“Open Water”

I was planning to take a run Friday night afternoon after arriving at my hotel, the Afroditi on the Mediterranean coastline at the foot of Mt. Olympos. It was about 7pm and the sun was starting to set. As I looked from my balcony I noticed someone floating in the water about 200 meters of the shoreline. I thought to myself “I’d much rather take a swim, and this would be a perfect time to overcome my fear of swimming in open water”. I didn’t really want to go for a run anyways because I think I have a massive hangnail or some other unidentified problem with the big toe on my right foot since it hearts like crazy and is bleeding….but back to the swimming. I’m not really scared of open water if there is a large group of people, but I can’t help but feel like there are huge hungry fish all around me when I’m in the ocean. Or worse lots of tiny little hungry fish. And I know they are all much faster than I am. But this other guy was floating around like a huge buoy so I figured I should be safe.

So I headed out and got about ¼ as far from the shoreline as this guy had been when I noticed he was back on shore and I was now the only swimmer in the entire ocean. O.K. no problem, just breathe and swim…. So, I kept swimming and was actually enjoying the view as I turned around to float on my back and watch the sun set behind Mt. Olympos. If that was the home of the Greek Gods, including Zeus, than I was swimming in his bath tub. Kind of cool. Anyways, after watching the sun setting and noticing that it was going to be getting dark very soon, I turned over to start swimming again and I see a shadow below me. Then my eyes focus and I see a HUGE jelly fish! To that point I had seen nothing in the water but little anchovy type fish and when I saw this jelly fish I must have swam the fastest 20 meters ever back towards shore. I may have even hydroplaned on my first couple of strokes.. The only thing I know about jelly fish is that some of them can be deadly and I wasn’t about to find out which kind this was. After my 20 meter sprint I slowed down and actually laughed at myself because it really wasn’t that big and it was probably 10 ft below me. Since the point was to overcome my fear, I started swimming back out towards it but couldn’t find it anymore. So, I slowly headed back to shore swimming and floating towards the sun set.