 19 are five times more likely
to drown than white
children, you know, in years past.
It's discriminatory practices
and also their own parents not knowing how to swim.
Go ahead. Rehearse. That's it. And just kind of do it.
Look at me for second. Just kind do this and go ahead.
Feel like you're hitting the button, right? Yes. Go ahead.
That's it. It that's what I want you to feel in the water.
Feel like you're almost crossing right here.
Almost like a customer here
coming against the current's heart.
Uh, it's difficult. Um,
and which is really, you'll start to slow down
and things will, you'll drift a lot
and it gets a little frustrating
because you're not moving, you're not
making forward progress.
But this is actually what good
'cause this is where you're really gotta focus on your
stroke and keep as narrow shape as possible.
So it's good, it's good practice. Yeah.
At Venice Pier, we started out again
and that's when the wind started picking up
and I was getting slammed by the waves,
which caused my breathing to go off, which caused me
to swallow water, which caused me
to get a little bit disoriented
and everything started falling apart.
Coming back, I had the current,
but I missed out on getting a ride back
to the other pier of Santa Monica.
I have never in my entire open water swimming career,
whether it be as flat as a pancake or rocking
and rolling like it's a tsunami out there.
Ever had the same swim twice in open water.
And that's what I love about it because
I always learned something new.
Alright, I think we turned another shade of gray.
Your hairs a lot more grayer than I started. Yeah. Yeah.
That, that was probably 'cause of this, the sheer terror
that was going through out there.
Oh my goodness. Crazy. A few shades, few shades
Different too.
So how long were you in ultimately?
Um, four hours. 20 minutes. Yeah.
Uhhuh, That's longer
than you've ever been in before. Right.
Um, in the ocean
Harbor seals and the sea lions at Pier 39 tend
to congregate with their own species like we do in cities,
even if it gets a bit crowded.
We have a lot in common with these mammals
way back when we all came from the sea.
Each body carries a different set of
currents inside of it.
These processes that move,
if you really think about it scientifically, we are kind
of a bag of water.
And I'm really drawn to the idea that this bag of water
that we are has a lot of processes
that go at different speeds all at the same time.
So if you sneeze, it's like a 70 mile an hour process.
Cells splitting neurons, synapsing,
that's a different speed.
Peristalsis like moving your food down,
your digestive track,
and they can be emotional intercurrent.
We as open water swimmers, we're in touch
with something very powerful and potentially very calming
because we put ourselves in another vat of water
that has its own speed and its own current.
And that can be an overwhelming presence that
pets our inner recurrence down into a better state.
Early on, I knew the breasts were gonna come off.
It was highly recommended to do a mastectomy.
I wanted something to look forward to
as my surgery was coming up,
so I invited all my friends at the south end
to do a bye-Bye booby swim.
Somehow the word got around to bring booby shaped food.
Jim was positioned in a robo
and they anchored my floating barbecue,
which everybody loved.
And Jim would hand them a graham cracker
and they would melt, melt a marshmallow over the pit,
and then they would eat this A s'more sandwich.
I think it's easy to be fearful when you're alone
and I wasn't alone.
Hi. Hey,
three.
Uh, we're gonna be, uh, area Yep.
Going in.
Get swim traffic up water for those towers.
It's graceful.
It's disorienting being out there.
Your brain's not working. You know, it's half frozen.
Uh, your body's half frozen. Can't really see.
Well, all you do is you look far ahead,
pick out your line, try to keep moving forward.
So
Miles,
When I get cold, I start diving down into the water
to force me to hold my breath longer.
And that seems like it warms me up a lot.
I also have some like weird side strokes that I do.
It's all very slow. Um, but it, it works.
Miles. Go straight in.
Just straight in. Die, die. Big red. Go ahead.
I don't really do a regular backstroke.
I do a lot of like s skulling underneath the water.
The same motion. I push my wheelchair with a flexion down
with the arms, like in a wheelchair.
Pushing motion.
Yeah, baby. Yeah, you're gonna do it. What?
Dig deep. You're not home yet.
Stop talking to the birds. Crazy man.
Look, he's on his own. So get breakfast.
So yeah, it was good. Really good.
Glad to, glad to do that.
Uh, third time's a charm. I guess
You had tried it twice before.
Yeah, twice before.
The first time I got repositioned
and, um, the second time I got,
I got plucked from the water, got too far west
and I, I was pretty cold, so I was glad to get plucked
Nose down, dragging
miles.
Real duckies 30.
Spin around.
Hopefully we can get some more cripples out here.
It's very easy to say, oh, I'm losing my vision.
It's so, so hard to stay active.
I'll do an alcaraz swim every year.
I've done an Ironman and I want to do another one.
But what I really like is being part of a team.
So I brought together six blind swimmers that I've known
before, and four guides
and two volunteers to swim across Lake Tahoe as part
of the Trans Tahoe relay.
I'm grateful to Daniel for guiding me at Lake Tahoe too.
The lake is really beautiful. The water's clear, clean.
It's very nice to swim in.
It's warm and I don't have to wear a wet seat.
Good job. Good job.
Even if I go lights out blind, I still want
to keep working and stay active.
There are blind software developers to
figure out a way to continue programming.
I could keep doing that
and being active.
There are people out there that want
to lend their eyes to blind athletes like me.
So you get to know them and, and they become friends.
So I, I have my hope.
For me, it's really the search for a meaningful life.
There's something about a longer swim
from darkness into light
that really became a metaphor for the path
that my life was taking.
When you're immersed in cold water, the first thing you go
to is your breathing.
But because you become so focused in
that moment on your breath,
you become focused on just being alive.
I couldn't look ahead
and say, okay, this is what's gonna happen next.
I had to deal with everything right as it came up.
There may be currents that are tricky,
there may be wind that comes up.
You don't know if the tide is gonna run out
and you don't know if you're gonna be able to make it
to the end, which is
like life.
As I've gotten older, I've faced things
that I couldn't see coming un diagnoseable, medical issues,
depression and swimming on these long swims has taught me
how to deal with things that are unexpected.
How to keep going when I don't think I can
keep going anymore.
I've read that swimming in cold water triggers an immune
response that makes your immune system function
so much more efficiently.
I've also heard that cold water triggers a dopamine
response, and I've noticed that if I'm feeling down,
being fully immersed in cold water makes me feel better,
gives me a better outlook on life,
makes me feel more positive and happy and just content.
No matter what's thrown at you, no matter
what comes your way, you're gonna work through it
and you're going to get there.
You're going to get from the darkness to the light
and everything will be okay.
Again.
It was very reassuring that my doctor said, yeah,
swim as much as you want.
I had a lot of nausea, but I noticed
that every time I would unglue myself from the couch
or the bed and go hiking
or go swimming, just have fresh air.
Just being in nature made me
feel noticeably better.
I had been swim buddies with Jim
for several years before cancer.
He came to almost all of my chemo sessions.
Al was there for all of them,
but it really touched me deeply
that Jim showed that much care.
I feel good. I think I'm perfectly healthy.
I got through it. Yep, I did. I got through it.
All right, let's go get dinner.
Four. Where you going?
Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday to you.
Base swimming has allowed me to love myself more.
I've found a lot of people here that I love,
but for us, it just wasn't in the cards.
So
I don't want to leave the open water swimming.
I am gonna miss it, but I plan
to come back as much as I can.
Being a disabled and handicapped person, you're a rare
being on this earth.
There's a lot of things we can do with helpers
and caretakers and stuff, but, um, you know, those helpers
and caretakers aren't getting the same enjoyment that we are
and it, it's not the same experience.
Okay? So take your time. Let us know when you're ready.
All 3, 2, 1.
That's not his best side. He'll be over there in a sec.
There. He's woo. Okay, now else can go in.
A big reason I'm move into Colorado is I, I need
to be in a, a place where there's a lot of adaptive sports.
The thing about skiing that's so great
for handicapped people is the fact that you can keep up
with able body skiers.
That's really what handicap folks are looking for, is just
to be able to keep up with their friends again
and go enjoy the, the same things that they used to enjoy.
Or, you know, to be like everybody else.
Just for the camaraderie to just, Hey,
let's go out skiing.
Sure, let's go skiing.
Let,
Oops,
I've always wanted to see this place.
This is the area, it's called the Inkwell.
And this is a segregated area where blacks were allowed
to come, um, to Santa Monica, to the beach.
They didn't name it the ink.
Well, um, the people who came here, they,
but they took it on as a sense of pride.
You know, they didn't care. They said,
it's still our section where we can come.
One in particular, Nick Beldon became
like a local surfing legend.
And the Black Surface Association of which I'm a part
of comes down here.
They bring a lot of kids from other parts of Los Angeles
and they teach them how to surf.
And also the, you know, uh, beach conservation,
water conservation, protecting the environment.
You're more than likely to catch on
to something if you see someone who looks like you.
I really wanna encourage other people, black people,
to learn how to be comfortable swimming in the open water.
I'm gonna show you some mechanics.
All I want you to do is swim to the end
of this dock and back.
Okay. Just working on what we're gonna be working on.
When you're out, you're gonna have your arms like this, um,
just outside the shoulder line.
And your head is gonna be looking down like this,
Straight along
this arm's called your lead arm.
It stays out here until this arm comes down to the water,
and then this arm can go back.
Okay?
It'll keep you stable. If you pull this arm too soon,
you're gonna be feeling unbalanced.
You got this.
It's a lot colder than the
last time you were in with miles
After. This is keep
moving forward.
Keep your head down.
That's it.
All right. Come back, girl. You're doing great.
Trust me, bud. By the summer, you'll be ready for,
You wanna go in?
You ready to go in the water?
Is it cold?
When you live a full life
and you love people, it's inevitable that there is loss.
It doesn't come when you're ready for it
because you know people die or they walk away from you.
If you're a strong person
and a vulnerable person, you'll be both hurt
and resilient.
One of the things that having children has allowed me
to do is attempt to carry on the way that I was raised
by my mother, who's now gone
and my father, who's still with me,
to go forward and do things.
Even if they're scar or difficult,
they carry on your lack of fear around swimming or water.
They'll carry that into the future
and other people will watch them dive into the ocean
and think, gosh, I would like to dive into the ocean,
and then they'll feel enabled.
Nobody will ever be my mom again.
She was an original,
but Hannah has some of her quirkiness
and her funniness and a little bit mischievous.
I don't know about life yet, you know, he's so little.
But I've never seen a baby get comfortable in the water
that quick and it makes me feel like he's gonna be more like
me than Hannah was.
We as human beings, are built for adventure.
That's how I wanna live,
and that's how I want my kids to live.
Rather than a fearful
behind closed doors kind of shutting type of life
For me.
The adverse conditions in the bay, the cold, the predators
are actually what I like.
Along with everything else my
swimmer friends have talked about.
The cold produces visions
and the predators encourage humility.
Even though I love chance encounters with other species,
I am afraid of harbor seals and sea lions
because they've nudged and bitten other swimmers
and I could be next.
As for the sharks that live here,
they eat harbor seals like this one,
and sea lions like these guys.
They've never attacked a human being in the bay, at least
as of this recording.
So I'm okay with sharks
When I'm warming up in the sauna
after a really cold swim behind my closed eyes,
I can see this pattern that jiggles
and shimmers and pulsates and vibrates.
I like to think of it as currents
that are usually invisible, but that are alive.
So I keep coming back,
escaping my abstract digital world for the real one.
way back?
Alright.
Alright, moving.
What do you think of these swimmers?
Well, like it is too cold outside.
I'm just good with like, fishing. That's it.
I wouldn't do that myself.
Um, I know for a fact that there are sharks in the bay.
I'm kind of scared.
Come on,
that's great.
White. Oh my god. Holy.
No way you can escape this place.
It's Johns. It's Johns.
Oh my god. Seal a frenzy.
That was a seal. Holy seal. Holy.
You probably came from the bay.
What'd you think of that, Casey?
That's the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
I've been swimming in the bay about half my life,
but I've never been able to explain why.
When I tell people it feels fantastic.
You feel like you've been reborn. They don't believe me.
So I asked some swimmer friends to tell me their stories.
Most people think it's completely nuts
to jump into cold water with predators who could kill you.
But these adverse conditions in the bay are nothing compared
to the adversities some
of the swimmers face in their own lives.
That's what these stories are about.
The first one starts with an accident.
I got accepted into medical school at
University of Louisville.
I was working at the time for my, my dad's company,
which is a excavation company.
I was laying sewer pipe and, uh, had a trench collapse on.
It
looked like a very safe ditch
or else I wouldn't have been in there.
You know, I grew up in ditches all my life.
Looked safe to my brother, looked safe to my dad.
But, um, you know, as it turns out, it, it wasn't
A, Basically a big chunk of clay broke off
and rode down on me.
Luckily, it was not more dirt than it was
or else I would've been killed.
Most trenching accidents, people don't live.
So yeah, that was a big change.
Of course, you know, it paralyzed me from the waist down.
How old were you? I was 24.
Everything changes when you, uh, lose half your body,
there's a huge learning curve.
Um, you know, to doing everything.
You have to, I mean, you have to learn how
to be a human again, because everything,
pretty much everything you've known
before is different, you know, with few exceptions.
You know, you have to learn how to, uh, pee, poop,
uh, navigate all in different circumstances.
Um, they're drastically different and,
and hard to swallow, you know?
So I wouldn't say that it's, uh,
an easy learning curve,
but one that's made a lot easier with, you know,
having a experienced, uh, guide or sherpa
or whatever you wanna call it.
I am a really slow swimmer, so I, I mostly just come here
and swim around in Aquatic Park the other day.
However, I came across this guy
who just looked like a normal guy.
He started explaining to me how tides work
and then he starts spouting off all these numbers.
Everything's a number to him.
Every reference,
uh, you know, I said, where, where are you swimming today?
He, he said, well, I'm probably gonna go to Fort Mason.
And he said, oh, are you gonna, you're gonna jump off?
He goes, yeah, no, I dive off. I don't jump, I dive off.
So I thought that was pretty damn interesting.
I'd been wanting to do Fort Mason,
but wasn't for sure how I would do it,
you know, from the wheelchair.
You know, first of all, I'm scared.
He says it's 16 feet at its max.
But I know that the more I look away from that fear,
the better chance there is of something going wrong.
So you have to face the fear.
I like that aspect of it.
'cause it, it carries over into other aspects of life.
Uh, you know, anything else that you get afraid of,
you can just keep that in mind
that the first thing you gotta do is face it.
You know,
I've had all these things running through my head, like the,
all the unknowns, but all that went away when I ran into nab
because, you know, he's been doing this forever.
So I think he said he's jumped off
of Fort Mason over 300 times.
It was great to be able to have freedom again.
Of all the things that I've done athletically
or just in life when I meet somebody,
I generally don't like talking about being a doctor.
I don't like to talk about medical school
'cause I don't like that attention for whatever reason.
Even skiing, I like to be humble about it,
but this cold water stuff,
I always like just bring it up out of nowhere.
I can't help but bask in that glory
that they give me when I tell 'em.
That was a flying flood. Yeah.
How was it? It was really fast.
Uh, nailed that one.
Yeah. That's what's the most fun.
Felt like we were there for a little bit.
We're like doing a pile on every stroke.
There's some jellyfish out there. Jelly. Yeah. Good size.
One kind of brownish bread.
Yeah, a big old jellyfish.
Geez, I don't think I was gonna make it.
How often do you do it, Ned?
I think I've done a couple hundred from Fort Mason.
Maybe not. I did 16 and 15 days once. Really? Yeah.
Uh, I've done a bunch of night swims from Fort Mason.
Cool. All right. You bet you guys better go get warmed up.
Yeah,
Well that'd be so cool if I could somehow
swim Alcatraz one day
For Najee.
The story centers around an insult
For
I get in the water normally about four 30 in the morning.
Sometimes I'll swim until the sun comes up.
Other times I'll have
to like cut it a little bit short because I have to go to work.
I never swam until I was about 40,
and there's a reason for that.
When I was 13, I got my very first job at Scripps
Institute of Oceanography.
It was a summer job that I got
and I was working with a marine
biologist Monday.
He asked me if I wanted to go out on a boat.
Yeah, sure, that'd be great.
We're going out about 20
or so miles off the coast of San Diego, and he
and some others who were skilled fishermen caught some aveor
and it was a really calm day on the water.
There was no wind, but it was really, really hot.
And one of the crew members on the boat took off his shirt
and he had on his trunks and he jumped in the water
and was just swimming around in there.
And I went off to the side
and was watching him, said, wow, this is fascinating.
Looking at him, you know, he's
feeling so comfortable out there.
He gets back on the boat
and I came up to him just awestruck.
I said, man, that's really great.
I says, can you teach me to do that?
And he says, oh kid, black people don't swim.
He laughed about it
and everyone else on the boat laughed about it
and the marine biologist laughed about it.
Even I laughed about it, but I was so
embarrassed that he didn't know how to swim,
that I never spoke about it for 30 years.
I didn't do anything about it for 30 years.
My father was in the Navy.
That doesn't mean that he knew how to swim.
My mom did not know how to swim.
So I didn't really have any reference point of a person
that looked like me that swam.
So I just assumed when people
said it was a white person sport.
Yeah, I mean, you're right. I don't see anybody else
who looks like me, so you must be right.
Um, what's the point?
Financially, we didn't have the money
to go and take swim lessons.
They didn't really have any programs that encouraged kids
of color to be able to learn how to swim.
They certainly had low income swim lessons,
but they weren't low enough income for us
For Corvin.
The story begins at birth.
Could you re-explain together? Okay.
Could you re-explain how the tether is
designed and how we swim together? Right.
So I the tether just a simple,
um, Shock cord.
Got it from REI.
The, the waist loop is to prevent the,
the tether from sliding down the leg.
And the thigh loop is to
keep the connecting tether further down the leg so that
my arm doesn't catch in the, when I do my stroke right.
It, it's got a free, uh, hand motion. Yeah.
Um, and this gives me the signal to, if,
if I go too far to the left and I know to force correct
and go back, uh, get closer to Daniel.
Uh, so it's all tactile for me because I don't see
or hear that te is my tactile form of communication.
Uh, so most people have like 170,
180 degree field division.
Right? When they look straight, they can see
180 degrees all around.
I can only see through a very small hole.
I can only see about five degrees,
central vision, tunnel vision.
So everything else is out of focus.
And the farther away it gets from my central vision,
the blurrier it gets.
And so I have to scan with my eyes to see the details
that I need to see, like faces,
arms, body.
But while I'm swimming, I rely totally on my guide.
If we have to make a a a stop, Daniel,
we'll do a double tap on, on on me.
And so I'll know to stop.
Um, and then we can, we can chat, we can talk
and then resume swimming after that.
Being both blind and deaf, it's all just by feel.
Just feeling a Daniel next
to me is the way I know which way to go.
Daniel would be on my right. I'll be on the left.
It requires that we synchronize, right?
We, we have to swim together.
As far as synchronizing the stroke, it's kind of hard
to do it to kind of maintain the same cadence.
Daniel has to pace himself to match my speed.
Generally all my guides are faster than I am.
Usher syndrome and rettino pigmentosa are
genetic conditions.
I know that my vision will, I'll be losing it,
but I still can push back, keep active.
For Lisa, the story begins at work.
I represent individuals whose benefits have been denied
health, insurance, benefits, disability, life insurance,
or retirement benefits.
For many people whose disability benefits have been
terminated, they don't have any way to make a living
with health insurance benefits.
Frequently we see it with people who have cancer.
For many of our clients, it could be life or death.
It's very stressful thinking about the difference
that you could make in somebody's life
and wanting to be that difference.
So it's a David versus Goliath moment
where you feel like you're fighting
for the little guy in the face of a huge corporation.
It is rewarding even though it's stressful.
I think I will keep working as long
as I can keep helping people
and I will keep swimming
because I do feel weighed down by a lot of fear and anxiety.
Swimming in the bay is a great stress reliever
and sometimes I say, what am I doing here?
And then I always remember, this is
who I am, this is what I do.
You are either swimming away from something
or swimming to something
and so are you swimming away from the things
that you wanna leave behind and swimming towards the future
or the person that you want to be.
I don't really know when I go in, I do know that
it's a search for happiness really, isn't it?
For Zena, the story begins with a diagnosis.
When they first discovered the lump in my right breast,
I had to fill out a zillion papers.
And every paper started with,
are you Ashkenazi Jew?
Yes, I have that blood,
but I've never been singled out for it.
That's probably why we live in this country, right?
I had the BRCA gene triple negative, which was kind of bad
because it needed way more treatment than any other type.
He said, the first chemo that you're gonna get,
it's gonna make all of your hair come out.
It'll come out in clumps.
You're not gonna be able to stop it.
I just suggest you get rid of it altogether,
like in one sitting.
So I started thinking Al my husband
and I, we started thinking Al is pretty awesome.
He is an artist and a designer like me, an illustrator,
but he is really good with his hands,
uses clippers on himself and he's cut his own hair.
And so I just dreamt up this like big silly party,
like funny hat
party, close to sunset.
He gave me a haircut with 70 of my closest friends.
I wasn't really interested in wigs,
but I just had this vision
that I would make a wig out of plants.
I decided that I wasn't gonna look in the mirror that day,
like with my non-existent hair,
but so many people came up to me and said, you're beautiful.
That by the time that I looked in the mirror the next
morning, I felt like this was the best
style decision I could have made.
I think both Al and I, we like having fun in our life,
especially during cancer.
I did punctuate it with fun group events and parties.
I feel that way about some of my personal art projects,
like the swim calendars.
I think that swimming with some danger, so you're kind
of relying on each other for your life
and swimming with some silliness
and swimming with nature
and with animals, it really adds up unexpectedly
to a lot of love.
Jim Bach was my most regular swim buddy.
He was maybe the third person
that I told when I got the diagnosis.
And one day it was a strong flood
and I thought, you know, my chemo
building is really not that far.
Why don't I just swim there?
To this day, I have never taken ownership of
that lump or that material.
I wasn't blind to the fact that I had a problem,
but I never felt like it was really in me.
We knew that we could emerge out of Pier 23 on the ladders,
so we would station al there
with some clean dry clothes and a towel.
I could easily keep walking and talking and getting chemo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Woohoo.
Another day in paradise. Another day.
Which to excel another day. We don't give up.
We don't give in, we don't give over.
If we made it here, hope again. South end.
The body shores of the great South end.
Woohoo.
For Danny and his daughter Emma.
The story centers around family.
Since my, uh, wife died,
I've had this problem clearing my throat.
Um, there's always something in my throat and my breathing,
and if I weren't swimming in the bay, I don't think
that I would be able to to get better.
I think about her all the time.
Whenever you're ready.
I started swimming when I was nine months old.
I swam before I walked
and I didn't know how special that was actually
until I had my own kid.
And my own kid has like a normal progression of swimming.
Both my mom and my dad swam.
So it's definitely a way for me to connect
with my mom now that she's passed.
She died three years ago and I think about her.
Every time I get in, I'd like to talk to her
and to be with her now much more
happily and with less deep sadness.
It's like at a certain point I was just going out there
and just sobbing.
When she was eight years old,
Emma swam across the golden gate.
Her mom was in the pilot boat
and her dad swam alongside her.
Neither parent could touch her
until she touched the other side.
Straight out him, she went through rock, baby baby,
The water's cold, 59 degrees,
weighing in at only 75 pounds.
She must contend with less than favorable weather
conditions, rough waters and erratic tides.
She, she's been training almost every day in the
below 60 degree water with her parents,
even though her father was with her this time.
Crossing the golden gate for Emma was a lot tougher than
her usual workout.
She's swung and borrowed time right now.
Come on Emma, go swim, Emma.
It's just over one mile from Fort Point to the Marin side
of the bridge this morning.
The tide was unpredictable
and at one point a huge ship crossed Emma's path
Go
Under The edge. So
clear up. Okay. I got
Really, all I wanted to do was just be close to her.
I really wanted to be in the water with her.
'cause when we train, the three of us swim together
and that's what I really liked.
But, um, I, I had to be in the boat
and so I was going through, I was jumping up
and down screaming.
We were going over to the other boat where that Bobby was
and saying, what should we do now?
What should we do now? You know,
kind of running interference.
Um, and, uh, and the pilot had to keep telling me, you know,
wave that flag, wave that flag.
He said, you're acting too much like a mother.
That's gotta be a tough thing to separate being a parent
and also being a coach to it.
So your daughter, because this is a very
specialized type of, uh,
Yeah. Hand. Well,
her dad is much more the coach,
and when she goes in with me, I'm kind of the,
um, comic relief.
Go. You're making history, baby.
You're
1 0 8, 29.
Bill, what time did you get 1 0 8, 9.
Mom, how do you feel about this whole
Thing? Oh, it's,
it's wonderful. Think What grade is she?
Uh, she's gonna be a fourth. Okay.
Emma was the youngest person
to ever swim across the golden Gate.
We always just, uh, we always say,
well attempt the impossible
because at least it's not boring.
So, and that, that's what,
and so I think she kind of always, she had that feeling
that it was okay to try things
and then if you don't make it, then that's fine,
but it to not try is what's really, that's a shame.
Um, several times I asked her, you know, uh,
it looked like she might be
borderline whether she could do it or not.
And I asked her, I told Emma, I love you.
Don't worry about anybody around you if you want to get out.
Now I still consider myself the proudest man of the,
in the world in relationship to my daughter.
And she said, no, daddy, I want to go.
Am I saying your name right? Maita Mankin.
Macchiarini. Mankin.
Macchiarini, man. Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm just not very good at this,
but I'll, I can, I'll, I'll do better if I can.
Now, how far was this swim you made? How? It
Was a mile and an eight.
That's pretty big. Didn't now this was,
now you're no longer eight years
old. I should point out. You're
No, I I turned nine on July 28th.
Well, happy ninth. And, uh, now, uh,
the water's very cold up there, isn't it?
I mean, we're talking the ocean here. This is cold stuff.
Does that bother you? Cold water?
No. That's one thing about the bay that doesn't bother
Me. No.
What what does bother you? What, uh,
In the ocean? Yeah,
What things that you're afraid of, things
that you're on that, well,
One day I was swimming along
and I felt this fishy thing
underneath my hand.
Fishy thing. Uhhuh? Yeah, it felt like a fish.
But my dad said it was a pa plastic bag and I,
and I screamed and it almost,
and it almost bring out the guy on the surfboard.
So, so a fear of plastic bags Was your
main, was your main concern?
Uh, now what, now are there, are there,
are there sharks up there?
I don't, I don't, I don't know. No, no.
Did you worry about that at all? Did you think about that?
Well, I tried not to.
Oh, well, I'm sorry to be bringing it up then.
She's laughing at me. She's laughing at now.
Your mother has an interesting profession.
She's, uh, she belongs, she works for Circus Red.
Yeah, the Pickle Family Circus. She's a clown.
My mom's ashes, were spread out by Alcatraz
and I'll ask her to protect me and I'll talk to her spirit.
Now I'm gonna put on my nun costume,
my Halloween costume.
The pregnant nun. I
know, I know, I know.
It's terrible. But to me it's funny. See the bump.
Step forward just a little tiny bit and we'll see.
Yeah, it's happening. Yeah. How many more months?
Uh, March. So six, six months.
This one's a baby boy. All right. What do you think?
Red hair. Hope so that Quinny moon gene come through.
Yeah, I hope so. I have to tell you my nun joke though.
Okay. You ready for my nun joke?
This is my grandfather's nun joke.
He says, you can kiss a nun, but don't get into the habit.
When I first started, I would show up here a lot of times
and, um, not actually go swimming.
It feels like a flirtation of death.
You get in there and everything slows.
Your mind slows, your body slows, your muscles are tight.
And, um, you know, that's, well that's
what happens when you die, isn't it?
I want that
because every time you go out there
and you don't die, you've survived.
And that means something.
Um, Nietzche said that Nietzsche said, to live is to suffer,
to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
So that's kind of the base swimming for you.
And then you merge outta that and go get it in the sauna
and DeShaw back to life.
Kind of like the wood frog.
That's quite a full day.
Najee first learned how to swim 30 years
after that racist insult when he was 43.
Inspired by Cullen Jones,
an African American swimmer in the Olympics.
By his mid fifties, he was ready to try his longest swim,
Dumbest idea I've ever had in
My life.
I spoke with my open water coach, uh,
Stuart McDougall recently,
and he suggested that I come down to Santa Monica
and swim from the Santa Monica Pier
to the Venice Beach Pier.
And that's like a distance of three miles
and then swim back, which would make it six miles.
I've never done that before.
Alright, nice.
Alright, so where are we gonna, we're gonna swim out
to the white wheat there. Yeah,
We'll swim out to the white buoy.
Oh look, check it out. There's dolphins out there
right up by the white buoy.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Two of them out there. Oh, there's a pair.
Wow. That's awesome.
You're coming.
This is not the cold over in San Francisco.
This is the ocean.
How do you feel? nj
A little nervous,
hopeful.
It all settles down in a while.
I always get like this, it doesn't matter
When I'm ever swimming, I always get nervous.
My whole reason for wanting to learn
to swim was to swim in open water.
It's the one place where I know I can go
where everything's equal.
I could have the freedom to go
where I want and how far I want.
And I always look at swimming as a life skill.
First, this sports second.
The water doesn't care what color you are.
You fall into that body of water, you don't know what to do.
You will drown. I don't care if you're white or black.
However, we do have a higher number of drowning deaths
amongst the black community.
Black children between the age of five
and 19 are five times more likely
to drown than white
children, you know, in years past.
It's discriminatory practices
and also their own parents not knowing how to swim.
Go ahead. Rehearse. That's it. And just kind of do it.
Look at me for second. Just kind do this and go ahead.
Feel like you're hitting the button, right? Yes. Go ahead.
That's it. It that's what I want you to feel in the water.
Feel like you're almost crossing right here.
Almost like a customer here
coming against the current's heart.
Uh, it's difficult. Um,
and which is really, you'll start to slow down
and things will, you'll drift a lot
and it gets a little frustrating
because you're not moving, you're not
making forward progress.
But this is actually what good
'cause this is where you're really gotta focus on your
stroke and keep as narrow shape as possible.
So it's good, it's good practice. Yeah.
At Venice Pier, we started out again
and that's when the wind started picking up
and I was getting slammed by the waves,
which caused my breathing to go off, which caused me
to swallow water, which caused me
to get a little bit disoriented
and everything started falling apart.
Coming back, I had the current,
but I missed out on getting a ride back
to the other pier of Santa Monica.
I have never in my entire open water swimming career,
whether it be as flat as a pancake or rocking
and rolling like it's a tsunami out there.
Ever had the same swim twice in open water.
And that's what I love about it because
I always learned something new.
Alright, I think we turned another shade of gray.
Your hairs a lot more grayer than I started. Yeah. Yeah.
That, that was probably 'cause of this, the sheer terror
that was going through out there.
Oh my goodness. Crazy. A few shades, few shades
Different too.
So how long were you in ultimately?
Um, four hours. 20 minutes. Yeah.
Uhhuh, That's longer
than you've ever been in before. Right.
Um, in the ocean
Harbor seals and the sea lions at Pier 39 tend
to congregate with their own species like we do in cities,
even if it gets a bit crowded.
We have a lot in common with these mammals
way back when we all came from the sea.
Each body carries a different set of
currents inside of it.
These processes that move,
if you really think about it scientifically, we are kind
of a bag of water.
And I'm really drawn to the idea that this bag of water
that we are has a lot of processes
that go at different speeds all at the same time.
So if you sneeze, it's like a 70 mile an hour process.
Cells splitting neurons, synapsing,
that's a different speed.
Peristalsis like moving your food down,
your digestive track,
and they can be emotional intercurrent.
We as open water swimmers, we're in touch
with something very powerful and potentially very calming
because we put ourselves in another vat of water
that has its own speed and its own current.
And that can be an overwhelming presence that
pets our inner recurrence down into a better state.
Early on, I knew the breasts were gonna come off.
It was highly recommended to do a mastectomy.
I wanted something to look forward to
as my surgery was coming up,
so I invited all my friends at the south end
to do a bye-Bye booby swim.
Somehow the word got around to bring booby shaped food.
Jim was positioned in a robo
and they anchored my floating barbecue,
which everybody loved.
And Jim would hand them a graham cracker
and they would melt, melt a marshmallow over the pit,
and then they would eat this A s'more sandwich.
I think it's easy to be fearful when you're alone
and I wasn't alone.
Hi. Hey,
three.
Uh, we're gonna be, uh, area Yep.
Going in.
Get swim traffic up water for those towers.
It's graceful.
It's disorienting being out there.
Your brain's not working. You know, it's half frozen.
Uh, your body's half frozen. Can't really see.
Well, all you do is you look far ahead,
pick out your line, try to keep moving forward.
So
Miles,
When I get cold, I start diving down into the water
to force me to hold my breath longer.
And that seems like it warms me up a lot.
I also have some like weird side strokes that I do.
It's all very slow. Um, but it, it works.
Miles. Go straight in.
Just straight in. Die, die. Big red. Go ahead.
I don't really do a regular backstroke.
I do a lot of like s skulling underneath the water.
The same motion. I push my wheelchair with a flexion down
with the arms, like in a wheelchair.
Pushing motion.
Yeah, baby. Yeah, you're gonna do it. What?
Dig deep. You're not home yet.
Stop talking to the birds. Crazy man.
Look, he's on his own. So get breakfast.
So yeah, it was good. Really good.
Glad to, glad to do that.
Uh, third time's a charm. I guess
You had tried it twice before.
Yeah, twice before.
The first time I got repositioned
and, um, the second time I got,
I got plucked from the water, got too far west
and I, I was pretty cold, so I was glad to get plucked
Nose down, dragging
miles.
Real duckies 30.
Spin around.
Hopefully we can get some more cripples out here.
It's very easy to say, oh, I'm losing my vision.
It's so, so hard to stay active.
I'll do an alcaraz swim every year.
I've done an Ironman and I want to do another one.
But what I really like is being part of a team.
So I brought together six blind swimmers that I've known
before, and four guides
and two volunteers to swim across Lake Tahoe as part
of the Trans Tahoe relay.
I'm grateful to Daniel for guiding me at Lake Tahoe too.
The lake is really beautiful. The water's clear, clean.
It's very nice to swim in.
It's warm and I don't have to wear a wet seat.
Good job. Good job.
Even if I go lights out blind, I still want
to keep working and stay active.
There are blind software developers to
figure out a way to continue programming.
I could keep doing that
and being active.
There are people out there that want
to lend their eyes to blind athletes like me.
So you get to know them and, and they become friends.
So I, I have my hope.
For me, it's really the search for a meaningful life.
There's something about a longer swim
from darkness into light
that really became a metaphor for the path
that my life was taking.
When you're immersed in cold water, the first thing you go
to is your breathing.
But because you become so focused in
that moment on your breath,
you become focused on just being alive.
I couldn't look ahead
and say, okay, this is what's gonna happen next.
I had to deal with everything right as it came up.
There may be currents that are tricky,
there may be wind that comes up.
You don't know if the tide is gonna run out
and you don't know if you're gonna be able to make it
to the end, which is
like life.
As I've gotten older, I've faced things
that I couldn't see coming un diagnoseable, medical issues,
depression and swimming on these long swims has taught me
how to deal with things that are unexpected.
How to keep going when I don't think I can
keep going anymore.
I've read that swimming in cold water triggers an immune
response that makes your immune system function
so much more efficiently.
I've also heard that cold water triggers a dopamine
response, and I've noticed that if I'm feeling down,
being fully immersed in cold water makes me feel better,
gives me a better outlook on life,
makes me feel more positive and happy and just content.
No matter what's thrown at you, no matter
what comes your way, you're gonna work through it
and you're going to get there.
You're going to get from the darkness to the light
and everything will be okay.
Again.
It was very reassuring that my doctor said, yeah,
swim as much as you want.
I had a lot of nausea, but I noticed
that every time I would unglue myself from the couch
or the bed and go hiking
or go swimming, just have fresh air.
Just being in nature made me
feel noticeably better.
I had been swim buddies with Jim
for several years before cancer.
He came to almost all of my chemo sessions.
Al was there for all of them,
but it really touched me deeply
that Jim showed that much care.
I feel good. I think I'm perfectly healthy.
I got through it. Yep, I did. I got through it.
All right, let's go get dinner.
Four. Where you going?
Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday to you.
Base swimming has allowed me to love myself more.
I've found a lot of people here that I love,
but for us, it just wasn't in the cards.
So
I don't want to leave the open water swimming.
I am gonna miss it, but I plan
to come back as much as I can.
Being a disabled and handicapped person, you're a rare
being on this earth.
There's a lot of things we can do with helpers
and caretakers and stuff, but, um, you know, those helpers
and caretakers aren't getting the same enjoyment that we are
and it, it's not the same experience.
Okay? So take your time. Let us know when you're ready.
All 3, 2, 1.
That's not his best side. He'll be over there in a sec.
There. He's woo. Okay, now else can go in.
A big reason I'm move into Colorado is I, I need
to be in a, a place where there's a lot of adaptive sports.
The thing about skiing that's so great
for handicapped people is the fact that you can keep up
with able body skiers.
That's really what handicap folks are looking for, is just
to be able to keep up with their friends again
and go enjoy the, the same things that they used to enjoy.
Or, you know, to be like everybody else.
Just for the camaraderie to just, Hey,
let's go out skiing.
Sure, let's go skiing.
Let,
Oops,
I've always wanted to see this place.
This is the area, it's called the Inkwell.
And this is a segregated area where blacks were allowed
to come, um, to Santa Monica, to the beach.
They didn't name it the ink.
Well, um, the people who came here, they,
but they took it on as a sense of pride.
You know, they didn't care. They said,
it's still our section where we can come.
One in particular, Nick Beldon became
like a local surfing legend.
And the Black Surface Association of which I'm a part
of comes down here.
They bring a lot of kids from other parts of Los Angeles
and they teach them how to surf.
And also the, you know, uh, beach conservation,
water conservation, protecting the environment.
You're more than likely to catch on
to something if you see someone who looks like you.
I really wanna encourage other people, black people,
to learn how to be comfortable swimming in the open water.
I'm gonna show you some mechanics.
All I want you to do is swim to the end
of this dock and back.
Okay. Just working on what we're gonna be working on.
When you're out, you're gonna have your arms like this, um,
just outside the shoulder line.
And your head is gonna be looking down like this,
Straight along
this arm's called your lead arm.
It stays out here until this arm comes down to the water,
and then this arm can go back.
Okay?
It'll keep you stable. If you pull this arm too soon,
you're gonna be feeling unbalanced.
You got this.
It's a lot colder than the
last time you were in with miles
After. This is keep
moving forward.
Keep your head down.
That's it.
All right. Come back, girl. You're doing great.
Trust me, bud. By the summer, you'll be ready for,
You wanna go in?
You ready to go in the water?
Is it cold?
When you live a full life
and you love people, it's inevitable that there is loss.
It doesn't come when you're ready for it
because you know people die or they walk away from you.
If you're a strong person
and a vulnerable person, you'll be both hurt
and resilient.
One of the things that having children has allowed me
to do is attempt to carry on the way that I was raised
by my mother, who's now gone
and my father, who's still with me,
to go forward and do things.
Even if they're scar or difficult,
they carry on your lack of fear around swimming or water.
They'll carry that into the future
and other people will watch them dive into the ocean
and think, gosh, I would like to dive into the ocean,
and then they'll feel enabled.
Nobody will ever be my mom again.
She was an original,
but Hannah has some of her quirkiness
and her funniness and a little bit mischievous.
I don't know about life yet, you know, he's so little.
But I've never seen a baby get comfortable in the water
that quick and it makes me feel like he's gonna be more like
me than Hannah was.
We as human beings, are built for adventure.
That's how I wanna live,
and that's how I want my kids to live.
Rather than a fearful
behind closed doors kind of shutting type of life
For me.
The adverse conditions in the bay, the cold, the predators
are actually what I like.
Along with everything else my
swimmer friends have talked about.
The cold produces visions
and the predators encourage humility.
Even though I love chance encounters with other species,
I am afraid of harbor seals and sea lions
because they've nudged and bitten other swimmers
and I could be next.
As for the sharks that live here,
they eat harbor seals like this one,
and sea lions like these guys.
They've never attacked a human being in the bay, at least
as of this recording.
So I'm okay with sharks
When I'm warming up in the sauna
after a really cold swim behind my closed eyes,
I can see this pattern that jiggles
and shimmers and pulsates and vibrates.
I like to think of it as currents
that are usually invisible, but that are alive.
So I keep coming back,
escaping my abstract digital world for the real one.