Got Doug to shoot this because I want to see if I can improve my form.
Any suggestions from swimmers?
Getting into a beautiful body of water like this makes me want to reverse the aquatic-to-terrestrial transition from water to land of 300 million years ago and go back to living in the water.
Photograph by Christopher Michel
The only continent with no history of human habitation, the vast ice fields of Antarctica have formed a blank slate onto which humanity can project itself: all of itself, from the imperial superego to the conspiratorial id.
At the turn of the 20th century, Antarctica was still largely unknown. As Apsley Cherry-Garrard observed in the introduction to his classic book The Worst Journey in the World (1922): “Even now the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying far beyond the seas which encircled man’s habitation.” But despite the hundred-plus years of exploration, habitation, and documentation since then, Antarctica remains utterly Other. It’s far away, it’s unlike anywhere else on the planet, and most people will never go there. They’ll only see pictures, and watch classic films like The Thing (01982) which project an image of peril and isolation onto the public consciousness.…
Story of our flood adventure in yesterday’s Santa Cruz Sentinel:
My Santa Cruz roommate George Kovalenko and I went down the San Lorenzo River on our surfboards in 1955, during the biggest flood in Santa Cruz history.
The water was up over the parking meters on the main street. It was a gray, drizzly day, and George and I put in by Paradise Park and got swept down the river, along with cars, uprooted trees, sections of houses, and refrigerators. Every bridge across the river had collapsed; it was pretty scary.
Morons!
When we got out down by the ferris wheel at the river mouth, the cops said they were going to arrest us, but they got diverted by other emergencies and we slipped away.
These 67-year old photos were almost illegible. Rick Gordon performed some Photoshop magic to get this much out of them.
Note: I was interviewed by Jessica York, a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel yesterday for an article on our adventure.
Lit with ultraviolet flashlight.
Photo by Tjarn Takuji Sato, sent us by Elise Cannon.
Jeremy Dierks filleting an albacore. Very different from filleting other fish, tricks to it as shown here.
I marinated in olive oil, soy sauce, a little vinegar, garlic, and ginger for 30 minutes, then cooked at high heat briefly on Weber grill.
I swear it was about the best food I’ve ever had.
Note: A lot of fishermen stay at sea for 2-3 weeks and quick-freeze fish until they get into port. Fresh fish is entirely different.
Rod, Steamer Lane. Rod was a powerful swimmer, the Laird Hamilton of ’50s Santa Cruz. Fearless.
Rod going left at the Lane, which very few people did in those days. We surfed without wet suits, summer and winter!
Rod doing a hasty reattachment of skeg. That’s Pat Curren at left, me on right. On the cliffs facing Santa Cruz pier.
Jack O’Neill at Steamer Lane in the ’50s
One of the early wetsuits
Jack had this kite flyer at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, before he moved to Santa Cruz. This thing would get up to high speeds. I was his insurance broker when he opened The Surf Shop on The Great Highway in SFO in the early ’50s. Some time I’ll tell you the story of how Jack made his first wetsuit. Spoiler alert: he did not invent the wetsuit.
At the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park in San Francisco:
