Mississippi River Mini-Goal Completed

Sometime in late 2006, I realized I was cranking out the distance, but had never tracked it.  I really had no idea how far I went over time.  So beginning at the start of 2007, I opened up a handy spreadsheet and began tracking my distance for each swim.  Seeing that the totals were adding up, I thought it would be cool to set some goals.  My main goal was to keep swimming, so I set what at the time seemed to be an impossible goal ... swim to Hawaii from LA (via a lap pool).  That surely would keep me swimming for a number of years.  I told myself, I'd reward myself by swimming the last distance into shore at Waikiki (I can always dream).  Realizing that I needed some mini-goals to keep the long-goal in sight, I added a bunch of those.  Actually, some of them are far in and of themselves (e.g., swim to Bermuda from NYC, cross the USA, etc. - see list on left margin of this blog).  Today, I completed one of those not-so mini-goals, the length of the Mississippi (Duluth to New Orleans) or 1,171 miles.  It feels good to complete a mini-goal, but I'm still not even half-way to another goal I've added on top of Hawaii - the Atlantic Ocean.  Maybe I can swim the last lap like Kramer did on Seinfeld, and swim in the river around Manhattan (Let's not get too carried away).