Alcatraz 2008 Update

He told me I was the worst father ever.

My son Michael and I were floating in Bartlett Lake, northeast of Scottsdale, in 50 degree water in the first of several swims to prepare us for Alcatraz.

The water was cold.

The refreshing, yet ice headache feeling you get when you drink something *really* cold, really fast.

The stinging pain that fired through our bodies each time we put our faces in the water had started to affect him as we swam the first of three legs out to a buoy 400 yards from shore.

"I don't want to do this", he said as I realized this would not be as easy as I hoped it would.

The wet suits were fine.

Thick enough in the chest and shoulders to contain the warmth, but flexible enough to let us swim through the chop of open water.

Your hands and feet became numb in the first few moments, but it was the pain each and every time you put your face down in the water that was doing in my son.

I tried the Knute Rockne speech, I told him about facing obstacles in your life and having the character to push through and it was having absolutely no impact on him.

Not like the ice cold water.

I finally switched to the Drill Sergeant approach, when stuck with the "worst father" label and encouraged him to the buoy and back to shore.

He completed one lap. One of three that will equal the distance from Alcatraz to the shore.

I really just wanted to get him acclimated to the cold water.

I didn't care how far he swam or how long he was in it. I just wanted him to understand how cold it was going to be.

I left him on shore and headed back out to complete the swim. The stinging sensation had stopped by the time I began the first leg back from buoy.

When I returned he walked up to me and said, "Dad, I really didn't mean..."

I stopped him and said, "Me too, son."

Not a Kodak moment, but good enough for me.

He told me he was still committed to making the swim in May.

Funny thing was, the entire time I was finishing the swim, he had been splashing around in the water, never realizing that his face had gone numb, and it didn't hurt anymore.

I pointed that out, to which he began laughing.

Let's see if he's still laughing in two weeks, when we hit the water again.