Goin' Skin

So when I got to San Francisco, when I stuck my little pinkie toe in the water, it was cold.

About 60 degrees cold. Or less.

But my brother and I had already swum in 60 degree water. In Santa Monica.

And my brother is hard-core.

So the next morning, when we drove down to the South End Rowing Club, for the actual Alcatraz swim, he said, "You want to swim without wetsuits?"

The seed was planted, the dare was dared.

Then my cousin Michael said he remembered a certain journalist who had written a story last year about her Alcatraz swim, swearing that if she did it again she was going "skin."

But you see, I never expected to DO Alcatraz again.

My cousin Kristin needed a wetsuit, because she is sleek and fast and she was going to swim with her parents, and if she swam their speed she would chill. (She is an amazing swimmer who inspiired me to swim when I was little, and went to the Olympic Trials in butterfly. I wanted to be her when I was little. I would part my hair like her and beg her mother to convince my mother to let me be on a swim team, the Sub Base Barracudas. It worked.)

That felt like a sign. So I offered my wetsuit, which was really her own mother's Ironman wetsuit. In the end she wore a different wet suit, but by then I had sworn off the wetsuit and Michael and Ian and I had made a pact: We were going skin.

It was insane. And colder than 60 degrees. More like 58. Which, when you are that cold, and in the water for 41 minutes, makes a difference.

It was so cold that when I got out of the water my tongue was numb on the right hand side, from breathing on the left, and my tongue hitting the water. I am not kidding!!!

I got another notch on my stick, tho, even if it wasn't as fun as doing it with a wetsuit.

So I guess I do feel pretty cool.

Even if all I can really remember about the race is that it was really, really cold. And I just wanted it to end.

Here I am.

Notice everyone else in wetsuits.

I am the crazy one.

(My wetsuit-less little brother finished before me, in a whopping 38 minutes, and my wetsuitless cousin came in right beside me, not pictured here.)