Feats of Adventure Dance in Her Head

Kym Kucera admits that she is a kid at heart and soul.

“In fact, I have to check myself at school to make sure I act like a teacher, not a kid,” said the 28-year-old Seal Beach woman and fifth-grade instructor. “If I have an opportunity to play, I’m going to play.”

It’s no wonder she feels that way, considering she lives an adventurous life that includes rock and mountain climbing, back-packing, roller-skating and five triathlons that she finished in fifth, sixth, second, third and first place.

She also won first place overall female in last month’s 10-kilometer Seal Beach Autumn Run and in August was part of a team that paddled an outrigger canoe from Huntington Beach to Santa Catalina Island.

This month, the teacher at Eastwood School in Westminster set a Guinness Book of World Records’ mark by pedaling a 15-foot-long sea cycle for 25.7 miles from Catalina to the Seal Beach Pier.

She pedaled a bicycle atop two pontoons and connected to a propeller to perform the feat.

“I like to have fun and adventure,” said Kucera, who trained for a month by riding a stationary bicycle for 50 minutes at a time. She also rode the sea cycle for two hours around Naples Island in Long Beach. On weekends, she took 60-mile bicycle trips along the coastline.

The training paid off. She completed the rigorous sea cycle ride in a little over five hours, averaging a bit more than 5 m.p.h. in sometimes-choppy waters.

Kucera said a school of leaping porpoises kept her company much of the way, providing distraction from the punishing pedaling. “My legs got very tired,” she said.

The idea for the trip came from a friend who challenged her to bike to Catalina, Kucera said. “I guess I was ready for an adventure.”

On an earlier adventure, Kucera took a summer camp trip to Switzerland that ended with her living there for three years--until her mother suggested that she should come home and finish her college education.

“I went there for a summer job and just didn’t come back,” she said. “It was a great experience and an education in itself, since I learned two other languages and met a lot of people. But my mother was right.”

A graduate of Cal State Long Beach, Kucera said she also folk dances and serves as an assistant scoutmaster for a Los Alamitos Boy Scout troop.

“I go on outings with the Boy Scouts,” she said. “I’m an outdoorsy, sportsy-type person. I have to be active.” During the summer, she works as a junior lifeguard instructor.

But Kucera isn’t planning another adventure, at least not right now.

“I like fun and exciting things, but I’m going to be a teacher for a while,” she confided.

Recalling the Catalina bike trip, Kucera said she was pleased at the support her students gave her. Some, who were studying nutrition in class, kept track of her protein and high carbohydrate diet during her training, she said. And a bunch of them and their parents showed up at the finish line to cheer her on.

“That really made me feel good,” she said. “It was just neat.”

Last May, Charles (Chip) Margelli, 37, of Garden Grove, traveled to an uninhabited island near the Soviet Union with 10 other ham radio operators and together made contacts with 41,000 other ham radio operators from 140 countries.

At the time, Margelli said, “it was just plain fun and was the highlight of my life,” despite some primitive accommodations and winds that created havoc with the camp site.

Now, the veteran ham radio operator and 11 others in February will take part in a 12-day expedition to Bouvet Island near Antarctica, and they hope to make 75,000 radio contacts during their stay there.

Following the contacts, the operators and the sending team exchange confirmation cards that authenticate the contact.

Margelli said ham operators often vie with one another to see who can make the most difficult and exotic radio contacts.

This will be Margelli’s third expedition. In 1984, he went to China with a team of operators. “It really is fun,” he said.

Acknowledgements--Irvine Co. Vice Chairman Thomas H. Nielsen, a 1948 Fullerton High School graduate who is a member of the school’s Hall of Fame, has been selected for membership in the California Public Education Hall of Fame. He was chosen from among 60 nominees throughout the state.