Thanks, Brian. Yes, I’m now making the final preparations for the astounding feat and I will, in fact, be using my astounding feet (ha ha) as the chief means of propulsion to accomplish my incredible publicity stunt designed to astonish and amaze. For I plan on April 9th to don my special astonishing slash amazing uniform, take my position in the Portland Maine Municipal Starting Blocks, and proceed to swim across the United States of America.

The plan is to begin in Maine, swim down New England following the I-95 corridor, picking up I-70 near Baltimore, and swimming west. This leg is where I’ll run into some difficult terrain in the form of the Appalachian mountains. My coaching team has been working with me and we’ve developed a pretty good technique for swimming up a mountain and back down the other side, so I think I’ll be able to cross them in just a few weeks. Then it’s smooth ground straight until St Louis.

Now, St Louis is where I will find the biggest challenge of swimming across the United States of America: water. There’s a large river called the Mississippi that runs north to south in that area and from what I understand it’s a pretty difficult thing to avoid. My coaching team and I considered altering the route to go around the Mississippi, but that would take me into Canada, which the brand team pointed out is not technically part of the old United S of A, and some of the public might take issue with a more internationalist course. Fortunately, it’s very broad and at times quite shallow, so I’ve checked with the judges and they’ve approved my request to at this point take a brief respite from swimming and wade across one of the shallower parts of the Old Miss, fighting off sharks and hippopotamuses and Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, heroically coming ashore in the western two-thirds of the country and resuming the great swim.

From that point, it’s considerably less dramatic the rest of the way to California. I’ve been swimming through cornfields and soy fields and wheat fields for sixteen years to prepare for this feat, so the journey shouldn’t be too much of a problem until I hit the Rockies. These have the same general triangular shape as the Appalachians, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. However, right after the Rockies comes an area known as Monument Valley. Now, unlike the Appalachians and the Rockies, which are more gradual in their slope, Monument Valley is more uppy-downey. It’s a flat sort of area with some straight up-and-down buttes dotting the landscape here and there. It will be a challenge since I haven’t swam straight up before as it defies gravity as well as the will of God, but I’m always willing to give something a try. Of course, once I reach the summit of each butte, it’s hundreds of feet straight down again, which makes for rough swimming, but I believe in my coaches and they’ve assured me that I can handle plowing through sandstone with only minimal psychological damage.

And from there, it’s a straight shot through the desert and the Sierra Nevadas to Oakland. At this point, I will plan on taking a BART train across the Bay as I’ve never actually swam through water and I don’t have time to learn how before the big event. This alteration didn’t need the judges’ approval as I will be swimming across the seats while on the train. I will emerge from the train at the Embarcadero station, swim up to the street, and make my way across the city until I reach the Golden Gate Bridge.

Now, some people have asked me why I’m doing this. It is in fact an effort to raise money for research into the cause of gun violence. The current research indicates that it’s most commonly from the bullet aspect of the gun violence scenario, but we would like to replicate those results as many times as possible, preferably next door the next time they’re having one of their midnight dance parties. Thanks to my online network of donors I have raised enough money for this effort to pay for the food I will require for the first three weeks of this seventeen-year endeavor. If you’d like to contribute, please go to fatuous-imbecile.biz and click on Donate. Thanks, Brian.