I remember reading about Ed Stafford walking the entire length of the Amazon 10+ years ago. The Amazon is the perfect exotic place to imagine adventuring and exploring- but in his travels, he's running into people all the time. It's exotic to me, but there are people living there who I'm sure find it as normal as I find my local park.
And that's what this reminds me of- I love the idea of exploring where you are.There are many things close to home that can be experienced, not just the foreign destinations I imagine from an adventure novel.
I have a project that got paused by grad school and kids that I hope to return to of walking all the streets of the suburb where I live in alphabetical order. I think one of the things that helped pause it is that the next street will be a seven mile walk once you factor in getting to the starting and ending points of the street.
Last year there was a guy in Rotterdam who moved there and decided to get to know the city better… by running through every street!
I’ve met the guy once when I was out running myself and pretty much the only thing he used was a small pocket map and a marker to track where he’d been.
Took him a while to complete all of it but it sure sounded like a cool project.
Slightly different take on this - there is a dude[0] who attempts to cross countries (Wales, Norway) on foot in a straight line. His videos are highly entertaining
> Once he obtained all the necessary permits to swim in the river—an ordeal in itself as he’d be swimming through 360 communes, each of which required its own approval process
That says so much about life in France - the fierce
independence of even the smallest bureaucracies, and the
stalwart patience of the citizens dealing with them.
> Strel swam the Amazon River, commencing on 1 February 2007, finishing 66 days later on April 7, 2007. This was a record-breaking distance of 5,268 kilometres (3,273 mi), longer than the width of the Atlantic Ocean. He had escort boats that were prepared to pour blood into the river to distract meat-eating fish such as piranhas.
> Typically Germain credits his achievements to a guru of a different kind: “I have learned how to master my emotions by following the Wim Hof method,” he says of Dutch adventurer Wim Hof’s three-pillar technique using the breath, exposure to cold temperatures, and a mix of commitment, will power, and self-control to survive in tough situations. “When things are hard,” he continues, “I can take pleasure in suffering. Not just in swimming, but in life. I was having so much fun that I wasn’t even counting the time.”
I'm not French and never swam in the Seine myself, but according to https://ijc.org/sites/default/files/migrate_default_content_... it seems the temperatures of the river after June should be at least 16 degress, so you shouldn't get hypothermia in that case.
Having swam (sometimes not voluntarily) in water temperature from 6deg C upwards, No, 16 deg is hypothermia territory.
20deg C is where you started to be able to swim for extended amount of time (i.e. 1 hr). But the water still feels very cold if it's not a sunny day. Wearing swim shirt is usually recommended.
27-28deg C is the temperature of majority of the pools.
30 deg C is about the temperature of water where you can not move and still feel warm.
I wanted to note that GQ spent the time to separate the motivation of the feat, distinguishing a call for autonomy, sport and environmentalism. With the local context, it’s too easy to project one image while there’s much more of a Terrence Mallick-like introspection in the daily reality of the track. Few journalists give time to that distinction.
And that's what this reminds me of- I love the idea of exploring where you are.There are many things close to home that can be experienced, not just the foreign destinations I imagine from an adventure novel.