Is so small

It's everywhere around you, though you may not notice.

Swimmers are dipping in under optimum conditions to cross the vast famous waters between vast famous landforms.

Late summer is the Season of the Big Swims.

They would have escaped my notice, too, until I became what passes for a swimmer a few years ago. Now, through a facebook™® community of swimmers, I sense the big events acutely.

Only a few attempts reach the non-swimming (some have dubbed "swuggle") world.

Perhaps, for example, you land lubbers saw the blurb, on Page 3 of your hometown newspaper, headlined, "Swimmer becomes first woman to reach Farallones."

That was Kimberley Chambers last week, swimming 30 miles from the Farallon Islands under the Golden Gate Bridge. Only four swimmers had succeeded before her, all men.

The first swimmer succeeded in 1967, and then came a nearly 50-year gap until in the last two years the attempts spiked, ushering in a quick spate of successes.

Kimberley is also one of fewer than 10 people who have swum the seven classic marathon ocean crossings — The English Channel between England and France, the North Sea Channel between Ireland and Scotland, the Molokai Channel in Hawaii, Cook Strait between the islands of New Zealand, Tsugaru Strait between the main islands of Japan, the Strait of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, and the distance between Catalina Island and the mainland of California.

A week before the Farallones success by Kimberley, a New Zealander living in California, an Australian-Californian named Simon Dominguez attempted to be first to reverse the route, swimming under the Golden Gate to find the tiny and spiny rock outcropping of the Farallones, far out in the cold blue Pacific.

The most real of dangers stopped him, when a great white shark approached him three miles from his destination. Sharks flock to feast on the breeding seal and sea elephant populations there.

Even the powerful sports-talk radio station KNBR in San Francisco spoke of Kimberley and Simon — not by name, mind you — interrupting the steady chatter diet of San Francisco Giants, National Football League, Golden State Warriors and prize fights to mention how crazy two people were to have done the impossible.

You might also have read, "Woman swims a triple crossing of the English Channel."  That was Chloë McCardel, an Australian who completed her feat in 36 hours. She swam the first leg of the 21-mile crossing (though it's far more than 21 miles after tides push swimmers around) in just over 11 hours — and swam even faster on her second leg.

McCardel also set a record last year, swimming 80 miles nonstop in the Bahamas.

These are swims you may have heard about, and I have had the pleasure of meeting Kimberley and swimming with Simon, who last year also crossed the English Channel. A documentary film crew is preparing a movie of Simon's attempt.

Here are some swims you might not have heard about, no less monumental.

France heard Bel's roar.

Annabel "Bel" Lavers last week also crossed the English Channel.

Having met her in the facebook™® community, I got to design a logo for her event, which her crew wore on their hooded sweatshirts.

Ebullient and funny, Bel seemed to attract a global following for her attempt. Many in the United Kingdom stayed up through the night to watch her 17-hour crossing, following a real-time GPS beacon blip across their computer screens.

Bel's blog includes a thorough question-and-answer about preparing for an English Channel swim, so comprehensive it makes me want to jump in and go. She also swam for charity.

As did Ion Lazarenco Tiron, a Moldavian who lives in Ireland, this week having completed the cold North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, raising money for the people in Moldova. Though he had announced his attempt a while back, he went silent for a long time until finally announcing his finish yesterday.

Ion Tiron swims the North Sea for his homeland.

I got to design something to commemorate his success too.

I'm leaving out so many stories, of Londoner Simon Fullerton attempting the North Sea before a painful shoulder forced him out, and of Philip Hodges, in Cambridge by way of Australia, also taking on the North Sea, and of many others crossing the English Channel.

More swimmers I have met will soon be crossing from the Channel Islands off California to the mainland. Still others have crossed England's great lake, Windermere, in the meantime.

I missed the opportunity finally to crew a long-distance swim, for my friend "fast" Karl Kingery, who swam with me almost every day at Lake Natoma near Sacramento until he moved to Colorado for a job.

Karl late last month swam the 21-mile length of Lake Tahoe.

When I texted him from afar, excited about him being able to cross Tahoe under the full moon, the taciturn mountain man swimmer replied simply, "Finished it yesterday. How was the full moon?!"

I had flubbed the date of the swim, and his eloquent summary came in three words, "Finished it yesterday."

While Karl crossed Lake Tahoe, marathon swimmer Craig Lenning was to embark on a triple crossing. Unfortunately, their pilot boat went dead in the water, Craig got out, ending his swim to help with the boat, and Karl finished his crossing.

In the jade, meditative waters of my lake, regarding the bridges towering above my head in the growing amber sunlight, I think of them, their accomplishments and heroic attempts, and dream.

Fair stood the wind for France*

This is what Annabel Lavers sought:

"The trio of the Amazon, Unicorn and Lion! Mixed with ocean waves! For instance, I loved the imagery in the Guinness advert with the horses within the waves. Don't want much do I??? I like strong, bold, clean lines. Projecting the power of all of those things??? Does that make sense??"

And she sent me the advert (commercial) she mentioned, of surfers taking the waves, their white froth become charging wild horses.

Could I do something like that?

I've never met Annabel but feel I have, through the magic of facebook®© and and almost global community of swimmers who communicate daily through it. Over the years — yes, years — I have gotten to know Bel (as some call her) as a serious swimmer with a fun, infectious spirit.

Serious, as in, this summer she's going to swim the English Channel, the great iconic snaking 21-plus mile endeavor that fewer have conquered than have climbed Mount Everest. She has amassed a team of stalwart Amazon swimmers to support her, and would I create an image to commemorate it?

This is the result.

I saw Annabel from the start as a fierce mermaid, giving the water as good as it gave her.

I have met many mermaids through facebook®©, who own the rivers and seas and bays and cold mountain lakes. Bel is a mermaid.

The image had to be compact and comprehensive, capturing at once this epic journey.

For some reason, I thought immediately of horse brass medallions, several of which my mom collected while she and dad were stationed in England.

At first, I wanted to convey something incised and raw and rough. Clearly the idea got away from me a bit, but I wanted to keep the close arrangement a medallion might require.

Early drawings suggested a swimmer overreaching the start (near the Cliffs of Dover in England) and finish (Cap Gris-Nez, if a swimmer is lucky, in France), the shortest distance between the countries.

Except, swimmers don't swim the shortest distance in that channel, but in a reverse-S route, swept this way and that by the changing tides.

The figure would be in the swirling vortex of wave and water — would be the vortex itself. Swimmer and water would form that S shape to which swimmers must resign their efforts.

But who is this swimmer, a thing of the waves?

The mermaid idea took shape. She was playing with the landmarks, as if amused, queen of the water surveying her sea:

Forcing the mermaid into the reverse-S prevented her from attacking the swim. So I stopped being so literal, and this figure emerged:

Except she looked like she was shopping for cake, a decidedly un-Channel like thing to do — before the swim, anyway. Finally she became this:

A fighter. The goal literally in her hands.

From here I scanned the image and worked digitally until the finish, solving spatial and elemental problems on the computer, trying to keep the lines simple but loose. The letterforms were part gothic blackletter, part rough incision into soft metal, part sass.

The first finished piece was more organic:

I simplified the undercurve of her tail in the final work, then added color in many variations, including the look at the top.

In the end, it became, subconsciously, horse-brass-meets-Alfons-Mucha.

The battle is joined, Annabel: Godspeed, and have a blast.

* The poetic way I know the English Channel swimming season has begun — especially when a British swimmer is in the water — is when swimmer Paul Smith, a French history professor at the University of Nottingham, posts simply "Fair stood the wind for France." It is the first line of "Agincourt," a 16th Century poem chronicling Henry V's victory over France.

'Tis the season for epic swims, several English Channel crossings having already been completed for the summer, as well as the Strait of Gibraltar; North Channel crossings are soon to come, as are Lake Tahoe crossings (go, fast Karl!) and a planned attempt by Simon Dominguez to the Farallon Islands from the Golden Gate.

Godspeed, all.

Yet so far away

Yesterday — somehow, some way — I swam two lengths of my beloved Lake Natoma.

It is one giant leap for me, one small splash for swimmingkind.

And all so ludicrous not too long ago.

Not too long ago — really, just three months back — I would amaze myself with the occasional 2.4-mile swim to a little island called Texas Hill near the middle of the lake. A mammoth swim.

Each time, I would crawl out of the water like I was reenacting the evolution of land animals.

Once a year, on Independence Day, I'd swim the length of the lake, impossible without a support boat and three stops to eat and drink. I was jelly at the end.

Now, every seven to 10 days a small group of us, sometimes just two, swim the length of the lake, a bit more than 4 1/2 miles. No support boat, no fuel except what we ingest before jumping in.

Swim buddy Sarah, gifted with the superpower of suggestion, compelled David — our other conspirator — and me to swim longer more regularly. It was the right time; we had exhausted the shoulda couldas, worn ourselves out with a couple of years of talking about it. Time to act.

Now two miles seems short, and we curse our conflicting schedules for it.

Sarah's been bugging us for a while to swim two lengths. We joked and made up names for the out-of-reach route instead, as we had begun to name our other routes.

A month back, to prime the pump for the double, we swam the traditional length — boat dock at lower Natoma to dock at upper Natoma — then added a round trip up the narrow rocky canyon to the boundary of Folsom Prison, for a total distance of 7 1/2 miles.

Common sense follows that we'd build up stamina for the double. A couple of more times of the length plus the prison boundary, for example. Then downstream and back up to Willow Creek, an additional two miles or so, with a lot where we could park and drive back to the starting point; swim that a couple of times. Then the length and up to Texas Hill and back to Willow Creek once or twice.

But we lack common sense.

With half a day off, Sarah and I made plans for Monday's swim. Sarah stashed food under a bench at lower Natoma; I kept mine in the tow float "butt buoy" I tether to myself. We parked our cars at the upper end.

Should we keep one car at the lower lake, just in case? Sarah asked.

No, we decided. We were like Cortés, burning his ships on reaching the New World. Conquer or die.

Or we could get out and walk back along the paved trail, if we really needed.

Hopes nosing out doubts, we plied the route, knowing from previous swims where the reeds and plants had overgrown in the shallow water, ready to trap us if we weren't paying attention. We knew where to look for any rowers; we knew one side of Texas Hill is better than the other for smooth unfettered passage.

We knew the chop was just a bunch of bumpy water. Adjust, roll a little more to breathe, deal with it. We knew the distant landmarks would remain distant for longer than we wished, and to be patient. We kept each other in sight.

At the lower dock we stopped and got out, violating international swimming rules, ate our stash and wondered aloud about walking back. In our hearts, though, we knew we could finish this, even if our shoulders and backs balked. A long moment of stretching and back in we went.

The water felt silky, aches went away, replaced by new aches elsewhere. Upstream was our usual route, and we knew it well, knew not to get too excited at every turn.

Along the way I thought, "This is really something!"

Followed by a new thought: It's really nothing.

It's all relative, of course. On my favorite facebook®™ page, Did You Swim Today?, swimmers around the world celebrate someone's first mile, or first open water swim, or first swim ever.

We also celebrate the gargantuan swims, the famous channel crossings, this time of year happening with stunning frequency. At times last week, it seemed a caravan of swimmers was crossing the English Channel, one right after the other, in the water at the same time along the tide-driven reverse "S" route from England to France.

Our long Natoma swim wasn't even as long as the six-hour qualifying swims English Channel swimmers must endure.

Within the last week, several teams and soloists have crossed the English Channel, including the oldest ever — 73-year-old heart surgeon Otto Thaning of South Africa — and the youngest to have completed what's called the Triple Crown. In addition to the English Channel, 16-year-old Charlotte Samuels of New Jersey has also swum around Manhattan Island and the Catalina Channel off California.

A 70-year-old Australian, Cyril Baldock, swam the Channel last month, holding the title of oldest crosser for only a couple of weeks.

In July, a Massachusetts woman, Elaine Howley, became the first to swim the 34-mile length of Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. A northern California woman, Patti Bauernfeind, last month became only the second to swim the 25 miles across Monterey Bay, followed shortly after by Kimberly Rutherford (see a great video of her Lake Tahoe ice mile with long-distance swimmer Scott Tapley).

In Southern California last week, Peter Hayden became the first swimmer to circumnavigate Anacapa Island in the Channel Islands chain. (Channel swimmer Lynn Kubasek takes you on the journey with her video documentation.) Hayden topped it off by swimming 12 miles into the mainland. Shortly after, Julian Rusinek also swam from Anacapa to the mainland, last year having been the first to swim from San Miguel to Santa Rosa islands.

(Editor's addendum for Sept. 10: Carol Schumacher Hayden swam from Anacapa to the mainland this day. She just happens to be married to Peter Hayden.)

A New Zealand woman named Kimberley Chambers, who lives and works in the Bay Area, last month became only the sixth swimmer to have completed the Ocean's Seven Challenge — The English Channel, Catalina Channel, Cook Strait of New Zealand, Molokai Channel in Hawaii, Tsugaru Channel in Japan, Strait of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, and the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland.

Just two months after finishing the 12-mile Tsugaru Strait, Kimberley capped her challenge with the North Channel, swimming through clots of poisonous lion's mane jellyfish. The constant stinging and exhausting swim briefly hospitalized her.

Kimberley writes eloquently and personally about her swims; I'm one of many waiting anxiously for her North Channel swim account.

Read also Jason Betley's blog, accounting his English Channel swim to raise money for the hospital that treated his son's brain tumor.

facebook®™ has enabled me to correspond with many of these stars of long-distance swimming.

I'm leaving out so many swims, only because we have so many to keep track of, including valiant but aborted long-distance attempts.

My Natoma swim only deepens my appreciation of theirs, magnifying the greatness of their feats.

Yet …

Now I'm wondering, and asking. Now I'm dreaming. Now a fire has begun burning about what if? All the swims I've swum this point seemed unreachable until I slowly reached them, after all. What could I reach in time? How far can we swim regularly when winter drops the water temperature? What else is possible?

Maybe. Just maybe.

In other news:

Ray Rice won't be play football in two weeks after all.

He may never play again in the NFL, now that video has surfaced showing him knock his fiancée — now his wife — unconscious with a punch that sent her sprawling against the wall of a casino elevator, a punch that appears to have driven her headfirst into a metal railing. The second punch he landed in that elevator.

A video that supposedly no on knew about. The Baltimore Ravens, Rice's employer until yesterday, and the NFL: We're surprised as anyone by this video!

Yeah, right.

Confronted with — or exposed by? — undeniable and appalling proof, the Ravens cut the contract of their star running back. The NFL, rather than suspending Rice for two games, suspended him indefinitely and required any team considering putting Rice on their roster to check with the NFL first.

Would any team consider it? I'm not surprised by much anymore.

The NFL looks extremely pathetic on this, with dim hope of being better without real reform and major changes in the league and the legal system that allowed this crime to go so lightly punished, until the truth emerged.

Rice's wife has criticized the NFL and the news media for her husband's consequences.

Is money the only thing that matters anymore?

The last word on Diana Nyad*

*Not because I claim any authority on the subject. Hardly that!

(nervous laugh)

This is the last word on Diana Nyad's 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida last week because it comes long after everyone else has exhausted the subject … and shortly before before Nyad goes on Ellen or ESPN with her odyssey, and launches the companion book/documentary/app/cologne.

(My friend Bob said he expected a Nyad post from me last week when I had instead gnashed about Syria. Though I told him I wouldn't, the story kept gnawing at me — in a different way than it bothers some others.)

You know the story: 64-year-old Nyad completed her fifth attempt to cross from Havana to Key West, a feat that took 53 hours — more than two days. After trying first in a shark cage in 1978, Nyad made three more attempts in the last two years — stopped by illness, weather, sharks and poisonous jellyfish, sometimes in combination — before last week's success.

She is the first person to have swum from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. An Australian woman, Susie Maroney, completed the swim in 1997 in a shark cage.

You might have seen video of Nyad stumbling onto the beach in Key West, a meld of Rocky Balboa after 10 rounds and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, parting the sea of supporters and the curious before falling into the arms of a supporter.

You might have heard her inspiring words right after:

"I've got three messages. One is, we should never ever give up. Two is, you're never too old to chase your dreams. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it's a team …"

The crowd cheered each message. The world watched her talk through swollen lips, her voice a sandpaper slur, her face crusted and red and misshapen, her fingers, numbering her messages, wrinkled and crooked.

I take her message to heart, having several projects on my desk and in my head, all worth doing, all trying to work against my horrible lifelong habit of giving up. The roar of time grows louder.

I compare swimming more than a hundred miles with the longest I've swum, six miles, and try to imagine swinging my arms for more than two days, let alone two or three hours, and I can't — not without shrugging my shoulders against phantom pain, anyway.

In a word, her swim is incredible.

Some others take that word literally.

I don't know how much news of this event reaches the swuggle (what some British swimmers I know call the non-swimming) world, but Nyad's swim is a point of controversy, notably for a group of competitive long-distance swimmers closely analyzing what details they can gather.

Chiefly through the Marathon Swimmers Forum, some — not all — of the elite marathon swimmers raise questions about the swim, and want answers and information from Nyad and her support team.

(Nyad reportedly will answer critics' questions today.)

The questions arise in the context of the marathon swimming culture, and the rules that govern the sport, in spirit if not letter. Competitive marathon swims usually abide by English Channel rules, which limit swimmers to a latex cap, goggles, a standard swim outfit, and maybe some body grease to prevent chafing. That's it. No touching the support boat or kayak or kayaker or any human during the swim. Feeds must be taken from a pole or tether extended off the support boat. Swims must start on dry land, and swimmers must reach dry land unassisted to complete the swim officially.

[The so-called Ocean's Seven swims, the most renowned of long-distance swims, are the English Channel between Britain and France; the Catalina Channel from Catalina Island to the California mainland; Cook Strait between New Zealand's two islands; the Irish Channel between Ireland and England; the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan between Honshu (the main) and Hokkaido islands; the Strait of Gibraltar at the opening of the Mediterranean Sea; and the Molokai Channel between the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Oahu.]

Nyad didn't follow all these rules (not that she said she would). She wore a special full-body suit and a custom rubber facemask at night to protect against box jellyfish, for one thing. She followed a streamer trailing alongside her pilot boat, and swam between kayakers trailing devices designed to deter sharks, more no-nos.

The critics have questioned the objectivity of the feat's independent observer, which is a requirement among major marathon swims.

With some data available but no released video of the swim, some critics raise questions about apparent discrepancies. Among them:

• Nyad's speed during parts of the swim, which appear to have exceeded — and sometimes doubled — her established swim speed.
• A 7 1/2-hour period in which Nyad did not take any feedings, which to some critics suggest she might have spent time on a support boat, or have been towed by one. Swimmers at long distances take feedings hourly if not fractions of hours.
• The imagined difficulty of putting on the anti-jellyfish suit in the water without assistance.

Nyad is quoted as saying she didn't cheat, if that's what critics suggest, and her support staff said at times she benefited from fast current that sped her above her normal pace. The observer said she swam the entire route.

I don't think the critics are saying Nyad cheated, despite a lot of online vitriol and sneer over her swim. As close as I can tell, critics are essentially asking, "What was your game? Because there may be some swimmers who want to beat you at it."

Aside from the immense distances, the elite marathon swimmers desire to be first to complete a treacherous swim, or the fastest if they can't be first. Or cover the course two times, or even three times, or reverse the route.

Some of these swimmers would like to be first to swim that distance by Channel rules.

But Nyad's swim may demonstrate that's next to impossible. Stopped each of the last three swims, Nyad and her support team regrouped and devised other ways to mitigate dangers, hence the body suit and the Skeletor mask.

Age may not be the limiting factor. 49-year-old Penny Palfrey, an Australian, was thwarted by strong currents — plus jellyfish stings and threat of hammerhead sharks — in her Channel rules attempt last year. Swarms of jellyfish stymied 28-year-old Australian Chloe McArdel's Channel rules swim earlier this summer.

Money may be a major limiter, though. Nyad has said the four attempts cost about $1 million, though one source pegged her second attempt, in 2011, at more than $300,000. An English Channel swim costs somewhere between $4,400 and $4,700, according to the Channel Swimming Association — not counting travel and potentially lengthy lodging. 

I see the marathon swimmers' concern, though as more of a swuggle than a swimmer I have difficulty appreciating their viewpoint. Some of these same critics also raised ire among themselves last month over footage of Australian Trent Grimsey's record-setting English Channel crossing, which showed him flinging an empty plastic feed cup into the water has he twirled back into his stroke. A battle of words ensued over whether champion swimmers get leniency in trashing the environment to pursue records.

But Nyad's feat will prevail over the criticisms, even if some prove true.

Why? Because Nyad is Nyad. And that's my problem with the whole thing.

Diana Nyad is engaging, a masterful storyteller, a wit — a motivational speaker, sometime reporter, occasional National Public Radio commentator. She is brash and loud and brassy and opinionated. I get it, such people get things done, squeaky wheels and all that. Lacking such personality, I chafe at personalities like hers, especially sports personalities.

Nyad will not let this feat stand on its own merit. She will smother it with the mother of all promotions. Just wait.

Her latest string of Cuba-to-Florida swim attempts coincided with my use of facebook™©. Through one connection and another, I came across some item about Nyad and her swim.

Interesting! I said to myself. I'll click "like." This was immediately before I realized that liking an entity or a business opened me up to an onslaught of advertising and constant chatter promoting the entity or business.

I clicked "Diana Nyad" and the woman. Would not. Shut up.

Even when she was not swimming she was broadcasting ruminations on the most mundane moments in her life. Hers is the epitome of social media corruption, in which people think other people crave to know their everyday doings and thinkings.

They do not, I can assure you.

Much of Nyad's meditations had nothing to do with swimming. They had nothing to do with anything. They were just variations on "Me! Me! Me!" Unrelenting and loud. Nyad's the best, and that ain't good.

Palfrey and McArdel may be well known among marathon swimmers and occasional swimmers like me, and revered in Australia where the sport itself is revered, but they don't transcend the sport the way Nyad does. Maybe they don't want to. Maybe they don't know how to.

I finally figured out how to block Nyad after she posted a selfie of her naked bronzed back, the tan lines from various swimsuits forming a freeway cloverleaf across her scapulae.

I've done such a good job of blocking Nyad that I didn't know about each swim attempt — and subsequent vow that each would be the last — until she was already in the water.

So it was with this swim. I followed it vaguely online, heard she made it, saw the video, reflected on her messages of perseverance. Then, through the same facebook©™ that put me face to face with Nyad's media machine, I started reading the chatter of criticism.

I think deep down we're all just jealous, for different reasons.

You can learn more than you want by simply googling "Nyad criticism."

I'll leave the last word to The Onion, a satirical media machine, and its unique angle on the story, headlined, "Jellyfish Falls Short of Dreams to Kill Diana Nyad."

In a blue moon

A quick paint sketch of our view across the lake, cloud forming a creature before the moon.
Never has a restroom light seemed so inviting. We swam back toward it.

"What a coupla Boy Scouts!" is how swim buddy Doug admonished himself and me. And we are.

Old Boy Scouts, just looking for a place to swim under the full moon — a blue moon, not to return for two more years — in our home water. Which we did Tuesday, but not without prickles.

Because I mistook Doug's swim proposal for the September full moon, I neglected to invite any other usual suspects like the last time.

Last time, we swam at Folsom Lake, but a swim there now would require a 500 yard downhill hike across a spooky moonscape (is that ironic?) to very low, too-warm water. We went to Lake Natoma instead.

Of the three entrances to Lake Natoma, only the lower lake has parking just outside park boundaries. We pulled into the ride-share lot (with my wife Nancy and daughter Maura to join in the adventure and watch over us) to find the park gates still open, long after sunset. Hmmm.

The blue moon — also called the green corn moon, the full red moon and my favorite, the full sturgeon moon — was no moon at all, barely a smudge behind the flat sheet of dark cloud. Already this swim has a bad moon rising.

Doug ran back to his car to get his little blinking diver's light to attach to his swim goggles for the night swim. The rest of us continued into the park, where a couple of vehicles with their lights on remained. We had expected everything empty, dark and locked down. One vehicle turned away onto the lane that separates the main parking lots. The other one headed toward us.

Sure enough, a park ranger. We glowed in the motion-sensor lights of the restrooms we had just passed.

"The parking is off limits to vehicles and pedestrians now," said the ranger through her passenger window.

The parking? Do you mean the park? As pedestrians, we are not really parking. I played stupid.

"So … we can't walk in then?"

"No," said the ranger, repeating her statement. The parking is off limits.

It was like the Second Amendment, so strangely constructed I could interpret it to my favor if need be. You know, just in case I got hauled into court for swimming the lake. Your honor, I would say, I was not technically parking, so I was OK.

Doug jogged back through the shadows with his diver's blinker and escaped the ranger's notice. We walked back out, checked the ride-share parking lot, noticed the park gates finally closed … and went back into the park.

By then we imagined eyes on us — of the ranger parked somewhere out in the shadows, scanning with binoculars … of night patrol (that probably doesn't exist) at the amber-lit aquatic center across the inlet at the lower lake … of undercover rangers still at large in the park, or across the lake on the bike trail, nabbing trespassers.

"We better go stealth," said Doug. We wore our blinkies but kept them off. All the glow sticks, already activated, remained suppressed in Maura's plastic grocery bag. Nancy and Maura sat in the shadows as Doug and I slipped into the water — just about where a young man had drowned late in the evening a month before.

Even without the full moon, lower Natoma is not dark. Hazel Avenue is an overpass lifting over the dam, lit on each side by the amber sodium lights. A Chevron™® station and a McDonalds®© bloom white across the avenue from the park entrance. The city of Folsom glows to the east. The spire of the Mormon Temple lights up like a Christmas tree above the oak forest.

We were disappointed.

The water, though, was dark but for the bubbles of our wake. Doug designated 100 strokes to get out of the inlet and get our bearing, then we picked a saddle in the hills across the lake and swam toward it 200 strokes at a time. Doug cut his speed — it had to have killed him! — to stay near my side so searching for each other wouldn't be difficult. I counted strokes, trying to keep my mind off the giant white prehistoric sturgeons that don't even exist in the lake.

Two-hundred strokes, stop. Two-hundred strokes, stop. We were across, standing on the slippery rocks. The hillside behind us radiated softly.

Doug and me, post swim. Maura photo

As familiar as we are with the lake, we were still uncertain of landmarks in the uncertain light. The moon drifted out of the clouds, which formed a giant hand, then a lurching creature. Across the lake, the amber light of a restroom above the beach became our Polaris. We started across on 200-stroke beads. A bicyclist on the trail behind us with a powerful searchlight swept the beam up the hill, then across the lake, over our heads. Park ranger, you think? Nah, just someone on his bike, checking for skunks, I bet.

"Hear that?" Doug said on our stop, midway across the lake. Crisp, like radio chatter, people talking, somewhere on the water, invisible.

"There!" I said, pointing to the two lights on an eastern ridge which I suddenly transformed into the double-hulled chase boat from the aquatic center, bearing down on us. "Let's get to shore!"

"No, wait," said Doug. The lights, of course, never moved, remaining streetlights somewhere in the distance. The voices, though, drew nearer. Finally we saw the moving dark shadow across more dark shadows. A couple in a kayak, headed for shore. We let them pass, swimming breaststroke for a while before resuming our freestyle.

Nancy and Maura reported the lake alive with people, even though none of us was supposed to be there. Two kayaks slipped into the inlet and took out somewhere in the darkness; we saw the paddlers later in the ride-share lot, tying their boats to their car. A standup paddler carried her board out of the water and passed Nancy and Maura, who were lying on the beach to avoid detection. Nancy devised alibis in case a ranger found them.

The full-moon swim was a nice change, because swimming lately has felt like a chore. Though I have not swum open water long, it's long enough to know I go through these periods of malaise, and they pass. I can't help wonder about their source, though.

I wonder if it's the notorious and creative swims I've been reading about lately. This is the season for them. I wonder if psychologically I'm making myself victim of their herculean successes.

Daily, and sometimes multiple times daily, swimmers are crossing the English Channel. One woman yesterday, Wendy Trehiou from the Island of Jersey, swam across the channel and back again. It took her 39 hours of continuous swimming.

Not only that:

• A 20-year-old kid named Owen O'Keefe just swam 37 miles down the River Blackwater in County Cork in the south of Ireland — that's shortly after he swam 41 miles around the island of Jersey.
• Gábor Mólnar, a Hungarian living in Ireland, just swam 30 miles down the River Koros in his native country.
• A Utah native, Gordon Gridley, completed the Catalina Channel crossing of about 20 miles.
• Two English swimmers, Kate Robarts and Zoe Sadler, just completed double crossings, 21 miles, of Lake Windermere, England's longest lake.
• An team of 40 swimmers from Russia, Ireland, South Africa, Italy, the United States, Latvia, Estonia, Chile, Poland, England, Argentina and Argentina last week completed a five-day, 60-mile swim across the Bering Strait between the United States and Russia, in 41-degree water. 
• The same week, Nejib Belhidi completed his 2.4-mile swim between Little Diomede and Big Diomede islands in the Bering Sea.
• A tight group of Orange County swimmers recently attempted swimming around 27 piers in 24 hours, from Santa Barbara to San Diego counties. In the end, only one of the 14 was able to complete all 27, and it took longer than planned. Still.
• A team from the Bay Area-based Night Train Swimmers today embarked on a 228-mile relay swim from Point Concepcion to San Diego, hoping to set a new record for distance relay.

That's an incomplete list. Almost all the swimmers are raising money for charity.

In our night swim, I think of Gridley telling his support crew not to tell him how far he had swim or how close he was to his goal. "I just want to put my face in the water and swim," he said.

Here I am, in this short "pootle," as some of my virtual swim friends call it, struggling along for a mile and a half or so, out of rhythm, out of breath, wanting to know when I can stop, finding their feats beyond imagination. I can manage a mere fraction of what they accomplish.

And yet, I think, the bubbles seeming to fluoresce beneath me as I swim in darkness, maybe there's some more I can do. Maybe farther, maybe better, maybe for someone else's sake.

What's next?

how do i love facebook©™®? last-minute addendum

"Gather!" Nejib Belhedi told summer campers at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center.
And they did; some called him "swimmer guy," but I'm not sure they know who he is.

The world grows smaller …

Yesterday Nejib Belhedi kissed me solemnly on both cheeks, bear-hugging me as tight as he could, given we were bobbing in 25 feet of water in Lake Natoma.

He thanked me for my help and swam back to shore. I wished him safe travels and continued swimming upstream.

By today he should be flying to Nome, Alaska, preparing to swim the 2.4 miles between Little Diomede (the United States) and Big Diomede (Russia) islands in the Bering Strait. The water should be about 40 degrees, says Steven Breiter, handling his publicity.

With logistics worked out, Nejib should make the swim sometime next week.

(Lynne Cox, famous for her extreme endurance swims, made this route in 1987; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev credited her swim, and lengthy delicate negotiations to make it possible, for easing U.S.-Soviet tensions leading to glasnost.)

Nejib Belhedi is a world wonder whom I wouldn't have known without facebook™©, specifically the group page in which swimmers around the world describe their swims that day. Nejib posts early and often, ebullient descriptions of swims from far away, accompanied by many many photos. And many many exclamation points!!!

I don't always understand what's going on in the photos, partly because his posts appear to have been translated from French or Arabic and the result is quaintly peculiar to me. His joy, though, is clear. So is his mission; peace.

Fox 40 reporter Alisa Becerra gets ready to interview Nejib Belhedi at Lake
Natoma. Expedition manager Carol Breiter (right) stands by for questions.

"The world is so noisy," Nejib told a reporter from Fox 40 News in Sacramento, covering his story yesterday morning. "We don't hear these kinds of voices. It's rare to hear these kinds of voices."

Nejib plans to bring the voices and words and pictures from children in his native Tunisia in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, to the children of the Bering Sea. Tunisia is the tragic but fiery birthplace for the so-called Arab Spring.
 
This is one of several swims Nejib has made to wage peace and to encourage Tunisian children to take to the sea.

In 2011 he swam the Tunisian coastline, 1,400 kilometers, stage by stage, for peace and encouragement. The World Open Water Swimming Association named his feat that year's Performance of the Year.

Nejib swam the English Channel in 1993 in 16 hours and 35 minutes on the highest tide of the year, 6.75 meters. The Belhedi Award now goes to the fastest English Channel crossing on the highest tide. (Information from a wiki site called Open Water Pedia.)

Cindi Dulgar, associate director of the Sac State Aquatic Center, pilots
The Fox 40 TV crew alongside Nejib on his swim. Carol Breiter photo.

All this I learned last week — including that he's a retired lieutenant colonel in the Tunisian army — when I saw yet another video of Nejib swimming.

Except in this one the background looked weirdly familiar.

The narrator introduced Nejib, announced the date June 30 and said, "His course is going to take him up the lake, Lake Natoma in Sacramento, California." The narrator noted Nejib's planned 4,400-meter swim that day.

"wait a minute," I posted on the group page. "you swam lake natoma and i missed the chance to meet you?!"

Soon Carol Breiter called me to say Nejib is still in the neighborhood, and would I like to meet him? She's the general manager of Nejib's Bering Strait expedition, and a swimmer and English Channel coach from Sacramento.

(I'm guessing the video narrator was her husband Steven, the publicity and logistics manager for this trek. I'm also guessing he misspoke, meaning July 30. I forgot to ask him yesterday.)

After a couple of attempts — Nejib was on the road with his team the last week, swimming in Lake Tahoe and then Aquatic Park in San Francisco — I finally got to meet him yesterday.

Nejib gets ready to jump in at Nimbus Flat after an interview.

"Careful," says Carol. "He'll get you to help out. He has that way."

Whatever he's got, he should bottle and sell it. 

"Gather!" he calls to children who have arrived for day camp at the aquatic center. Children run to him; I don't know whether someone has told them who he is. They pose for a photo. 

He gestures and hugs and laughs and approaches perfect strangers with great glee, revealing how reserved we tend to be in this part of the world.
 
I have commented briefly on his posts before, and he has called me his dear friend since. With a great hug he greeted me again this way, his great walrus mustache rising above a big smile.

"Come, we are together in this now," he said.

Soon, sure enough, I was helping hold up a backdrop while the news reporter did a live tease for the lengthier broadcast later. Then I was in the stern of a canoe, paddling alongside Nejib on a swim to demonstrate a mid-swim feeding for the TV crew. Nejib's neoprene cap bore the red crescent and star of the Tunisian flag.

Carol and Steven switched places in the canoe to keep piloting Nejib, while Cindi Dulgar of the aquatic center took me back on her boat with the TV crew.

Then I joined my swim buddy Doug for a swim of Burroughs Island, about 1.3 miles round trip.

Nejib and his crew were returning on our way out. I veered over to say goodbye.

"Come, I kiss you," said Nejib. I looked up at Carol and Steven, not sure what I heard.

"It's the custom," said Carol. "Go with it."

Peace will come by people reaching out, I think, by meeting others more than halfway. Godspeed, Nejib. 

Carol Breiter photo

How I swim cold water

Today's temperature in Lake Natoma, which I swim at least four times a week, is 46.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 8.3 degrees Celsius.

The temperature is rising, from a mid-January low of 44.3 degrees F (6.8 C).

To swim it this time of year, I imagine blue flame blooming from my arms, about 80 strokes in. The prickling becomes the delicate flames igniting and spreading, jacketing my arms. The stinging intensifies until, 40 or so strokes later, it levels off, the flames hold, their tendrils snapping off into the green water, and I can go on.

Except …

For some reason, I haven't needed to visualize the flames this winter, even though the water has been colder longer than the last two winters. Last year, the temperature dipped to 47 F for just one mid-January day before steadily rising. The same thing happened the year before, except the temperature dropped to 46.

Besides falling below 45 this year, the water temperature has held steady for more than a month, rarely rising above 47 before dipping again.

I don't know whether my mind has grown to know exactly what to expect when I dive in now, or I've gotten used to swimming immediately on entering the water (instead of wading a while, as I used to), but the low temperatures I had dreaded for two months don't bother me.

This is nothing, though. Through facebook™®©, I've come to know many swimmers — mostly in England and Ireland — who swim regularly in much colder water. Several of them abide by "channel rules:" Goggles, a single latex cap and a swimsuit, no wetsuit, as required of swimmers who brave the English Channel, the Mount Everest for long-distance swimmers.

I swim "channel rules light," with a neoprene cap and two slightly thicker silicone caps. No wetsuit, but my head is warm.

One London swimmer, John Donald, reports almost daily on facebook®©™ of swimming more than a mile, "channel rules," in his stainless steel community pool (or lido, pronounced LIE-doe … the things one learns on facebook™©®), where the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius, or 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I encouraged him to get in touch with the International Ice Swimming Association (yes, it's a sport!), which has documented a small number of people worldwide who have swum a mile in temperatures 41 F and below.

It's a big deal, requiring a doctor's documentation of the swimmer's heart health, careful temperature readings of the watercourse, and layers of safety and recording and certification. Local long-distance swimmer Brad Schindler swam an ice mile unofficially last year at Lake Tahoe, and plans to repeat the event soon for keeps.

This London swimmer achieves this feat almost every day, apparently, with no attention save for a bitty post on a facebook®™© group page for swimmers.

The painting above illustrates, literally and figuratively:

• I look at my hand too much. With my head positioned correctly, I should barely be able to see my arm pass in peripheral view, and I try hard not to look. But on a long swim, I can't help but imagine the world below the dark green of the water, and how clear my arm looks in the void;
• I need to work on my watercolor skills. Or Photoshop®™© skills. Probably both.

Getting along swimmingly

See no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil:
Being a Giants fan in the home stretch
requires iron fortitude and

• Keep Calm and Swim On

'Tis the season for the world's most stalwart swimmers to complete or try lunatic expeditions.

I say that with the utmost jealousy.

One guy this weekend, Jamie Patrick, (beware this link: It will absolutely blast a song by the pop group Fun, and the off switch is way down at the bottom of the page) will attempt to swim the circumference of Lake Tahoe, about 68 miles. He has swum twice Tahoe's length, 44 miles at one go, and last year swam more than 100 miles down the Sacramento River.

I follow his progress through Facebook. I also follow a doctor, who amazed me for his daily reports of swimming at least six miles in the ocean, apparently by himself. I wondered how he found the time, for one, and the courage, for another.

He did all that to train for a crossing of the English Channel, the Mt. Everest for swimmers, as I've heard it described, a 21-mile tidal battle that requires swimmers three times farther from England to France than a gull might fly.

Another swimmer from down the doctor's way, San Diego, also completed the English Channel. On a page called "Did You Swim Today?" on which swimmers from all over the world post their jaunts big and small, she wrote

Not today but yesterday I swam from Engand to France (-:

Still others whom I follow on Facebook have completed solo or relay crossings from one of the Channel Islands onto shore in Los Angeles or Ventura counties.

Dyana Nyad last month tried a fourth, and maybe last, time to cross through sharks and jelly fish and storms from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, 103 miles.

People may congratulate me for my daily one or two miles in the nearby lake by telling me how few people would really even get into the cold water, let alone swim that distance, which is always a struggle for me. But I'm in awe of so many swimmers who can swim day and night, thousands and thousands of strokes, and still emerge from the brine at the end of their goal.

• Keep Calm and Watch the Giants

I've let those Giants get to me, after all. I greet wins with calm, because that's what I expect, wins. I curse losses and errors and a paucity of hits and runs, because the Giants are supposed to win and hit and score and play perfect defense.

Why? I don't know. Win or lose, I still get nothing for it, as I've said before.

The Giants swept the Houston Astros this week, something they should have done, though each game proved a battle. They face the Chicago Cubs over the weekend, and then the Arizona Diamondbacks early next week. With a Los Angeles Dodgers loss, the Giants could pull away to 4 1/2 games up in the National League West.

It's the home stretch and they're fighting, and it's almost hard to believe. I didn't write about the Giants losing its star left fielder, Melky Cabrera, for 50 games (and probably his Giants career) for taking synthetic testosterone. Everyone else was writing about it, and I wasn't going to add anything new. But more than hits, Cabrera brought a joy to his play, smilingly mocking opponents, holding the baseball for an extra moment and daring baserunners to try an extra base before he mowed them down with his arm.

His joy was juiced, and now it looks like he'll never play for the Giants again. On the other hand, the Giants welcomed relief pitcher Guillermo Mota after a 100-game suspension for taking performance-enhancing drugs, and the Giants say they're convinced the guy took one of his children's steroid-tinged cough medicines by mistake. OK. Who knows?

The Giants acquired right fielder Hunter Pence from the Phillies a month ago. The guy always seemed to hit at will against the Giants when he was an opponent, but he hadn't really started to hit for the Giants until this week, against his old home team, the Astros. Until then, he has become almost unwatchable, the antsiest, most jittery player I've ever seen. The man can't stand still, and gets in the batter's box rollicking like a washing machine with an uneven load. He swings as hard as he can at everything, chases breaking balls in the dirt, strikes out and then returns to pace the dugout like a caged animal.

The Giants act like a team betrayed by Melky Cabrera and now on an angry mission to prove he wasn't the team, and they're finding ways to win despite flubs and foul-ups and bad breaks, which is what the top teams do in the home stretch. Now it's a race to the playoffs with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have paid huge sums to get the players that will overtake the Giants. So far for the Dodgers, not so good.