My Midnight Club

08/04/2026

Bartłomiej Kubkowski first attempted to swim across the Baltic Sea in 2021. He made it 71 miles (115 kilometers) before the sea stopped him. He came back in 2022 and got 73 miles (117 kilometers). In 2023, snow fell on him in mid-August and his team pulled him out at 81 miles (130 kilometers). In 2025, his fourth attempt, he swam for over 52 hours and made it 99 miles (159 kilometers), just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the Polish coast, before exhaustion and deteriorating conditions forced him out of the water.

Across four failed attempts, he had swum 324 miles (521 kilometers) of the Baltic Sea without ever reaching Poland.

He came back in 2026.

On Friday, July 31, Kubkowski entered the water at Kåseberga on the southern coast of Sweden. The rules were simple and brutal: no sleeping, no touching the support boat at any point, no stopping. Food and fluids were passed to him on a pole while he kept swimming. He had to reach the beach in Dziwnów, Poland, under his own power and remain standing without assistance for the achievement to count.

For the first day, he swam. For the second day, he swam. After two consecutive nights without sleep, the hallucinations started. His team later described moments when he lost touch with reality entirely, his mind going somewhere else while his body kept pulling stroke after stroke through cold Baltic water.

He kept going.

After 56 hours and 100 miles (160 kilometers), Kubkowski clambered onto the beach at Dziwnów. Hundreds of people were waiting. He walked out of the water unaided, visibly destroyed, and stood on Polish soil for the first time since he had left it years earlier chasing this goal.

He was the first person in history to swim across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland.

The swim raised over $200,000 for Cancer Fighters, a foundation supporting children with cancer.

07/23/2026

07/10/2026

Forty-three days. Alone. Twenty-four hundred miles of open Pacific Ocean.

Kelsey Pfendler, a 30-year-old Grand Canyon river rafting guide, just became the fastest person — man or woman — to ever row solo from California to Hawaii.

She launched from Monterey, California on May 21 in a 21-foot rowboat named Lily.

No support crew. No stops. Just her against the ocean for over six weeks straight.

She rowed through blistered hands, brutal sleep deprivation, capsizing risk, and unpredictable currents that could push her miles off course overnight.

She ate close to 4,000 calories a day just to keep her body from breaking down.

She made her own fresh water, cooked her own meals, and kept herself sane with audiobooks and podcasts in the middle of nowhere.

On July 3, she rowed into Honolulu Harbor to a crowd of hundreds waiting to cheer her in.

The numbers are staggering.

The previous women's record for this crossing stood at 86 days, held by Lia Ditton. Pfendler didn't just beat it — she nearly cut it in half.

She also blew past the outright record of 52 days, set by a man in 2014, making her the fastest person of any gender to ever complete this row.

She's now the first American woman, the youngest woman, and the fastest woman — and fastest person, period — to row solo from California to Hawaii.

Before she reached shore, she said this was never just about her. She wanted anyone watching to feel a little more capable in their own life, whatever their version of "a big, hard, scary thing" looks like.

Forty-three days. One woman. One boat. A record that stood for years, gone.

04/04/2026

“I’d get up there and have to tell everybody that it wasn’t a stand-up comedy show,” Lyons, 31, told me on a recent call. “It was sometimes a struggle to explain to people that this film is a glimpse into my life outside of comedy.”

Read the full story at the link in comments.

03/05/2026

To all the back of the packers, we see your grit! ❤️😎