Beach tags can't deter his quest to swim 365 days a year

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. - Up on the boardwalk, the lunchtime beach crowd was teeming past shops offering body piercings, tattoos, and ice cream cones, and the warm air, redolent of sausage and fried onions, was filled with happy screams from the carnival rides.

But 30 feet away, on Ocean Terrace, Doug Maday was frowning at a parking kiosk that read, "No Wet Bills."

"How does this thing work?" he muttered one day this week, jabbing at its buttons. All he wanted was 10 minutes on the beach.

Since Labor Day, on a promise to himself, the 50-year-old car dealer from Island Heights has been plunging daily into the Atlantic Ocean. Although he was unsure when he started if he could stick to his pledge, this day's trip would mark his 324th consecutive daily swim.

"I usually go after hours," he explained. "So I don't have to pay."

Its mysteries revealed, the kiosk at last spat out a $2 parking receipt, good for an hour. Maday laid it on his dashboard and hurried toward the boardwalk. "I'm mostly just in and out on weekdays," he said.

Skies had been balmy and the sea warm when he took the first plunge of this quixotic personal journey on Labor Day 2014.

"Why does summer have to end?" he had asked himself a few days earlier as he bobbed beyond the breakers of neighboring Seaside Park, where he grew up.

Gazing on the packed beach and kids scampering like plovers at the water's edge, he decided that an unbroken string of daily plunges just might sustain the collective happiness that is the Jersey Shore in summer.

Most of what followed, of course, has been anything but summerlike - or collective. By November beaches were desolate, the water temperature had dropped 20 degrees, to the low 50s, and in February, it hit the 30s, where it stayed through April. Many of his treks were solitary, often in twilight and sometimes at night.

Snowstorms, including three howling nor'easters, punctuated his winter, and Maday developed lingering frostbite on his left heel and the tip of his right index finger - the latter from taking daily iPhone photos for his Facebook page.

Yet on this July afternoon, as he made his way along the boardwalk in a broad-brim hat and round, mirrored sunglasses toward Casino Pier, winter seemed as remote as Pluto.

"What a beautiful day," he marveled. The air was 84 degrees, the water about 72, and the cerulean sky cloudless.

"Now it feels like all these people are visitors to my place," he joked as he threaded through the crowd toward a beach entrance.

"Do I need a badge?" he asked the teenager guarding the entrance, and explained his project.

As he spoke, a woman waiting behind him interrupted. "I know you!" exclaimed Jennifer Regan, 36, of Middletown. "You're the one who goes in every day, even in winter."

When Maday turned around wearing a surprised smile, Regan explained, "I read about you on Facebook."

The beach-tag guard was unswayed. "I don't have discretion" to waive the $6 beach tag fee, he said, and pointed Maday to his supervisor, who let him in.

Maday's objective this afternoon was the water just south of Casino Pier. "This was my home all winter," he said, explaining as he got closer that it had sheltered him from the worst of wind and waves.

When he arrived at the water's edge, he realized he was about 100 feet outside the area protected by lifeguards, in a zone off-limits to swimming.

He really wanted to go in there, though. "This pier is the reason I got through winter," he said.

In a moment, he had stripped down to his bathing suit and was heading into the gentle swells.

"Fweeeeeeep!" went a whistle just as he rose out of the first wave. Turning south, he spotted a lifeguard gesturing with both arms for him to get out. He did.

"Oh, well," Maday said with a laugh. "That was good enough." Except for warm weather weekends, most of his plunges have been about this brief.

True to his word to the beach-tag guards, he was off the beach in under 10 minutes. Back on the boardwalk, he wrapped a towel around his waist, pulled his wet suit off, and pulled up a pair of shorts.

"I'm an expert at disrobing," he joked.

Over lunch of chicken salad and a beer at the Sawmill Tavern in Seaside Park, Maday said he came close to ending his streak in February. That was the day he accompanied his mother to Deborah Heart and Lung Center for pacemaker implant surgery.

"I kept saying to myself, 'I really belong with her,' " he recalled. "I was feeling guilty that I was even thinking I had to get to the beach."

Once she was settled, however, he drove straight to Casino Pier, arriving at 9:45 p.m. The water temperature was 29 degrees, he said, the coldest it would be all year. A friend met him and donned the beach end of a 100-foot tether as Maday splashed under.

Maday requires of himself that he put his whole body - head included - under water each time. He wears the tether when waves and undertow are severe.

Not much scares him anymore, including the recent shark sightings along the Atlantic Coast. "Even a hurricane would be welcome," he said, provided he is not denied access to the beaches.

Once he discovered that he looked forward to even the coldest plunges, he approached the Joan Dancy and PALS Foundation of Red Bank early this year with an offer to help raise money. The nonprofit, which provides in-home care for people with ALS, agreed.

"He's raised about $5,000 for us so far," Mike Damato, the charity's administrator, said last week. "But even more important, he's helped raise awareness of us. And a lot of our homebound patients are living vicariously through him, following him on Facebook every day."

A lawyer in Pennsylvania also has promised to donate $2,500 to the organization if Maday completes all 365 plunges without a miss.

With fewer than 40 days to go, he feels certain he can make it to Aug. 31, when he will host a celebration. He might even push weeks beyond.

"When I first started this, I just hoped I'd get to the end," Maday said. "I never went into this seeking attention for myself. I was always the guy in the background."

"But now, I don't want it to end," he said. "It's really become a part of me."