Crazy?

I remember the times when matt & myself with some other fellow RCNUWC people jumped in the fjord. There were several of occasions to do it. Those were most joyous, definitely some of the properly chilled moments. I will always remember them.

To move back to the future. Last Saturday Peter, a great friend down here in Slovenia and I thought of doing something a little bit crazy. A group of 5 squeezed in a car and at 1 am in the morning we drove down to Croatian coast ( about 120 km, 2 hrs drive ) and went for a midnight walk, and climax of the evening, night swim. It was about -13 degrees at my place, but at seaside it was about +2 ˚C. Water had about 8˚C. Even though it was a bit challenging as the entrance to water was slow, it was necessary to walk into it, and not just a simple fast jump...
The annoying part was sea urchin. I stepped on one of them during my second swim (it was a very short swim though). It itched a bit and it was a little bit painful trying to get all 19 prickles out.

Probably there are some people who ( the same thing at RCN ) think i am a little bit lunatic to do such a thing.

However there are people even crazier than myself. Take this guy for example. His name is Martin Strel, and he is a Slovenian marathon swimmer. In 90s ( at about age of 40 ) he restarted his professional swimming carrier.
His greatest achievements are :

Europe - Danube River, June 25th - August 23rd, 2000
1867 miles (3004 kms) in 58 days - a new world record in distance swimming. Martin was the first person to swim the entire Danube River from source to estuary. This brought him into the Guinness Book for the first time.

Europe - Danube River, July, 2001
Martin became the first person to swim 313 miles (504 kms) non-stop in 84 hours 10 minutes, setting another world record for the furthest distance swum.

USA - Mississippi River, July 4th - September 9th, 2002
Martin swam the entire length of the Mississippi River, a length of 2360 miles (3797 kms) in 68 days. The project was entitled Eye to Eye. Again Martin became the first person to swim the river from source to estuary. He broke his own record and entered the Guinness Book of World Records again.
Then in 2003 he was nominated by the wordlwide media houses for the prestigious LAUREUS Award in Monte Carlo. Martin´s Mississippi swim is one of the records featured in a video: 25 Awesome Records produced by OLN-Outdoor Life Network Channel.

Argentina - Paraná River, Nov 15th - Dec 8th, 2003
Martin made it in all the way from Iguazzu Falls to the center of Buenos Aires in the Rio de La Plata. Becoming the first man to have swam the entire 1200 miles (1930 kms) of this tricky South American river. He was swimming from dawn to dusk, and averaged over 80 kms per day.

China - Yangtze river, June 10th - July 30th, 2004
Martin Strel surpassed his record from the Mississippi with swimming 2488 miles (4003 kms) of the longest Chinese river and earned another entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Apparently this is not enough for him. Today he started with the greatest challenge of his career - swimming the Amazon.
He is going to swim for 70 days and hopes to make 5,430 km in that time.

Is this crazy / cool or what ?
More about him and his adventure here