Coney Island Polar Bears Snow Swim!

 

Snow Swim: Brooklyn Offers Winter Magic 2.7.21 from Al Leibman on Vimeo.

I haven't been able to get out to play in the snow we've finally been having this winter, but I've been vicariously enjoying friends' photos and videos. Here's a lovely video from one of the Coney Island Polar bears - enjoy!

The Coney Island Polar Bears are a remarkable crew. A lot of people just think of the big New Year's Day plunge when they see "Polar Bears" but that's actually an event that the Bears sponsor and oversee for the NYC community. It's always a fundraiser for some worthwhile group, and the Bears put in a LOT of work to make sure it's fun and safe for everyone. 

The club swims every weekend all winter, plus pretty much any time it snows.

This winter has been a true test of polar bear fortitude - in normal years the Coney Island Aquarium has made their Education Hall available to the Bears for their regular weekend swims, so there's a warm place to gather before and after the swims. That's not happening this year, but the Bears swim on!

Perfect Weekend Part 3 - Swimming!

Part 3 of the perfect weekend (now 2 weeks ago) was finally getting in a swim at Brighton Beach! I'd been craving a swim all July and probably going back into June, finally got my act together and went on the 19th. 

Subway was somewhat worrisome; most of my subway ventures have been to midtown for doctors' appointments, and on those trips, the subways weren't crowded and almost everybody was wearing masks. The Q to the beach had a lot more riders and I think the festive air of being beach-bound on a hot day seemed to make people a little loosey-goosey about masks - people still had 'em but there were a lot of under-the-nose masks, chin masks, or just held in the hand masks. I was unfortunately just wearing one of the surgical masks I wear for day to day errands - I actually have a couple of N95's, one of which a friend who's a nurse gave me specifically for doctor visits. I have no idea why I didn't think to wear that on the subway but when I posted about this on FB, another friend who's a nurse (thanks Laura!) suggested getting an N95 to make beachgoing a little safer for myself. My response was something along the lines of "Oh, derp. I have one." So that'll help.  

Would also probably help if I went earlier - I'd been on the fence between a swim and a lazy day at home, didn't decide until I think 2:00 or so, and then of course it took me longer than I thought to get my gear together. 

The beach threw me for a bit of a loop, too - the groups I've been paddling with at Sebago, which have tended to max out at maybe 15, and usually less, have been the biggest crowds I've been in since March. Now, if you know Coney Island and Brighton Beach at all, and you look at these photos,  you'll see that this is a very thin crowd compared to normal years - but after all that self-isolation this just felt like THRONGS. I was a little bit freaked out and thinking of maybe going home when one of the CIBBOWS  crew happened by and talked me down (ok, it wasn't that hard, but he saw me and said hello at a really good time to get me back into "gotta swim" mindset). 

So I joined the CIBBOWS group and went for a fun short swim. It was breezy, and a little bit bouncy, and the current was running pretty hard towards Jamaica Bay, so it was a little bit like swimming on a treadmill, but I had dinner plans involving some greenmarket goodness I'd picked up in the morning, and wanted to be home by a certain time to get going on that, so knowing that I would be swept back to my starting point at Grimaldo's Chair tout de suite when I turned around was actually helpful. 

And it just felt great to be back in the ocean for even a short swim, as you'll be able to see from my three releasing-my-inner-mermaid selfies! 

In fact so good that I did pretty much an exact repeat, right down to what the current was doing, yesterday. Conditions yesterday were much quieter, I did more crawl and less breast stroke (my fallback stroke when I'm feeling a little challenged) and even some backstroke, enjoying looking up at beautiful fishscale clouds in the blue sky. Sorry, no pix from yesterday, I'd once again taken some time to decide to go, and once again had some cooking plans, so I left the camera home so I would swim instead of float around taking pictures. It was a short swim again but going against the current made it a good workout. I renewed my CIBBOWS membership yesterday too as swimming feels great.

And there was a paddle this weekend too - only thing missing from perfection this time was the peaches, the offerings at the greenmarket really just didn't look ready. But I'm trying plums instead! 

That's it for the verbiage - click any photo for a slideshow view.

Unintentional Neil Simon Tribute Weekend

Saturday - Yonkers

Sunday - Brighton Beach

Actually made for a wonderful weekend. I was in Yonkers yesterday for the 3rd leg of the annual set of races for the Joe Glickman Cup (of which the longest is also the Mayor's Cup) - the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club are great hosts and ran a great day of racing and paddling. It's always so nice to see old friends at the YPRC, and this year I was very happy with how I did in the races, too, taking 3rd place in the 400 and 800 meter -- and this time not because there were 3 of us in the race and all I had to do was find the finish line - that's happened more than once.

I have to say that I am getting quite a collection of 3rd place medals. OK, I did have to throw in my 1st from Empire Kayak's old May Day on the Bay race That was a fun one.

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The Neil Simon connection just hit me as I was on the train to Brighton Beach to go swimming today. We had another beautiful day and I thought about going for a paddle, but the end is in sight for my 2019 outdoor swimming season as the water is cooling down fast. I once again got there early enough to swim as long as I wanted to, and that turned out to be 1.2 miles.

More pix from Yonkers coming soon! 

End of August swim at Coney Island

Labor Day weekend came in with some beautiful weather, and I decided to take advantage of it with another swim at Coney Island. I set out with the idea that I would swim a mile; end up swimming a one and a third as I'd gotten there early enough that I could just keep swimming as long as I felt like it, and I kept deciding to go one more jetty. Found these cormorants who were posing so nicely with the Parachute Jump as I made my turn to head back to my starting point at Grimaldo's Chair, where the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers gather through the swimming season.

I rewarded myself with a couple of corn dogs and a lemonade at Paul's Daughter, then stopped to grab a picture of the modern Steeplechase rollercoaster. Sometime I want to go back with my Lumix and see if I can get one where you can make out the horses better, but I just loved the swishy clouds today and had to at least try.

My final stop as I meandered to the train was at the Coney Island History Project booth. They have a really interesting exhibit there right now, Salvation by the Sea: Coney Island's 19th Century Fresh Air Cure and Immigrant Aid Societies, talking about places that were set up for the poor to be able to come spend some time by the sea. I've read a good bit of Coney Island history but this was new to me, so I'm glad I dropped in. Also the cyclops is weirdly adorable, isn't he?

Just a few more pictures after this - click on any of them for a slideshow view Don't forget to see the cormorants in full screen - it was a little tricky to get while treading water, and with the bright sun making it hard to see the screen, but I took a bunch and hoped for the best. I was pretty happy with how it came out!

Summers Need Swimming

Grimaldo's Chair, Brighton Beach, NY

I had such a good time helping out with the Grimaldo's Mile event earlier back in July, and that reminded me that I'd meant to renew my membership in the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers. 

Took me a while to actually do that, but I finally did on Sunday afternoon, then headed for the beach, where I was greeted with a cheerful shout of "Here's our newest member". They'd been a little surprised to see somebody until they saw it was just me finally getting around to renewing - I get so busy with the paddling in the summertime nobody's surprised that it takes me a while to remember that summers need swimming, too. 

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I'd been puttering around at home and ended up getting out there pretty late. There were thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon, but I got there in time to squeeze in a good half-mile swim. Felt great. Here is me heading home in a very good mood. More beach hair, still don't care! 

And also in the "better late than never" category, I finally signed up for after-work lap swimming this week. In summers past, I've always done evening swimming at the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center on Carmine Street; it's a few minutes closer to work, and the staff there was really nice, and the pool area features this wonderful Keith Haring mural with merfolk and sea monsters and dolphins, oh my - but it's a small pool, and the laps are laid out width-wise to allow more swimmers to fit, so a lap is really, really short. I found out about the Hamilton Fish pool through another Tony Dapolito swimmer on FB - she's somewhere where it's considerably easier for her to get to the Carmine Street center, but I think I mentioned I was coming from near Broadway and she mentioned that the Olympic-sizedat the Hamilton Fish Park Pool might be something I should check out. I did, on Wednesday night, and had a great 3/4 mile swim under enormous puffy peach sunset clouds. Fine first visit, and there's time for a couple more good swims before the outdoor city pools shut down for the season.

Sorry no photos of the sunset clouds, they were gorgeous but I didn't have a camera, but here are a few more photos from the beach, plus fog coming in at the Brighton Beach subway station and storm clouds at Newkirk Plaza. Click the first photo for a slideshow view. Ah, summer. 

Kayak Support for the 15th Annual Grimaldo's Mile

From what I've seen, the Mayor's Cup in Hoboken on Saturday went great. Meanwhile, I was helping out with the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers'  (CIBBOWS) 15th annual Grimaldo's Mile swim race.

Grimaldo's Mile is named after a lifeguard who was really instrumental in turning Coney Island and Brighton Beach into the popular open water training ground it's become for NYC area aquatic athletes. It's funny - if somebody just stumbled across this blog today and just poked around in the last couple of years, they would think that recreational water access is just a normal thing here in NYC. That's getting to be the case now, and certainly was the case historically, but there was a rather large hiatus when the city's waterways got to be too polluted to play in.

The passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 (thank you Pete Seeger & friends!) mostly stopped the river from being used as a legal dumping ground for industry, and the local waterways began a long, slow recovery, setting the stage for a renewed interest in recreational use.

That wasn't as much of a no-brainer as you might think, though. Perceptions of the water quality stayed bad for a long time -- when I started paddling in the late 90's, people's reactions when I told them about my new hobby generally involved cracks about how I must glow in the dark; I get a lot less of that and a lot more "That must be fun!" these days, which is really neat. Also, the impression I have is that NYC had lost the recreational traditions that naturally grow up in port cities, and with no recent history, and deep concerns about liability, the higher-up powers that be weren't entirely sure that opening up access was a really good idea.

It took people who were actually there on the waterfront and in a position to vouch for the idea to make it happen. There were a number of people and organizations to whom I would give credit for opening the waterways to the level of paddling and rowing we have here today, and I owe a lot to all of them.

Lifeguard Grimaldo Medrano was the guy who did that for the open-water swimmers. Before he took up their case, Coney Island and Brighton Beach lifeguards didn't let anyone swim outside of the jetties, which are spaced maybe 500 to 600 feet apart.

I started swimming at Coney Island far too late to meet him, but the love that my swimmer friends have for him is profound, and every Grimaldo's Mile is a tribute to him.

You can read more about him in a moving NY Times article I always like to share when I talk about this race - it tells his story way better than I could. Click here to read.

It was a beautiful morning at Coney Island and I had a wonderful time helping out. I always enjoy doing kayak support for CIBBOWS races - and this year was extra fun because my friend Steve the Paddling Chef has been doing some lap swimming and decided to give open water a try. Grimaldo's is a fantastic intro - my first open-water swim was in the Hudson, where just going to the beach isn't an option, and it was a little intimidating. I'd never swum any serious distance in water where I couldn't see, and the green murk of the Hudson was enough to freak me out a bit. Fortunately one of my paddling friends was doing swim support that day and came paddling up just as I stopped to tread water and think for a minute. Couldn't whuss out in front of Harry!

Steve did report a similar reaction (his open water experience had also been somewhere with tropical fish and coral), but he carried on just fine. The last few shots here are him finishing the race - I took about a million of him but I think these ones show the sequence pretty well, right down to the high-five with one of the Swim Angels (experienced swimmers who are there to encourage less experienced swimmers as necessary) as he left the water. There were a number of other Sebago Canoe Club folks paddling and we were all so excited to see him pull this off!

And then afterwards I joined another friend who'd volunteered in a roughly 3/4 mile swim. The water temperature was perfect for swimming. All in all, just a great day.

Photos from the day - click on any photo for a better view. 

Early morning in the Coney Island Aquarium's Education Hall

Registration underway

Buoys heading out

Marker buoys awaiting pickup

Education Hall filling up!

Paddling to the start - such a calm morning!

Starting Line - at Grimaldo's Chair in Brighton Beach

Swim Angels are ready!

Into the water

And they're off!

Heading for Stilwell

Paddlers gather to cheer on Steve the Paddling Chef

who is now also Steve the Swimming Chef! 

Approaching the finish

High-five with Eric the Swim Angel before the run to the finish.

My post-swim look. Beach hair, don't care!

Friday Early Morning Sunrise Swim 8/31/2018

"In the Shadow of the Parachute Jump, Coney Island"

Only there was no shadow, and there was no sunrise for this final August edition of the Coney Island Friday Early Morning Sunrise Swims ("FEMSS"). I did get out there and I did get in the water (which was lovely) but it wasn't quite the idyllic lazy Coney Island morning I'd been daydreaming about while getting hot and sticky cleaning the place. The daydream involved a sunrise swim, breakfast at a diner, a little more swimming after the lifeguards were on duty, maybe a nap on the beach, and then a visit to the new shark exhibit at the Coney Island Aquarium.

 I've spent a fair amount of time at Coney Island this summer - enough that I finally joined the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers instead of just taking advantage of their hospitality (as I have done in summers when I only swam once or twice, particular when I was able to do kayak support for a swim or two - this summer I didn't think I would be able to). We've had a very rainy summer but the weekends I did go, the beach was in the most welcoming mood - even the day I attended one of the open-water clinics that is one of the club's offerings for members, when the forecast was I think calling for some rain in the afternoon, it started out a little cloudy and the wind had kicked up a pretty good chop, but then it cleared up. And other days, the beach was positively operating in the spirit of one of those beguiling hosts or hostesses, where you think you're just going to drop by somebody's party for a few minutes to say hi and hours later you still just can't pull yourself away because it's all so lovely. Bright sun sparkling on the cool water, the camaraderie of the CIBBOWS group gathered at Grimaldo's Chair - it's hard to leave sometimes! 

Not so much today. The heat wave has broken, but it's still very, very humid, with the salty air at the beach feeling downright sticky. The clouds were thick and looming, and the wind was enough to lift a mist of sand into the air. The water did feel lovely - it's warmed up since the end of July - and I wouldn't have minded staying out longer, but the usual FEMSS is a short dip ending at 6:30 and when the rest of the small group who'd braved the weather got out, I joined them and headed back home - there was just a little too much sand flying around to make sticking around appealing (and in fact I was crunching sand between my teeth on the subway ride home). Had my nap at home, will have to go back for the sharks another time.

All photos after this - click for a slide show.