¡Feliz año nuevo!
I love the sound of Spanish, the music of it, the way so many words end by flowing out of vowels rather than by crashing into consonants: gato vs. cat, for instance, or perro vs. dog, calle vs. street, etc.
I don’t know enough Spanish, though, to converse in it beyond the level of un niño who has just turned three.
I do know a thing or two about Diana Nyad. She is a con artist and a fraud, and she will lie about anything. The last two Annex posts leave no doubt about that.
So just one task remains: proving that Nyad did not swim all the way from Cuba to Florida under her own power.
To do that, at least one of two things must happen (although if I’m overlooking something, I’d love to hear about it): Either…
- Someone who knows how Nyad cheated must come forward, or…
- Someone must prove that the currents were not running the way Nyad claimed they were.
I can’t do much about #1, so I started in on the second task a few months ago, beginning with emails to faculty and researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. That resulted in a folder full of raw current data that filled me with the fear of God (and trigonometric functions).
To find someone who might know what to do with all that data, I went back to the roots of Nyad skepticism—“110 Miles, 53 Hours…”—on a quest to find folks who had already addressed currents.
But the pilgrimage did not go as planned. Yes, I came across a number of people who know currents and had examined them during the swim. As I read, though, patterns unrelated to currents emerged, swirling eddies of ideas that I had missed or ignored while reading the posts in real time.
So much emerged and continues to emerge, in fact, that I want to try something different for the new year: shorter, more frequent posts rather than the infrequent, octopoidal opuses of yore. Each post will focus on one or two of the gems and revelations that surfaced in “110 Miles….”
><((̗(̂(°> <°))̂)̖)><
This does not mean that the Annex lacks for new material.
Far from it! In addition to the currents, we’re looking into why, in 2017, a non-profit organization gave Diana Nyad/Everwalk over $300,000 for activities having little or nothing to do with the non-profit’s purpose. We’re also examining evidence that at least one person knew months in advance that, barring catastrophe, Diana Nyad would succeed in her 2013 crossing.
And, finally, we here at the Annex remain confident that Ms. Nyad’s 2019 shenanigans will continue to provide fresh fodder for further forensic forays.
¡Adelante! Onward!
<°))̂)̖)>< ><((̗(̂(°>
But wait . . . hold on . . . just one more thing
After finishing the above, I came across an article (which is a brief way of saying that a cousin helped me access the archives of the New York Herald Tribune after I’d tried for weeks) that clarifies, in a delightful and unexpected way, part of my last post.
So, the next post will be about that Herald Tribune article, then we’ll get back on the “110….”
