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Give a good man hope!!

Posted in Swimming in Penn Cove, Whidbey's Best, tagged Oso, Penn Cove Shellfish, Seth Jefferds, Washington mud slide, Whidbey cares on March 25, 2014| 1 Comment »

Ian and Rawle Jefferds have given much to our community. Now we need to reach out and help their family.

I hate mussels, but I have a great respect for Ian and Rawle Jefferds.

The brothers and co-owners of Penn Cove Shellfish loom large over our town, good men who have done much to make Coupeville a better place.

Every day, when I go down the Hill O’ Death in front of my house and plunge into Penn Cove, I am face-to-face with the mussel rafts they own and operate.

Their processing buildings sit up the hill from my house, and they could hit me with a well-thrown mussel, if they so chose.

Over the years, I have known both men and their families through my jobs — mainly from the many years at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso — and I have stood next to Ian as he watched a derelict boat burn and threaten the very future of all that he and his family built.

While I will always bitch and moan about mussels and believe them to be the slugs of the sea, forever scarred by my time on the water working for a different, far less competent mussel harvesting company in my younger days, I embrace the Jefferds.

They are good people, they are our people.

And now they need our help.

Seth Jefferds, the middle brother in the family, is a volunteer firefighter in Oso, Washington. His life, like many others, has been devastated in the recent mudslide that decimated the area.

He has lost his wife and his home. His four-month-old granddaughter is among the missing.

Our help will not give him back his family, but it will give a good man hope.

It will show him we do not walk away and leave others to their pain. We help them, in any way we can, at any time we can, because we can. Because we should. Because there is no other way to live our lives.

We are Coupeville. If you are connected to one of us, you are connected to all of us.

Please visit:

http://www.gofundme.com/7s58tc

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Winter cold water challenge? That’s cute…

Posted in Swimming in Penn Cove, tagged Emilee Crichton, ice sharks, Swimming in Penn Cove, Winter Challenge on March 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Shark! Ice shark on the horizon!!

Cause I’m stupid.

Damn you, Facebook. I wasn’t ready to go back in the water yet.

It hasn’t been a full four months since the last time Penn Cove assaulted my nether regions with ice water up the trunks.

Nov. 22, 2013 — Day 222 — I came out of the water and walked away for the year, having beaten my two previous years, when I totaled 167 and 133 days in the less-than-balmy waters of the aquatic temptress that sits in front of my house.

And here I am, March 14 (way too early in the year), going back down the Hill O’ Death — which held up remarkably well during the winter, I must say — and plunging back in.

All cause I got called out by my neighbor, one Ms. Emilee Crichton, Coupeville High School cheer captain and all-around pretty awesome person.

The “cold water challenge,” “winter challenge,” whatever you want to call it, is sweeping the nation (or, Coupeville, at least), as everyone nominates other people for the challenge, then run into the waters off of Whidbey and run back out, generally screaming like banshees.

It’s cute, the way people act like they’ve never felt cold water before.

When Ms. Crichton called my name out on camera, there was no avoiding it. Well, there was, but then I would have felt like a wuss.

Only thing is, if I go back in, I go back in. I stay in longer than the average I’m seeing (15 seconds) on the videos being posted and then I go back in for day two, and three, and four and so on.

So, I went back in, and you know what, it wasn’t that cold. Certainly nothing like it was in November.

So, yeah, it ain’t no big thing. Now, I nominate you all to go back in a second time…

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222 days … and we’re done here!!

Posted in Swimming in Penn Cove on November 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

“You da woman, Penn Cove. Nicely played, you icy vixen!!”

In the end, I guess I still have a brain.

Or else I’m just being a wimp. Yeah, probably the latter.

Either way, today (Nov. 22) was the 222nd and final day I will go into Penn Cove this year. It’s 55 days more than my 2011 record of 167 days and much deeper into the calendar than I went in either ’11 or ’12.

Both those years, the rain eventually made the Hill O’ Death in front of my house too dangerous to go down, and after minor slips, I chose not to tempt fate and the possibility of a big slip.

Especially on a hill where a big slip would send you into open space way, way above the rocky beach.

This year, though, the hill has held up fairly well. No big rains. No slips, minor or otherwise.

But something has drastically changed in the past two days, and, for the first time in three years, I actually hit a point where I have to be smart and walk away.

The water in Penn Cove is always cold — always, always, always, regardless of whether it’s a 90-degree August day or an early morning November nip-fest. It is what it is, and you convince yourself to overcome it.

But the past two days, with the drop in outside temperature, frost everywhere and water freezing in the bowl my landlord’s pack of outside-living wild alley cats drink from, Penn Cove went from unfriendly to brutal to seriously-dude-you’re-gonna-hurt-yourself.

Today, as I headed back on the second leg of my underwater lap, having made the turn at the big rock that sits like the ruler of the frozen tundra, I actually could feel my legs trying to shut down.

There is cold. There is mild pain. And then there is the sensation that your legs are giving up and preparing to desert you.

I’ve ridden chop that beat me like a rag doll. Faced screaming wind and had frost on the ground before. But I’ve never had the water in Penn Cove suck the life out of me like that until now.

I had it some in Day 221, but Day 222 upped the ante.

When I got out of the water — having completed my lap (I’m not a tourist and I’m not getting out early and walking back on the beach), resembling a giant, pink goosebump, I, for once in my life, chose the smarter path.

I don’t need to see what Day 223 would feel like.

Well played, Penn Cove. Well played. I’ll be back. Just not in 2013.

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Hypothermia or bust!!

Posted in Swimming in Penn Cove on November 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

So, if you leave wet shoes outside and it freezes, the shoes don’t stay soft and pliable? Who knew…

“Hmm … it appears to be a wee bit nippy out here.”

Well, that was … interesting.

Thursday morning, 10:15 AM, Penn Cove came for me. Hard.

Day 221 in the water started with a surprise. My “water shoes,” the hiking boots I wear to protect my toes from the rock and mussel-encrusted shoreline, were frozen.

Not just covered in frost. Frozen.

In between battles with Penn Cove, the shoes sit on my back deck. During the summer, they dry out. During the fall, not so much.

Today, with the windshield on my car still frozen over and frost on the ground, they were solid. As in hard to get on my feet and hard to tie the (also frozen) laces.

A smarter man would have called it quits at that point and gone home for the year.

I am not that smarter man.

So, into the water I went, after getting my usual weird stares from passing motorists as I waited to cross the road in front of my house and head down the Hill O’ Death.

You would think they had never seen a guy in a swimsuit before.

Was the water cold? It’s always cold.

But I generally don’t have frozen shoes, which means I generally don’t get 75% done with my underwater run only to have one shoe pop off my foot and head back to shore by itself. As I hop madly on one foot trying to catch it.

The guys on the mussel rafts could be seen in the background, nodding and mumbling.

“Yep. He finally lost that last piece of brain.”

But, the story ends well.

I got my shoe back. Didn’t cut my foot up. And my fingers only hurt really, really badly for several minutes afterward, even with a warm shower.

Tomorrow would be magical day 222. My brain says no.

But I just lost that last piece of my brain, so…

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