Extreme Family

My father didn't die and my brother kicked my ass. I swam sans wetsuit and my shoulder didn't give out. Here we are after the race.



This is my amazing family, post-race.

Just looking at this picture makes me proud. I come from some extreme sports stock. There are my Aunt Judy and Uncle John, co-founders of the Iron Man triathlon. They have had crazy adventures that inspired me from afar for as long as I can remember. They were always swimming and biking and coming up with crazy challenges. They rode bikes up into the Sierras with their kids when their kids were still little, eating salami and soda. They rode cross country on motorcycles when I was in high school, and my uncle gave me a ride on the back of his bike that thrilled me, until my father yelled at him to never, ever do that again. That only whet my appetite more. Then they bought a sailboat and sailed off into the sunset on grand adventures. I have lost track. I think they sailed to Scotland. Then they started from Coronado on a quest to sail round the world. They only made it as far as Panama, where they still live half the year, but the adventures they had! They knew people held up by pirates and hung out with indigenous tribes. They were just so cool!

My cousins Kristin and Michael are supersonic athletes who are do not even train, They just do triathlons when they feel the inclination, do marathons at the drop of a hat, drive around the country in vans on 17 hour treks and take it all in stride. My cousin Kristin was one of the first women to go to the Naval Academy, learned to fly a helicopter, and even now, when she learns to scuba dive, does not just learn to go down and look at coral--she gets wreck certified!!!

Then I had other cousins I never saw when I was growing up. They are the Santa Cruz cousins. Older, the children of my father's half-brother Michael, we never knew them when we were growing up. I didn't meet most of them until I was 30. They are another variation on the extreme sports DNA. The cousins all surf. All the time. One of their children did tow-in surfing in Hawaii, until he got bored. He's over it now.

Those cousins swam Alcatraz so fast we never even saw them. They don't even think of themselves as competitive swimmers. They are just fast and strong and used to cold water--like seals.

We all did it. My cousins Ian MacGregor and Mike Wells were across the Bay in no time. My brother flew in, fast and in skin. My cousin finished with me. My father swam with a wetsuit, didn't get hypothermia, and his hands and ankles were only bright red for a few hours after the race. My cousin Kristin swam with her parents and carried a camera around her waist to shoot pictures in the water during the swim. And my aunt and uncle swam together the whole way, walking out of the water together, holding hands as they crossed the finish line. How romantic! In an extreme way!

That night we gathered for dinner in Santa Cruz and ate lasagna. It was all of us who swam, and everyone else, too. Twenty two MacGregors under one roof. I wondered what it was like for my sons to see the genetic strands unfurling in that room. They saw every variation of MacGregor face and nose and chin. They saw red hair and freckles and a lot of tall people. They saw that the Celtic blood lives on, with people singing and playing instruments in every direction.

But most of all they saw crazy extreme sports people, whose idea of a good time is to get together and escape from Alcatraz.

I am jealous. I would have loved to have met so much family.

But I love watching the effect.

Already Theo, 7, has a goal.

"I will swim from Alcatraz when I am 11," he said. "In a wetsuit."