Evan Smith and Bill Palladino had thrown the idea around for years, but for a while it was nothing more than idle banter – the type of “wouldn’t it be great” thing that seems doable after a few beers but quickly fades when the realities of life set back in.

What if, they thought, they could swim in all five Great Lakes in a single day? Not 24 hours, but in the span of sunup to sundown. What an adventure it would be. They wouldn’t be the first, but they’d still have a heck of a story to tell.

The longtime friends decided this year to turn talk into action. On June 20 (the summer solstice), their plan is to start out from Toronto with a swim in Lake Ontario at sunrise and finish in Traverse City with a Lake Michigan dip before the sun sinks below the horizon.

“When you get to this age, one of the promises you make to yourself is to say yes more often, because you’ve spent a lifetime saying no because you’re too busy,” Palladino, 65, tells The Ticker. “You don’t have the opportunity for the stories unless you put yourself out there.”

Smith, 71, shares this thinking. The former Food for Thought vice president and Cherry Capital Foods CEO is already on quite a lake-based tear after taking a dip in Lake Michigan for each of the last 242 consecutive months, and he’s ready for the next adventure.

“There’s nothing worse than thinking about your own funeral and having there be people sitting around trying to think of something memorable to share,” he says. “We’ve all talked about this, but it takes somebody saying ‘I’m going to do this, and here’s the day – are you in?’”

Once the longtime friends made a firm commitment to themselves and each other, they realized they probably needed some help to split up the driving. Enter another longtime pal and Empire resident Timothy Young, who signed up after seeing Palladino’s call for help on social media. 

“My objective is going to be to get them from point A to point B safely and quickly and efficiently, and if there’s time for me (to also) jump in the water, I will,” Young says.

The gang expects to arrive in Toronto the night before the big day. There are many ways such a trip could have been plotted, but they feel good about what they have mapped out.

“So really, it's just mapping the shortest distance between two points. The biggest (leg) is getting from Lake Erie to Lake Superior,” Palladino says. “That’s the longest trip, so that track is going to be where all the stories are told.”

They say they’re too old to be nervous about anything tied to such a lighthearted adventure – if it happens, great, if not, no big deal – but they’ll still have some fingers crossed to avoid any major traffic issues that could slow them down.

The summer solstice was chosen strategically (it’s the longest day of the year, giving them the largest possible window to complete this adventure) but it also has symbolic significance. Palladino, a longtime local consultant, has hosted gatherings on both the winter and summer solstices in years past. To him, these are very important days.

“I love to hang on solstices as important times to create ritual in your life,” he says. “Since time immemorial, people have looked at those moments…as special.”

Young, 62, agrees.

“To me, it's always been a day to stop and pause and be intentional about something, to take stock in the fact that…every day isn’t necessarily just a repeat, even though our lives sometimes feel like a repeated cycle,” he says.

Although the trip is just for fun without any sort of fundraising component, the friends hope the trip will help raise awareness and generate more discourse about the largest collection of fresh water on the planet. All three men have been deeply involved in local environmental projects over the years, and Palladino was particularly inspired by a recent conference focused on technologies to protect the Great Lakes.

“I got to thinking, what a great connector it would be, to put your body in all of that water,” he says.

With less than a week to go, the excitement is building. Once it’s all said and done, the friends – all of whom are well traveled – will have a sense of satisfaction and reward.

“It's still just going to be bar talk. That's the only real place we’ll have to tell the story anyways,” Young says. “But now it’s going to be something that we actually did instead of something we want to do.”