THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 3, 1994 TAG: 9409050217
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Daydream Believers
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
J. DAVID CICIO needed a dream.
That was two years ago. He was a 52-year-old retired Navy Commander struggling to stay fit, despite a bad knee.
Cicio, pronounced SIS-see-o, had one thing going for him: a last name easy to remember how to spell. He tells strangers it's C-I-C-I-O, as in ``Old MacDonald had a farm.'' They nod knowingly, and the next time they meet Cicio they say, ``Uh, it's Mr. MacDonald, right?''
But Cicio is a seeker - a broad-shouldered, thick-chested 6-footer who wants more in life than an easy-to-spell last name.
The bad knee, a service-related disability, kept MacDonald, uh, Cicio from distance walking, running and racquetball, three of his favorite activities.
At age 52, he was swimming in various pools, but with little purpose, and not far.
He couldn't stand the thought of letting his body dissolve into fat, of giving in to aging.
But he needed motivation to drive to a pool and swim the laps, each exactly like the one before, with neither a view nor interesting sounds to break the excruciating monotony of the blue guide stripe on the pool's bottom.
As Cicio put it: ``I live by myself, a solitary person with a solitary pursuit. I could stop swimming with no consequences.''
Clearly, he needed motivation.
The dream came to him, as though in a dream.
He would swim from his house to the Pacific Ocean.
Not literally, of course.
Over a few years, he would swim a distance equal to the distance to the Pacific Coast - and do it in a pool.
His dream is to figuratively arrive in San Diego on New Year's Eve 1999, just before the new century begins, and to have a celebration with friends.
He chose San Diego because it's the closest West Coast city to Chesapeake and because the line on the map looks slightly downhill from here to there.
It's easier to swim downhill, he quipped.
The distance to San Diego is about 2,300 miles as a crow flies. You might say he is swimming to San Diego as the crow flies.
``The commander is a man on a mission,'' said Jimi Phillips, a lifeguard at Bally's Holiday Health and Fitness Center near Greenbrier Mall.
Every day but Sunday, Cicio enters the Bally's pool shortly before noon and begins swimming freestyle. He'll swim 40 down-and-back laps, each lap 50 meters long, 1 1/4 miles a day.
Each stroke propels him just over a meter, and on a recent weekday, almost every lap took 61 seconds. Thus he swims his daily 1 1/4 miles in a tad more than 40 minutes, without pausing.
He wears neither flippers nor cap. He uses a snorkel so he can power down the pool without having to turn his head to the side to breathe.
His line is absolutely straight. Most of his power comes from his arms, because the bad knee restricts the power in his kick.
At the end of the 40th lap, he strikes up a conversation and is not in the least winded.
His hero is Paul Spangler, a retired Navy Captain from California who ran the New York Marathon at age 94 and died this past spring at age 95 - of a heart attack while running. Spangler's obit said, ``He lived long and died short.''
For Cicio's 54th birthday this past April, he swam 2 miles in 70 minutes.
Occasionally a friend will call to see where he is on his dream trip. A friend from Kansas City, Mo., called to complain that he never saw Cicio swim past.
Cicio is counting all the miles he's logged since he started swimming in 1985, after doctors told him his right knee was no good.
He said a doctor told him, ``Get yourself a remote control. What do you want to be, a youngster and still run around?'' Cicio remembers answering, ``Yes.''
In his early days of swimming, before he decided to swim to San Diego, he logged far fewer miles: 124 from 1985-'87, 58 in 1988, 66 in 1989, 86 in 1990, 125 in 1991, 146 in 1992, 173 in 1993 and more than 160 miles already this year. He increased his swimming to six days a week late in May, and he figures to swim about 250 miles in 1994 and more than 300 in subsequent years.
Right now he's near Joplin, Mo., at about 945 miles.
Now that he's turned himself into a serious swimming machine, he realizes he would reach San Diego before his target date.
No problem. His path takes him across the Grand Canyon, and he plans to take a sightseeing swim up and down it. MEMO: This is another in an occasional series about Hampton Roads residents
who act on their dreams. If you know someone who might make a good
subject for a future article, please write Patrick K. Lackey, 150 W.
Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510 or call him at 446-2251.
ILLUSTRATION: Color staff digital illustration by Martin Smith-Rodden
J. David Cicio is swimming 2,3000 miles in a pool - as far as from
his Chesapeake home to the Pacific Coast.
B/W photo
J. David Cicio swims 40 down-and-back laps a day at the Bally's
pool. Each lap is 50 meters long.
by CNB