THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701160433
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Dave Addis
LENGTH: 61 lines
The other morning, not long after dawn, just after the cold weather came back, 28 guys went swimming by my kitchen window.
You see strange and wondrous things on the Chesapeake Bay just about every day, if you look hard enough. But this was extraordinary.
The swimmers were in black wetsuits, with hoods, gloves and fins, and were heading west, about half a mile past the Duck Inn in Virginia Beach.
They looked like dolphins at first, but it's so cold now that the dolphins, the tourists, and about anything else that contains warm blood has long since fled for the Florida Keys.
They probably were a SEAL unit out of Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. They looked like they'd been in the water awhile, perhaps on a training swim from Lynnhaven Inlet and back to the base. (A SEAL spokesman wouldn't say. They tend to say very little.)
The leaders of the pack, two of them, were were still strong, stroking hard. Steam hid their faces. The guys in the middle were pacing themselves. The few stragglers really caught my heart.
One, trailing the group, would do a few strokes on his face, then roll onto his back, struggling along with a fin-kick. He would lift his hands out of the water and hold them above his face and stare, as if to wonder why they no longer worked, why they were just blocks of ice that ignored his commands.
I've been in water that cold in a wetsuit. It doesn't help for long. You're soon begging God for the simple favor of kicking your kidneys into gear just so you can savor a moment of warmth.
This sight came to mind over the past couple of days while reading stories of one dilettante adventurer after another who had to be rescued by an under-paid cadre of military types who really have better things to do than rescue millionaires in distress.
There were those French and British yachtsmen who were solo-sailing too close to the ice floes of the Antarctic. And the rugged individualist who sailed a suspicious tub of a tall ship out of Norfolk in the dead of winter, into the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and learned why that nickname is no joke.
Now come three attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. The third is still aloft as this is written, but the other two crews had to be rescued, respectively, from the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea. Their saviors were quickly shoved aside as the cameras trained on each adventurer as he vowed to try, try again.
Here's a modest proposal: The next time a bored socialite tries one of these stunts he should be forced to post a bond - $1 million sounds fair - in his nation of origin. It could be used to pay the direct cost of rescuing him, if necessary.
Any cash left over should be divvied up among the crew of courageous professionals who put their own hides on the line to pull the intrepid adventurer out of the drink.
It would give the soldiers, sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who do this sort of work a little more to look forward to than a couple hundred bucks in their paycheck and discount groceries down at the commissary.
And maybe it would make me feel less guilty about my warm kitchen, my hot cup of coffee and my cushy civilian job the next time I see one of those SEALS go struggling by my window in the brutal winter surf of the Chesapeake Bay. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. You can reach him at
446-2726, or via e-mail at addis@worldnet.att.net.