2005-02-03 - 7:37 p.m.

>A Hero In Our Midst

Check out this life-affirming experience. Bee's dad is fifty-something but looks at least ten years younger. He is heavily entrenched in the whole biathlon/triathlon/marathon/ironman subculture, so he is always training and competing with such skills as instantly switching from riding a bike, stripping down in less than a second and diving into a lake and swimming a few kilometers (or vice versa, I'm not totally clear how these things go).

Here is Bee's dad in the midst of one of his triathlons. My solution to the problem of concealing identity was good I think: I reduced the picture until his head was only about 200 pixels, which I could artfully rearrange so that it still looked like a face - just not his face. Much nicer than blurring it out or something.

Anyway, this afternoon he was driving up-island on a section of the highway that runs parallel to a good-sized river, a really cold, fast-moving one. As he drove, he noticed this little plane flying overhead. He is really interested in vehicles of all kinds, whether it's planes or boats or motorcycles, so he was flipping his attention back and forth between driving and checking out this weird-looking little plane.

Suddenly, he saw one of the wings dip. That looked bad to him, so he must have pulled over as soon as he saw that, because when the plane suddenly twisted and dove straight down into the water, he was already out of his car headed for the riverbank. Bee's dad tore off his clothes and dove in the frigid water, swimming out to the lone occupant of the plane. The pilot had managed to get himself out of the cockpit, but was bleeding and in shock, and was therefore starting to drown and be swept downstream. It took 30 seconds for the plane to sink. Bee's dad had rescued the pilot and pulled him out of the water in little more than 15 seconds.

In no time, the pilot's friends and family who had been watching from the nearby airport arrived, as did camera crews and photographers, followed finally by an ambulance with accompanying paramedics. The man's wife was tearfully thanking Bee's dad, and the pilot was asking to talk to him, but the paramedics had oxygen masks on his face and talking wasn't possible. Through this, Bee's dad was standing there dripping wet in his underwear with photographers snapping pictures. He got out of there before the TV news people started filming.

Funny about that: on the news tonight, they reported that "the pilot managed to swim to shore." We'll see what the papers say tomorrow.

When he eventually arrived at Bee's sister's house, still a bit damp, he said "Well, I've done my good deed for the day!"