"The way you pestered that nice lady—I'll bet she'll be glad to see you gone!"
from May/June 1999

"Humid, isn’t it?"
from March/April 1995

"Uh Mom, that string you tied your hair back with is Jennifer's bathing suit."
from March/April 1994

"Bosworth, I’d like a word with you!"
from August 28, 1954

"Gangs, muggers, smog…Yes sir, it sure is great to be in the safety of the outdoors!"
from July/August 1998

"You know, this evening would be a lot more romantic if you'd quit screaming, ‘We're going to die! We're going to die!’"
from January/February 1995

"Relax, dear! Here comes your bathing suit!"
from November/December 1996

Cartoons: Summer Fun The Saturday Evening Post

The Swimmer

Diana Nyad was 28 years old in 1978 the first time she tried to swim from Cuba to Florida. She went 42 hours before conditions forced her to quit. The following year Nyad swam 102 miles from Bimini, The Bahamas, to Jupiter, Florida. She got out, toweled off, and determined never to get in the water again.

More than three decades later her record still stands. It’s the longest uninterrupted open-water swim without a shark cage—marathon swimming’s equivalent to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak—and Nyad did it without the benefit of GPS and other technology that’s now allowing swimmers to push way past the limits of earlier generations.

But as 2010 neared, Nyad, approaching 60, yearned again to do something extreme, something beyond her previous accomplishments. Against all odds she decided to complete that Cuba-to-Florida swim. “I wanted to be filled with a feeling of commitment to something,” she says. “It’s not the swimming, per se, it was the high of being immersed in something that extreme.”

She put herself through an arduous training regimen for two years and, in August of last year, she got back in the water.

By the rules of the swim she could not touch the boat or be touched by anyone on it. That meant not just swimming the 103-mile stretch of the Florida Straits but staying awake and pushing on for at least 60 hours through hard currents in shark-infested waters. With a support team alongside her, Nyad lasted 56 miles and almost 30 hours before an injury to her shoulder and an 11-hour asthma attack that wouldn’t abate finally defeated her.

That she’d try again seemed unlikely. Gathering a good team is expensive and logistically complicated, requiring money, boats, supplies, visas, and travel arrangements. Moreover, trying again would mean maintaining her fitness and positive mental outlook for another year—unless she tried again right away.

And that’s what Nyad did.

In September, barely six weeks after the earlier attempt, Nyad returned with her team to Havana’s Hemingway Marina and leaped back in. She began swimming, between 50 and 54 strokes per minute, propelling herself through water at about the pace of a good walker, hour by hour, as the sun fell into the Caribbean. Her shoulder was fine, and there was no asthma. She swam through the night, the darkness of the sky and the deep sea blending together. She swam all the next day and into the second night. The water was much calmer. For a while it seemed as if she would achieve her dream.

What she didn’t count on were the box jellyfish—umbrella-shaped organisms that give vicious and potentially lethal stings. Nyad suffered an attack only two hours offshore and a second sting at around hour 26. The pain was exquisite. Her face swelled. The doctor who dived in to help free her from the creature had to be injected with two shots of epinephrine.

And still Nyad went on—until doctors warned that a third attack would be likely to kill her. When she stopped she’d gone 42 hours and an estimated 43-69 nautical miles.

Nyad has said she will try again this summer. But whether anyone can do the swim given all the obstacles is a question. Possible or not, Nyad does not believe her age is a factor. “All athletes wish they had the head they have now then,” she says. “Physically I’m stronger now. I used to swim in anger, now I’m happy. I have a whole new attitude about my life and life in general. Sixty is the middle of middle age. I’m just getting started.”

The Trekker

Todd Carmichael

Todd Carmichael placed one foot methodically in front of the other, his shoulders in a harness that pulled a red wagon loaded with 50-gallon jerrycans of water.

It was September of 2010, and Carmichael was attempting to become the first person to walk alone across Death Valley. But he had barely started when he came to an impasse—a 45-plus-degree downhill slope. His only option was to off-load the wagon’s 450 pounds of supplies and carry each drum and then the wagon itself, one piece at a time. After 12 hours, he’d covered a mere 300 yards—of a 160-mile journey.

Ninety miles and ten days later, walking all night and sleeping by day to escape the 118-degree heat (in the shade), Carmichael had lacerations on his legs and puncture wounds on his feet where hard needles had speared his boots. Then, at 3:30 in the morning, Carmichael made a wrong turn and strayed miles off course. In the darkness there was no point of reference, no connection to the rest of the world. It was just him, the moon and Venus, and coyotes trailing behind. He looked up at the sky, drew a breath, and knew at that moment that he had to be the happiest man on earth. A short while later he would regain his position and continue onward one step at a time.

In his ordinary life in Philadelphia Carmichael is the T-shirt-and-dungarees CEO of La Colombe Torrefaction, a coffee supplier to high-end restaurants that exceeds $20 million a year in sales. In 2008 he and his wife, singer-songwriter Lauren Hart, adopted three girls from Ethiopia, one of several African countries where he sources beans and funds projects to improve access to clean water. Trekking, though, is how he responds to that call of the wild and steps off the grid.

A full life, he says, requires risk. “What happens if you fail? How do you mitigate the risk? I look around and see people who live in the safest places in the world, and they are preoccupied with anxieties and fears because they don’t know what risk is anymore.”

Carmichael, a former Washington State track champion, is part of a small, informal fraternity of elite trekkers who eschew such conquests as climbing Mt. Everest as “too Disney World.” He has hiked across portions of the Sahara, Namib, and Arabian deserts. In 2008 he became just the third person—and the first American—to solo to the South Pole, walking almost the whole way because his skis broke, and still doing it faster than those who had finished before him on skis.

At 49 Carmichael is practically geriatric for this community, but even the youngest, hardest-core members regard Death Valley as unconquerable. Because the mountains enclose the main riverbed, the dry air is trapped like in an oven. The valley itself is ripped apart by thousands of intimidating pans and washes—dry river beds—many of them 25 feet deep. The margin for error is extremely slim: Carmichael’s first attempt had failed because his wagon couldn’t stand up to the punishment. This time, he’d redesigned it, creating a gyrating, flexible axle that would turn and bend over the punishing terrain.Still, he hadn’t counted on the tires bursting every 20 minutes from the heat. All the pumping to refill them had left him with raw ulcers on his hands.

For 10 days Carmichael experienced oscillating joys and ordeals, cosmic harmony and physical pain. “People think it’s impossible,” he said before he’d departed. “That intrigues me. With enough focus, drive, and attention, it is possible. It’s just not easy.”

Indeed. By the 11th day, the constant pumping of his tires had finally become too taxing, and it had taken away precious hours that he could have spent resting. After pulling the wagon through seas of roasted sand, hour after hour, day after day, forward progress became impossible. The tires began to burst beyond repair. He had traveled about 90 of the 160 miles. He called his project manager, Patrick Libois. “That’s it,” he said. “It’s over, dude.”

He made his way to the Furnace Creek Ranch, a golf resort whose busloads of day-tripping German tourists could not have been farther removed from his own desert experience.
He’d come all this way, again, another year gone when he didn’t know how many he had left to do this. The hair on his normally shaved dome and face had grown in all white, and when he looked in the mirror he saw his grandfather.

But a few hours and a shave and a shower later, he was already gathering himself for another attempt.

“When you have to fold the tent, it’s not a fun experience,” he would say later. “The word that goes through your mind is ‘fail, fail, fail.’ But once you get some perspective you realize that you learned something important. In the end, it’s not about how many tries you needed to get something done. It’s about not quitting and keeping at it until you achieve the goal. So, no, I didn’t fail. Failure is if it broke me, if I said, ‘I’m done, I’m not going back.’” He paused. “I just didn’t make it—this time.”

“So you’re going back?” a reporter asked.

“Next year, baby! The third time will be a charm.”

Carmichael has plans to make another attempt on Death Valley this September.

The Golf ZenMaster

Ben Witter

Ben Witter does implausible things with golf balls. Amazing things. He strikes them far or makes them twist or bend. Sometimes it’s as if a ball he hits is a yo-yo attached on a very, very long string connected to his club. If you blink you miss it. Still, your impulse is to blink to be sure your eyes haven’t deceived you.

‘“A trick shot is only a trick shot if you call it in advance,” he says, and then explains the shot he intends to make to a gathering of about 150 people who have come to see him near his home in central Pennsylvania. He will hit it off a 3-foot-high tee under an arched footbridge, skim it off the face of some water in a lake beyond, and make it land about 250 yards away by an inflated yellow exercise ball in the middle of the fairway. And then, as promised, he hits precisely that shot.

Witter is a former world long-drive champion—he once hit a ball 409 yards, almost all of it carry—and can still mash it jaw-dropping distances. At 6’2” and 215 pounds he has
a physique that most men half his age would envy. For 20 years tour pros such as former LPGA star Jan Stephenson and fellow long-drive champ Carl Wolter have traveled long distances to learn at the knee of this golf Zen master.

If he has lost anything along the way, it’s not because he’s 47. It’s that every time he seems poised to move on, the cancer that he has fought through since he was 22 keeps reappearing. So the amazing things you see—Ben hitting balls while standing on exercise balls, bending the flight of shots, making golf balls fly like F-14s or turn like boomerangs, all while explaining the physics of ball flight and “swing planes” to slack-jawed audiences—is all the more staggering for what you can’t see—that he has one lung and a layer of thick scar tissue around his ribs that constricts his lateral movement or that he has no central vision in his right eye, depriving him of depth perception. Or that the day before, he was getting experimental radiation treatment.

Or that Ben’s lovely teenage daughter, Gabbie, has had to overcome a rare form of cancer. (For more about the Witter family’s struggle, go to takeaswing4benandgabbie.com.)

The thing is to keep going on: “If cancer has taught me one thing,” says Ben who after recent treatment is doing well, “it’s that everyone has a date of expiry, and no one knows what it is. Some of us know it’ll be sooner, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to live every day.”

The way he has stood up to adversity and never given up may be Witter’s most admirable trick of all.

Take It To The Limit The Saturday Evening Post

The Gossips—March 6, 1948

The Gossips by Norman Rockwell. March 6, 1948.

It seems Rockwell had a neighbor who started a disagreeable rumor about him. What can one do about a nasty gossip? Well, if you are a famous illustrator, you can paint a cover about it.

It started with just a couple of people, then it just grew, leaving Rockwell in need of more models. The result, said the editors, is that we see “almost the entire adult population of Arlington, Vermont.” As he worked on the project, the artist worried that his friends and neighbors might be offended, so he included his wife and himself. Mary Rockwell is second and third in the third row, spreading the rumor via rotary phone. In the gray felt hat in the bottom row is, of course, the artist himself (you can click on the image for a close-up). You’ll notice the lady at the end is the one at the beginning who started the rumor, and our friend Rockwell appears to be giving her a piece of his mind. Apparently, the neighbor who started the rumor in real life never spoke to Rockwell again. I have a feeling it was no great loss. The lesson here is: don’t anger someone whose Saturday Evening Post covers are viewed by millions.

No Swimming—June 4, 1921

No SwimmingNorman RockwellJune 4, 1921© SEPS.

These boys sure are hightailing it out of there! Even the dog is hauling tail (okay, sorry). Rockwell expert Robert Berridge wrote about this cover in a recent edition of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. “Franklin Lischke—the freckle-faced lad in the middle,” writes Berridge, was so taken with Rockwell’s work, he ended up studying art himself, becoming a successful commercial artist.

The question remained for decades: what were the boys running from? “Could it have been the pond owner,” Berridge asked, “an irritated bull, or a group of passing girls?” The model himself told Berridge. Answer at the end of this piece…

The Runaway—September 20, 1958

The RunawayNorman RockwellSeptember 20, 1958

“The Runaway” is one of everyone’s favorite Rockwell covers. A neighbor of Rockwell’s, Richard Clemens, just happened to be a Massachusetts State Trooper and gladly posed for the artist, along with young Eddie Lock. After posing for this now iconic cover in 1958, Richard and Eddie didn’t see each other again until 1971 when they happened to find themselves sitting next to each other in an evening class (in logic) at a community college.

Besides the touching contrast between the large man and the little boy, there is a myriad of details Rockwell meticulously included: The old-time radio, the pies in the case, the coffee starting to perk and just turning brown, for example. The artist’s “mania for detail” extends to the stools: they were “spring-loaded,” causing the police officer’s seat to sink lower than boy’s. Even the chrome on the stools reflects the front of the diner.

By the way, the answer to the question of the running boys: why were they desperately trying to flee? They weren’t fearing the land owner or trying to hide their bare bottoms from an unexpected visit by girls; they were fleeing a swarm of bees! Thank you, Robert Berridge, for answering that long-standing question!

Classic Covers: Rockwell Behind The Canvas The Saturday Evening Post

North Americans have a rich bounty of shipwrecks along the reefs and shoals of the continent. Here is a sampler of easily accessible dives.

Florida Keys Shipwreck Heritage Trail

Florida Keys Shipwreck Heritage Trail. Divers and snorkelers can explore nine wrecks from Key Largo to Key West, lying in 20 to 140 feet of water. Many dote on the oldest wreck, the San Pedro, a member of the 1733 Spanish treasure fleet. It’s off Islamorada’s Indian Key in just 18 feet of water. Dives are usually less than $100 including gear. 800-352-5397; fla-keys.com.

James Bond, Thuderball, Plane Wreck

The famous James Bond wreck is in Nassau, Bahamas. Divers can see two wrecks used in Thunderball and Never Say Never Again, an old World War II landing craft, decorated with fire coral, sponges, and sea fans, and the steel skeleton of a Vulcan bomber aircraft. Dives are usually less than $150 including gear. 242-302-2000; bahamas.com .

The Royal Mail Steamer Rhone Shipwreck

The Royal Mail Steamer Rhone is the grand dive of the British Virgin Islands, off Salt Island. The ship, which went down in an 1867 hurricane, lies on a reef in 20 to 80 feet of water. It’s now encrusted with corals and sponges, and world-famous from its starring role in the film The Deep, with Jacqueline Bisset. Dives are generally less than $150 including gear. 800-835-8530; b-v-i.com.

Barbados’ Carlisle Bay Shipwrecks

Barbados’ Carlisle Bay is clogged with at least four wrecks, all close to shore. The Berwind is an easy dive, a French tug sunk in 1919, now in about 25 feet of water. Blowfish, trumpet fish, and lizard fish make the wreck home. 800-221-9831; barbados.org.

Besides the Herman H. Hettler, Smith Moore, and The Manhattan, many other wrecks lie off Au Sable Reef in Pictured Rock National Lakeshore, Lake Superior. Shipwreck Tours of Munising leads dive charters out to two wrecks, at $75 per person for a two-tank dive. Landlubbers can glide above three turn-of-the-century wooden ships, the Bermuda, the Hettler, and a mystery wreck as yet unidentified, in the company’s glass-bottom boat for $30, $12 for children 12 and younger. 906-387-5456; shipwrecktours.com.

Stay Dry in the Museums

For those who don’t like to get their feet wet, here are some great rescued wrecks and artifacts around the world.

Florida Keys History of Diving Museum in Islamorada covers every inch of dive history, from the heavy lead boots to the shiny metal helmets of early diving. Take a snapshot of the earliest underwater cameras. The museum is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ticket price is $12 per adult, $11 per seniors, $6 per child 5-12 and free for children younger than 5. 305-664-9737; divingmuseum.org.

Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, Key West, holds one of the world’s great Spanish sunken treasures raised to the surface. For more than 15 years, Fisher, his family and his team searched for the Spanish galleons Atocha and Santa Margarita, royal treasure ships that went down in a hurricane in 1622 en route from Cuba to Spain. They found millions in emeralds, coins and gold bars, on display in Key West. The museum is open daily 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. weekends and holidays. Ticket price is $12 per adult; $10.50 per student, and $6 per child. 305-294-2633; melfisher.org.

Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute covers the waterfront from the island’s pink sand to the bottom of the ocean floor. This is the place to try on scuba gear and take a simulated dive in a Nautilus X2 submersible—and survive an attack by a giant squid. Science is fun in this museum, which also has a Shipwreck Gallery, with centuries of recovered artifacts, and a Treasure Room with Spanish gold and pirate booty. The museum is open daily except Christmas, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. weekends. Ticket price is $12.50 per adult, $10 per senior, $6 per child 6-17, and free for children younger than 5. 441-292-7219; buei.org.

Mary Rose, King Henry VIII’s favorite warship, is awaiting her new $59 million museum in 2012 in Portsmouth, England. In the meantime, scores of artifacts brought up from the wreck are on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. See what Tudor tankards looked like, and the tools that the ship’s barber/physician used on the crew. The Mary Rose, built between 1509 and 1511, served proudly in King Henry’s wars, and was on her way out of Portsmouth harbor in 1545 to fight the French once again when she sank. Not until 1966 did scuba diver Alexander McKee locate the wreck in near-zero visibility. The hull was raised in 1982, and has been undergoing hydration preservation ever since. Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is open 10 a.m. daily except Dec. 24, 25 and 26; from April-October, last tickets to the attractions are sold at 4.30 p.m. and the Dockyard gates are closed at 6 p.m. From November-March, last tickets to the attractions are sold at 4 p.m. and the Dockyard gates are closed at 5.30 p.m. Ticket price for all six Dockyard attractions is $31 per adult, $26 per senior, and $22 per student and child 5-15. 44-023- 9272-8060; maryrose.org

The Vasa Museum in Stockholm is Scandinavia’s most-visited, a vast space that spotlights the world’s only surviving 17th-century ship. King Gustav II Adolf commissioned the mighty warship, which was launched in 1627. On her maiden voyage in Stockholm harbor, the Vasa heeled over and sank. In 1956, divers raised the foremast; they brought the bulk of the ship to the surface in 1961. “Face to Face” is one of the museum’s most moving exhibits, with personae created from the wreck’s 15 unidentified skeletons telling their stories from Aug. 10, 1628, the day the Vasa sank. The museum is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., until 8 p.m. on select Wednesdays. Ticket price is $16 per adult, free for children 18 and younger. 46-8-519 548 00; vasamuseet.se/en.

Diver Betsa Marsh has explored shipwrecks from the Great Lakes and Caribbean to Polynesia and Micronesia.

Dive In! The Saturday Evening Post

Make the most of family time with these suggestions from Malcolm and Laura Gauld, parenting experts and co-authors of the parenting book “The Biggest Job We’ll Ever Have” (Scribner).

Build positive attitudes. Take time out every week to create and build upon family traditions. During the summer months, walk on a trail or to the park, prepare a meal together, or volunteer at the local animal shelter.   

Talk about the important stuff. Hold weekly family meetings (even for only 15 minutes) to share ideas, challenges, and stories. 

Share the load. Assigning family jobs teaches responsibility and gives teens an opportunity to learn what they enjoy – painting, repair work, gardening, etc. 

Insist on fun. Schedule a time to do something fun and silly. Sure, teens may resist at first, but the positive effect of laughing for 30 straight minutes cannot be overestimated. 

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Demand respect, but let the comments your teenager makes roll off. 

For more from Malcolm and Laura Gauld, visit their blog at greatparenting101.com. 

Seconds Save Lives

Practical advice (and a free brochure) from emergency care experts helps you take action in case of a medical emergency.

“Nobody plans an emergency, but you can take steps to be prepared for one,” said Dr. Angela Gardner, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). “The most important—and yet sometimes the most difficult thing to do—is to keep your composure. You will be better able to provide critical information to emergency responders and physicians, whether for yourself or someone else.”

To get started, enter emergency contact information into your cell phone under the name “ICE” (for In Case of Emergency) and make sure family medical information is organized and available to take to the emergency department.

Then, click here to download a free ACEP brochure that tells bystanders when to call for help, what to say, and what to do while waiting. Share the information with your family, and keep copies in your billfold or glove compartment.

“Everyone is only one step away from a medical emergency,” reminds Dr. Gardner, “and when it happens, seconds can save lives.”

Is Your Public Pool Safe? Test it!

Unhealthy swimming pools are more common than you may think, warn experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who are encouraging swimmers to take action this summer with free test kits from the Water Quality & Healthy Council.

“Chlorine and pH are a key defense against germs that can make swimmers sick,” explains Michele Hlavsa, Chief of the Healthy Swimming Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In contrast, improperly chlorinated water puts swimmers at risk for recreational water illnesses (RWIs) like diarrhea and ear and skin infections.

Last year’s survey by the Water Quality and Health Council found that one in five Americans pee in the pool.  Urine, as well as sweat and sunscreens, contains nitrogen that eats up some of a pool’s free chlorine, making it less effective in fighting off waterborne germs.  

“You can’t always trust your fellow swimmer to practice healthy swimming habits,” said Chris Wiant, Chair of the Water Quality and Health Council.  “But, what you can do is test the chlorine level and pH of the water to make sure your pool is properly treated – and immediately approach pool staff if it is not.”

RWIs are on the rise. Are you swimming in an unhealthy pool?  Don’t get in the water if you:

• Can’t see the floor drain in the deep end of the pool;
• Can’t hear the pool pump running;
• Do smell a strong chemical odor; or
• Do feel sliminess on tile walls.

Read more healthy swimming tips at the CDC’s website.

Finding a Missing Loved One

EmSeeQ device
Courtesy of EmFinders

What do children with autism, people with Down syndrome, and adults with Alzheimer’s have in common? All tend to wander—and with potentially life-threatening consequences, of course. 

Most of us have experienced panic and fear when a child has wandered in a store or other public place. But for families with loved ones affected by cognition disorders, the risk of wandering is a daily yet rarely talked-about reality. 

A new cellular device may help. The EmSeeQ from EmFinders is fully integrated with the nationwide 9-1-1 system. When triggered by the parent or caregiver, the watch-like device sends digital signals to emergency responders to quickly locate and recover the person who has become disoriented and lost.

For more information on price and coverage area, see emfinders.com.

Tips for Happy and Healthy Families The Saturday Evening Post

Top 5 Tips from the American College of Emergency Physicians:

Safe Meals: Use a meat thermometer. Cook fresh poultry to 165 F, hamburgers to 160 F, and beef to at least 145 F. Refrigerate all perishable food within 2 hours, 1 hour if the temperature outside is above 90 degrees F. Keep uncooked meats away from other foods.

Safe Grilling: Thoroughly clean a grill of any grease or dust. On gas grills, check tubes leading into the burner for any blockages from insects or food grease and replace connectors if needed. Do not use a grill in a garage, breezeway, carport, porch, or near any surface that can catch fire. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions that accompany the grill.

Safe in the Water: Don’t drink alcohol when swimming or boating. Wear a lifejacket whenever you are on a boat. Make sure young children are supervised at all times when near the beach, on a boat, or by a pool or hot tub. Don’t swim alone or in bad weather. Learn to swim and teach your children to swim. We also recommend that you learn CPR in case of an emergency.

Safe in the Sun: Protect against sunburn and heat stroke. Wear sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher and apply it generously throughout the day. Wear a hat outdoors and UV-blocking sunglasses to protect your eyes. Drink plenty of water, especially when in the sun or sweating heavily. If you feel faint or nauseous, get into a cool place immediately.

Safe on the Road: Don’t drink alcohol and drive or travel with anyone who has been drinking. Wear your seatbelt at all times. Make sure your vehicle has been properly serviced and is in good working shape before a long road trip. Familiarize yourself with your surroundings and know the location of the nearest emergency room in case of an emergency.

“Many of the factors that will determine your safety over Memorial Day weekend—and any time this summer—come down to good decision-making and common sense,” said Dr. Gardner. “As someone who sees the consequences up close, my best advice is: know your limits, be mindful of certain risks and stay smart.”

Plan Now for Safety The Saturday Evening Post