Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [114]
On August 3,1987, one by one the support team assembled in the rental house in Nome. As each person arrived, the excitement intensified. Dr. Keatinge, Dr. Nyboer Jr., and Dr. Nyboer Sr. commandeered a bedroom and eagerly transformed it into a medical testing unit.
Stretched out on one bed were an experimental charcoal-heated sleeping bag, a blood-pressure cuff, and a doctor’s bag filled with pills, syringes, adrenaline, and a stethoscope. On another cot was a forty-foot-long spaghetti-thin wire—the rectal probe that at the end of the swim would be plugged into a telemetry device to measure my core temperature. On a kitchen table was a portable defibrillator, the infrared heat-flow measuring device, and the impedance machine.
Maria Sullivan assisted them as they tested and repacked their equipment. Maria had trouble walking, but she didn’t care. She was having the time of her life. And I needed her there so badly. It was exciting, but also crazy. The doctors wanted to run experiments on me each day after training. And there were phone calls coming in from all over the world, from reporters, well-wishers, even Mom and Dad, whose voices sounded stressed.
In the living room, the journalists—Rich Roberts from the Los Angeles Times, Jim McHugh and Jack Kelley from People magazine, the ABC television crew, Claire Richardson from KNOM, a reporter from the AP, and one from UPI—set up a makeshift media center and began filing stories.
Then there were the people from Nome. They had been listening to interviews daily about the plans for the swim, and the Nome Nugget and Anchorage Daily News were doing daily stories. It felt like a wave of interest was building around us and, with it, support. A businessman who owned a mining company called Inspiration Gold heard over the radio that I was trying to find life jackets for the crew in our umiaks. He brought over a dozen jackets that we could borrow for the swim. A shop owner, knowing that we had limited funds, sent over crates of apples and oranges. The local hospital let us borrow whatever medical equipment we required for the swim and said they would be on standby if we needed them. The town priest invited me to dinner to get me away from the crowd, and he said he would be praying for me. The town minister did the same. And then Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod, the dogsled race across Alaska, came over to the house to wish me the best of luck and said that she hoped that we could succeed at opening the border. Neighbors, saloon owners, the whole town of Nome, it seemed, came by to offer support or wish us luck or just to let us know they cared. It was absolutely amazing.
Then CNN, NBC, and NHK, from Japan, arrived to do stories. CKO from Canada, the BBC from Britain, and ABC radio called for live radio interviews. Reuters, the Long Beach Press Telegram, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Manchester Union Leader, the Boston Globe, the Orange County Register, the Chicago Tribune, and so many others were calling for interviews. All of the journalists were asking the same question: Will the Soviets open the border for you and allow you to swim? Trying to sound positive, I told them I thought they would, but I had no idea if they would do it.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I had overlooked a very important detail. Our request for permission to land had been for the physicians and journalists, but I hadn’t supplied the names of the pilots for the swim, nor did I know if the coast guard would support us. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to pass into Soviet waters without our pilots and boats. This oversight was a major mistake and could have blown the whole project.
I immediately called Bruce Evans at Senator Murkowski’s office, Gene Fisher, and Ed Salazar. Evans said that the Soviet ambassador had put his other projects on hold, giving this one priority; it appeared that the ambassador