Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [121]
Looking out the window, I could see wind ripples on the sea surface. I was getting nervous. Just the week before, I had seen the straits when they were rough, and I couldn’t get that image out of my mind: the Bering Sea as a raging hell. If the wind increased quickly I knew, we would have to postpone the swim. Even though the distance was only 2.7 miles in a straight line from our side to theirs, we couldn’t start in marginal conditions. It was just too dangerous. There was no way I was going to wait until noon. I thought that any delay now reduced our chances of getting across.
Dr. Nyboer Jr. came down to the beach to find me. He said that Dr. Keatinge wanted to begin the preswim tests on me. I asked him if he could make it quick. I had changed the plan, I told him; we were going to start the swim at nine. But Dr. Nyboer Jr. didn’t think we could get our Inuit crew together in that time.
We couldn’t wait. I told him conditions were beginning to change. He said he would go tell Pat Omiak, and he asked me if I’d lie down and relax in a room in the community center so he and Dr. Keatinge could get their preswim readings.
As I lay on the table waiting for Dr. Nyboer’s return, I heard Dr. Keatinge talking with a crew member. They had found an uninflated Zodiac and had decided to inflate it and tow along it on the swim. The Zodiac would provide a more stable base for them to hold their equipment and get readings. Dr. Keatinge unrolled the rubber boat, and Pat Omiak began reading directions for inserting its floorboards.
While this was happening, Dr. Nyboer Jr. returned and took my pulse. He couldn’t believe how slow and calm it was: forty-four beats per minute. I was doing my best to be calm, but I was itching to go. This wait was killing me. My skin temperature was the same as the air temperature, seventy degrees, and my core temperature was all the way up to 100.7, three degrees above my normal temperature. My mind must have told my body to turn up the heater.
Dr. Keatinge handed me a large silver capsule and explained that it was the thermopill, a metal pill the size of a horse pill that contained a radio transmitter. This device would measure my internal temperature. As backup, I would insert a thin rectal probe connected to a twenty-foot-long lead that would be coiled up in the bottom of my swimsuit. To get a body-temperature reading, the doctors would have me roll over onto my back while they held a receiver attached to a long broomstick near my stomach, to get a transmission from the thermopill.
Dr. Keatinge handed me a large cup of coffee, explaining that some subjects had difficulty swallowing the thermopill. I wasn’t worried about swallowing; I was more concerned about getting it out afterward. But I wasn’t sure how to ask Dr. Keatinge this delicate question.
Fortunately, he volunteered the information. The pill was worth about a thousand dollars, and Dr. Keatinge wanted me to recover it once it passed through my system. He told me that a plastic bag worked nicely for the recovery phase. I hesitated before I swallowed it, wondering, Was this pill new or had it been used? Dr. Keatinge assured me that it was new. They wanted to sterilize it and reuse it for future experiments and to check the calibrations after the swim.
Everyone in the village turned out for the swim—the village elders, men, women, and children. Some were blowing up red, white, and blue balloons, while others carried the umiaks from the racks and placed them in the water.
The journalists—Rich Roberts, Jack Kelley, Jim McHugh, and Claire Richardson—climbed into one umiak with David Soolook, their pilot, while the ABC cameraman and