The Six Million Dollar Man

"Steve Austin, astronaut.  A man barely alive.  Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.  We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man.  Steve Austin will be that man.  Better than he was before.  Better... stronger... faster."

The opening credits on The Six Million Dollar Man shook my world every Sunday night in the mid 1970s.  My eyes gaped as Steve bent steel or jumped tall hedges. It made sense that he was launched from a torpedo hole into the Pacific to prevent a planet-destroying weapon being built on a deserted island. The "nyosynthetic" (advanced bionic) sasquatch - created by an alien colony hiding on Earth in the Pacific Northwest - required a double Bigfoot episode and a "to be continued" still-frame - Game on !!

Us boys debated the whole Jaime Sommers bionic woman love affair and thrilled to Max, the German Shepherd with bionic legs and jaw giving him super strength and speed. There was good and bad in the 70s but, as a kid, it did not get better than the bionic man.

Catalina Strait

Catalina Strait start 

The official Big Swim season ends, at least in the Western Hemisphere, around early October when water temperatures drop below comfortable levels. I take advantage of July to swim around Manhattan ( 29 miles in 8 hours, 30 minutes) and September for the Catalina Strait (22 miles in 10 hours, 49 minutes). With the English Channel, I am the 394th person to complete the so-called "Triple Crown" of big water swimming.

The Catalina swim notable for its 11pm start-time to avoid the windy afternoon swells along the Southern California coastline. The darkness disturbing but, even more so, the unlucky British swimmer, also swimming the straight, nipped by a great white shark the night before my jump. The poor fellow pulled from the water after two hours, bandaged and greeted by the coast guard, then ambulance and fire engine at the Long Beach docks, and raced to the emergency for a few stitches to his leg and hand, all reported dutifully by the local news channels and hitting the BBC and Times just in time for Sonnet to worry. A truism I accept : The only strategy for sharks is to not think about sharks.