John 'The River Guy'

In June 2018 I SUP’d from Lake Gadsden, from a home right where Big Will’s Creek empties out down to my brother’s home on the Rainbow City, Whorton Bend’s city limits on Johnson Street. I also had the notion of swimming roughly the same route for the past couple of years. With training needing to be done for my Mobile Bay endeavor, I felt this was the right time.

What was intended about this route (demarked by lime green line) in last photo, at this time of year, was really accidental. There is heat, there are thunderstorms to make you go inside just to tempt you to quit. 5 miles in, my ‘water proctor’ and I encountered a violent thunderstorm at the confluence of the Whorton Bend ‘creek’ (a section of the Coosa in Etowah Co. that is narrowed and separated by the main channel by an agricultural and nature based island); sans the lightening as mother nature was merciful. And getting home to rest I was indeed angry that my route was interrupted. I did want the satisfaction of completing the seven mile route in one swim. Yet, it was a good exercise in patience, knowing that nature and life circumstance does not always give us our way. The moment was a lesson in just taking what the route gave me and being thankful for what I got. It was a lesson in having the temptation once I got home, to not go back out the next day and to be satisfied with our accomplisment in the 5 miles we’d done. A lesson to press forward and defeat that temptation.

What I got was a fantastic morning with the start of a cool front on Saturday July 6 to finish two more miles to get to the Southside, AL. ‘low bridge’ to make the seven mile designation so we could call it a true bridge to bridge endeavor, This so called having started at 6:00 a.m. 10 yards north of the Broad Street bridge over downtown Gadsden. Mine and my friend’s original bridge to bridge route from the Broad Street bridge to the I-459 bridge one mile south. The only open water swimmer in Etowah County bold enough to get out of a pool. Who I only get to see half the year as he spends the warmer months at his second home in Rhode Island. A place where I dream of living where open water swimming is vogue and you can find ‘wet friends’ in a matter of days, after advertising for them.

So, struggling and then finishing at the orange buoy thirty yards from the Southside ‘low bridge’ my water proctor and I said a prayer of thanks and went back to my brother’s home, where I’d finished my ‘dry route’ with a stand up paddle board 6 years prior. It was also on this journey that I realized after 25 years of open water swimming I’m burned out and will call it quits for good after the Mobile Bay swim this fall. It could be that water traffic is getting worse and boaters (society in general) is getting more selfish, careless and belligerent (I almost got hit by and pontoon and then into an altercation with one of it’s drunk passengers up at Weiss Lake in June). It could be that other than my friend Jim, from Rhode Island I’m always swimming alone in a culture that does not understand health and proving it by thinking exercise is sitting in a boat waiting for the next bite. It could be I’ve done every adventure I seek to do and my mind and body are disenchanted with the experience. Which one of these it is, I know buying property on the river or moving to Rhode Island to become neighbors with Jim no longer is a valid line of logic. I no longer have the desire to do either as much. I never saw it going this way. I’ll always do water sports, it’s just that I’m ready for something else. Surfing…………scuba diving………….water polo! I’m game for it all. I just know I need a change. I’m surprisingly o.k. with that.