A month ago our Comcast guy came over to our house to update our basic cable connection. Long story short he had some issues, didn’t have what he needed and ended up leaving without putting the restrictor back in place. This meant that Jamie and I had full cable and we weren’t even paying for it. I found full cable to be too overwhelming. I would spend an hour trying to find something to watch and then all the shows would be coming to an end and I would have to start searching all over. I quickly figured out that there were about 2 or 3 channels that seemed to air the same type of shows. I tended to watch the History Channel or Discovery Channel. It just happened that the couple of weeks we had free full cable it was shark week. Yup, that’s right shark week. I found myself watching shark week anytime I found a little bit of time to sit down. Sharks are fascinating creatures and I learned some interesting facts about them. Like how they attack, how they have been found in brackish water, how they have been sighted off the coast of Maine. The other show that I found myself watching was River Monsters. My husband enjoys this show and I found it to be very interesting. Oh my goodness!! Have any of you watched River Monsters? You will never look at any body of water the same. You will have mental images that will never leave you.
So where am I going with this? Well, great question. It just happened that the very week I started to watch shark week my triathlon club invited me to swim with them in the ocean. I hadn’t ever gone swimming in the ocean other than a dip off the beach or something. I haven’t ever jumped in the ocean to swim a mile.
Let me share with you what my first swim was like. I showed up at Simpson’s Point at 5:30 a.m. with my wetsuit in hand. My crew was there waiting for me and ready to jump in. My crew seemed very happy and excited to swim in the ocean. I didn’t share the same happiness or excitement. I was freaked out. Everyone jumped in the ocean and started swimming toward a little island. I didn’t have any other choice but to hurry up and jump in. I didn’t want to get left behind and I had just worked my butt off to get my wetsuit on so there was no way I was going to chicken out. I dove in the water and got a mouth full of salt water which gave me a friendly reminder that I was swimming in the ocean where sharks live. I immediately started to freak. It was a battle for me to focus on my swimming stroke and to leave all those mental images of shark attacks out of mind. The water was a nice bluish color but you can’t see more than 2 feet in front of you (or at least that is my guess). I kept thinking that at any moment some big ugly, huge, fanged, beastly fish was going to all of a sudden come into view and swim straight toward my face. I still feel like one of these days I am going to come into contact with this terrifing fish. Eventfully I found a way to block this stupid fish out of my head. I started to get into the groove of swimming in the ocean.
Things started to go well until all of a sudden my hand hit this massive slimy alive beast. The sliminess hit my hand and then my face, my body, my legs, my feet. All of a sudden I felt like my whole body was getting swallowed by some nightmereish ocean beast. I was ‘seeing’ what my brain was ‘seeing’ not what my eyes where seeing. My eyes saw seaweed but my brain saw a beast. Of course the minute I hit the seaweed a high pitch noise came out of my mouth that could be heard from 100 miles away. Any fish that might have been nearby probably fled for their lives. The seaweed seemed to follow me all the way around the island. I never got use to hitting it. Every time I ran into seaweed I freaked out, yelled and started swimming like a drowning dog. Finally after losing several years of my life I made it to the island and you can be sure I climbed out of that water as fast as I possibly could. We stopped and talked for several minutes, all the while I stayed on dry ground and thought I was safe from all ocean life. One of the guys that I was swimming with joined me on dry ground where we spent several very peaceful minutes talking about swimming. Next thing I knew I felt some sort of creature on my foot. Being a bit paranoid I looked down to find a crab on my foot. Normally I wouldn’t be too freaked out by a crab but I was so uptight and paranoid that the little crab brought the worst out of me. The crab can be thankful that it was already dead because I flung that thing so hard and so fast it wouldn’t have stood a chance (actually I am sure it probably would have been fine but just to spruce up the story I need to be dramatic). After the whole incident happened I learned that Tom, my fellow swimmer purposefully flung the crab onto my foot after Dominque, another fellow swimmer, told him too. I owe these two big time!!!!
After 10 minutes I calmed down enough to somehow jump back into the ocean of freaky life. Everything started to go pretty well until, or course, I hit another pile of seaweed. At least this time I viewed the seaweed as seaweed instead of some monster. Improvement!!! I figured the worst must be over. I was wrong. When I swim I breath on both sides in order to pace myself. Right, three strokes, left, three strokes, right, three strokes, left. I was getting into the rhythm until all of a sudden I took a breath left and saw a gross dead fish too close for comfort. I missed hitting it by feet. All of a sudden my heart rate skyrocketed as I thought about what it would have been like to have actually hit that dead fish with my hand or face. Makes me want to jump out of my skin. I was totally freaking out again and could only think about getting out of this very alive (or dead) ocean. The only way I was going to get out of this ocean was to keep swimming. After scanning the waters ahead for any other dead beasts I stuck my face back in the water and started swimming again. I took a breath to my right and the next thing I knew there was, in fact, a huge, terrify alive creature moving toward me. It was dark green/brown, slimy and very scary. It was hovering above the water and was moving directly toward me. I couldn’t believe how fast it was moving toward me and I started to figure out it was gaining on me. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what this thing was and if it was life threatening. All of a sudden this big freaky thing, that I couldn’t make out behind my very foggy goggles, started to laugh very loud at me. Once again I fell for another Tom prank. Tom, who is a way faster swimmer than me, swam ahead of me all in order to grab a ton of seaweed put it on top of his head and wait for me to come by. He seemed to have stationed himself right by the dead fish for a little extra scare. I will totally admit Tom got be good. Now I have to figure out how to get him back.
The good news is after swimming through a lot more seaweed I did make it back to shore without any missing limbs, without being attacked by all the sharks, etc, and without drowning from fear of Tom. It was a swim I will NEVER forget. Not only was it horrifying it was also hilarious. It was freaky but very funny. I pulled out from the swim, took my wetsuit off which was warm from peeeee* and I said to myself “well that wasn’t too bad, I can totally do this again”. I did do it again but not until about a week later. I am about to hit the ocean again this week and hope that I calm down, start to enjoy the very alive ocean and avoid all those sharks that are hunting me down. I swear one of these times I will see some huge fish swim by. When I do you will probably know it.
*I haven’t actually peed in my wetsuit but if I was going to my first ocean swim would have been the day.
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