The story’s author, Bonnie Tsui, chose to focus on four very different travel companies and the experiences they provide. Swim Art, for instance, leads swimmers to both salt-water (the San Francisco Bay around Alcatraz) and fresh-water (Lake Tahoe) locales in northern California, and the London-based SwimTrek offers a two-day swimming expedition down the Thames River that incorporates frequent rest stops at riverside pubs (for local color, I suppose, and “re-fueling”).