Anyone available this Saturday? For a kinda stupid/awesome thing?

So, this Saturday, my father's going to swim eight miles across the Boston Harbor. Or at least attempt to. It's the Boston Light Swim, the country's oldest long-distance open-water race, starting from the Boston Light on Little Brewster Island, and ending at the L Street Bathhouse in Southie.

Each swimmer needs a support crew. For my father, it's a guy named Jed that neither of us have yet met, who has a boat, and me.

The idea is that the boat goes along the route at about one and a half knots, and Father follows behind keeping the same distance from it, which will be how he paces himself, and also how he actually goes along the race course. That will be the skipper's job, who, presumably, will be Jed.

At the same time, there are at least two other important jobs. Every twenty minutes, I will throw eight ounces of water to my father, who will drink it. On every other one of those waterings, I will also provide calories -- sometimes it will be by mixing maltodextrin into the water, sometimes it will be by providing a piece of a Clif bar along with the water.

Also, I will be watching to make sure that my father doesn't drown, or otherwise get into trouble.

Dad and I spent a couple hours last night practicing these things, and I came to the conclusion that this would be easier with one more crew member.

Anyone interested?

Normally, I'd assume this was a hoax:

Take a look at this.

Probably fairly soon, because it's from a local television news channel, and those links tend not to stick around THAT long. But this one has an interview with the man who had a pea plant growing inside his lung, and the fact that they've got a real person hooked up to oxygen talking about the experience makes it seem much less hoax-like to me.