Taking the plunge (but not in the marital sense)

Well, I did the Polar Plunge this afternoon.

My training began a few weeks ago when I was up in D.C. and stood outside of Circuit City with some friends from college to buy a Wii (Nintendo's latest gaming console and pronounced "we," for those not in the know). We started standing in line at 8:30 in the morning in the freezing cold for 2 or more hours. I hadn't originally planned on buying a Wii for a while, much less doing something stupid for one. But Aaron really wanted one so we all went, and as dumb as it might sound to say, "I stood in a line in the cold in the early morning to buy a Wii," it sounds a lot stupider to say you went through all of that to watch someone ELSE buy a Wii. So we endured the cold and now I own a Wii. You can read the full Gig story here.

Anyhow, since then, my training has consisted of ... well, not really thinking about it. We all met for brunch this morning and then headed out to the beach where we wandered around and looked at all the other crazies. I was dressed as Superman, of course.

To round out the superheroes, we also had Catwoman, Wonder Woman and "Ghetto Aquaman" (as he put it), although all of us in the group that were plunging dressed up in some form or another. I got my picture taken a lot because who doesn't want to get their picture taken with Superman? So that was pretty cool. Wonder Woman got that a lot, too, as did Catwoman some. And true to the running joke in the comic book world, no one paid much attention to Aquaman.

The temperature was in the low 40s and it was pretty windy, but it was sunny, which helped. When it finally came time for the plunge, they corralled us all like cows to the slaughter and we went into the water. I would have preferred to have been able to run in and just dive under, but there were so many people (last year, they had more than 3,000; I would guess it was a similar number this year), that wasn't really feasible. So it was sort of a slow death march to the water -- just with a lot more whooping, yelling and splashing. But I did a quick wade up to my chest (they told us not to go all the way under so they could tell if people were drowning), splashed around for a bit and came out.

And then I ran back to where our stuff was to get a dry towel.

It was invigorating to say the least. The cold water really takes your breath away but after you dry off and get changed into warm clothes, it's not so bad. Granted, I'm doing the Polar Plunge in southern Virginia; there are much colder places to do this sort of thing that are a lot more hardcore. But it was a pretty darned fun day overall and I'm glad I did it. I'm already thinking of ways to do it even bigger and better next year.

For more of the photos, just click on the one above. Thanks to everyone who lent their support and well wishes.