Water

Swimming at sunrise
The water tower
It sank...
El Gordo
The Big Wave Method of exercising your heart
Have a catamaran with your dinner
Sailing down the Chicago River -- solving a twenty-year mystery

Swimming

In the summer of 1998 I went down to an Evanston beach on Lake Michigan at five A.M. and swam continuously, in three-foot (?) waves, until nine A.M., covering what I believe to be about five miles. I have heard of a man who used to swim regularly between Evanston and downtown Chicago. I wonder if I will ever make it that far?

The Water Tower
Recently, I have been over quite a bit to a friend's condominium. He lives in a converted pencil factory. This was a big pencil factory, with many many condominiums per floor and five high-ceilinged floors.
On the top of the building there is a sun deck. Rising up from the roof near the sun deck are steel stilts supporting a big old water tower that was used to maintain water pressure in the factory. Part way up one of the stilts is a metal ladder that runs up the stilt, and then all the way up the side of, and over the top of, this big tower.
I looked that tower over from the first time I saw it, and I'm thinking, "I am not that old yet."
Testing the "waters" once [:)] I discovered that as soon as you get on the stilt, away from the protection of the roof, the wind really starts whistling past. You are so high up that the gusts are thoroughly unimpeded. The view down is a long way down, and the view up is straight vertical and what at least appears to be a long way up.
It took me a while, but I finally made it up to the top of that water tower. I was spurred into action because my friend said that the tower had been declared structurally unsound, and they are going to tear it down.
I went up in the early morning on a clear winter day. When I got to the top I discovered that there were no conveniences like railings -- just a gently sloping circular metal roof. But this was fine. I could, of course, see in all directions, and the view included such sights as Lake Michigan, Wrigley Field, the John Hancock Building, and the Sears Tower, to name just a few.
I made it back down too, although there was that one sticky moment of getting over the edge onto the ladder.
While it does not really qualify as adventure, it was still satisfying.

Boats
It sank. I built my first (wooden) sailboat when I was ten, and sailed it in Berkeley's Aquatic Park. It was made from discarded plywood I had hauled home on a wagon from "licorice lumberyard" -- our name for an empty lot full of wild anise where construction workers had dumped the plywood forms used for constructing sidewalks in the area. It sailed, but then sank.
El Gordo. When I was eleven I sailed another creation, "El Gordo," out and around both the Berkeley Yacht Harbor and San Francisco bay. For this I actually purchased some plywood -- but everything else, including the hand-sewn sails, was scrounged. Most of the nails were straightened from bent rejects that workmen had discarded, or were recovered from old boards thrown in the trash. Stripped screw-heads had to be re-cut with a hack-saw. Even though most of the wood was old, and re-used, El Gordo had a certain raw elegance, if you can apprecite that sort of thing.
How to exercise your heart. When I was twelve I sailed my El Toro -- purchased and restored -- on many trips out into San Francisco Bay. In the summertime the Bay has respectable winds -- enough for many sailors to shy away from. An El Toro is an open eight-foot sailboat, designed primarily for calm lake waters. Let me say that there were VERY few willing to sail an El Toro out in the Bay on windy summer days. A slight miscalculation, and the boat would capsize in an instant. This did not deter me however, since I was young, and stupid.
On one memorable windy day I was a long way out into the Bay when my tiller broke. (The tiller is the stick that attaches to the rudder, which in turn steers the boat.) The waves are steep in the bay, and about five feet from trough to crest on this day. Since the open El Torro has sides about a foot high, and at rest the boat only clears eight inches or so when perfectly level -- well you get the idea.
I immediately let go of the sheet (the rope holding the sail), leaned over the back of the boat, and grabbed the rudder. Forcing the boat to run toward shore required that I exert a decent amount of force on the rudder, and this meant that I had to KEEP leaning over the back of the boat to get enough leverage. Because the boat is small, leaning over the rear transom means that the bow comes well out of the water. When rocked by five-foot waves the boat becomes almost vertical with each crest. When on the rise, and still in the almost-vertical position, the view from the back of the boat is of just one wall of water. My face was about a foot from this wall. Also, with each wave, besides the twin worries of capsizing front-to-back (which is pretty unusual unless you are on a surfboard), and of my falling out, water would flow freely over the transom into the boat.
So -- in this manner I would travel for a little while, attempting to bail water out furiously with one hand whenever I could free up one hand or the other (using an open-bottomed gallon Clorox container brought along for that purpose). Every so often I would have to (skillfully!) bring the boat around into the wind -- facing the oncoming waves -- so I could let go of the rudder and bail water. Ordinarily this is not a problem, but with no tiller there is a big risk of capsizing broadside if the timing were not just right.
I did make it back safe and sound. Using C-clamps on the tiller I was able to effect a repair, and then go out sailing again. Some time after an hour or so my heart slowed down. But I would not want to miss a day on the bay!
Things of beauty. I did make quite a few other boats in my youth. All wooden, all sailboats. Some of these were quite beautiful, and it is possible that one or two are still floating around on various bodies of water.
I'll have a catamaran with my dinner. My brother Will, and our neighbor Norman, had boats too, and raced them. Will's favorites were the quite fast 505s and Flying Dutchmen, which required that one crew member hang completely over the side on a trapeze to keep the boat from capsizing. One early creation in the neighborhood was a catamaran, "El Gato." This came as a set of plans, but was ultimately completely redisigned to use vast amounts of sail, and which would go quite fast indeed.
About this time eating down at the harbor became the Yuppie thing to do, and restaurants were built on stilts out into the bay. There was some resentment over this (perhaps we felt there was not enough water to go around?? -- hmmm). A favorite ploy of Will and Norman was to sail straight at the restaurant, and its glass walls, pretending to have an absorbing argument, or to watch the sunset, completely unaware of the proximity of the looming restauarant. At the last minute they would casually glance around, throw their arms up in the air, shout madly, fling the tiller hard over, and go flashing fully past the length of the restaurant, and the startled guests. Live entertainment!
The three-hour boat