Playing Through

Bill Adorno (Photo by Thomas Hackett)

Hundreds of hardy souls marked the beginning of the new year with a plunge into Barton Springs. Bill Adorno was happy to see them, of course – he loves Barton Springs and loves seeing people enjoy it – but, frankly, he wasn't impressed. A once-a-winter plunge on a warm and sunny day doesn't exactly make you a polar bear. Try getting up at 5am every single day of the year. Try stripping down to almost nothing when the temperature drops into the 20s.

Well, maybe not at 5am sharp, but on a much colder Christmas morning, Adorno was still one of the first few swimmers in the water, just as he is most mornings an hour or so before sunrise. The water is a constant 68 degrees, winter and summer, but on more than one occasion, he's come out of the pool with hoarfrost on his head.

"You talk about a trendsetter – I am that man," says Adorno, 78, a retired engineer. "There's usually another codger there before me. I don't know his name. I get there before 5:30, though. I swim an hour and 10 minutes. I used to swim a mile in 55 minutes. Three or four years ago, I don't know why, but I started swimming on my back, and now others are doing it, too. It's a trend I started. It's the only way I swim. I can look at the stars. I can watch the meteorites and satellites pass by. One time the space station came right across the pool. You could see it plain as day. It's huge."

Swimming on his back, Adorno doesn't use his arms. He wears fins and just seems to glide serenely on the surface, like a sea otter, in no particular hurry. He also wears goggles, but not to see through. Since he's not watching where he's going, they're a kind of bumper for when someone crashes into him – something that happens once or twice a week.

"I'm like a derelict hull floating in the harbor. People get pissed off at me. You're going along in a reverie, and all of a sudden – bang! It's like running your fist into a wall. But what are you going to do?"

Despite the occasional head-on collision, Adorno wishes he'd discovered the serenity of his back-swimming routine decades ago. He grew up in New York, swimming in Long Island Sound, but spent his career abroad – in Afghanistan, in Somoa, in the Sudan, in Mongolia, in Nigeria, in Nepal, in Naples, in Zambia, and maybe in another country or two he can't remember – and didn't get into swimming until he retired to Austin a decade or so ago.

"Now I can't imagine life without it," he says. "Working in these asshole places that I was trying to civilize, I had one bad problem after another. There were times I wanted to kill someone. I think if I were swimming, I would have been a lot more sane. I don't like the word 'spiritual,' and I don't pray. But I imagine it's like that. You have this harmony. You watch the birds come out and the owls come home as the sun is rising. You ponder things. That's a civilized thing to do."