Tuesdays With Micaela #1 – A Day at the Beach

My blogging New Years resolution was to blog every Tuesday. So even though Leah already blogged today, I am trumping her post because there is no way I am going to lose on the first Tuesday of the year!

Kent and I started this year out in an interesting way. For as long as I’ve known him, Kent has been a water rat. He is not afraid of diving right into the water, no matter how cold. His dream has always been to do a polar bear swim on New Years Day. For those of you who don’t come from arctic temperatures, polar bear swims happen all over the place on January 1st in Canada. All of the absolutely insane people who want to participate go to the beach and run into freezing cold water. Us normal people wait until July. Our friends Dane and Michelle came along to cheer Kent on. For them and I there was no question – we knew there was no way we were going in there.

We arrived in Port Dover, where the swim was happening, and Kent and I went into a store where all of the future polar bears were waiting. The temperature was negative 10 degrees celsius. Kent got dressed in his bathing suit and robe and they listened to a pep talk where they were told that if you don’t put your head under, it doesn’t count! Everyone started chanting “THE WATER IS WARM! THE WATER IS WARM!” over and over. They were also told that the lake had frozen over the night before and there was a hold cut into the ice which all the polar bear swimmers had to jump into! I hugged Kent a lot and told him to be careful.

I tried to watch Kent jump in but there was so much bumpy ice that was really hard to walk on, and soo many people, that I couldn’t see a thing which was disappointing. Definitely not a spectator sport. Here’s what I did see.

I spotted him with the other swimmers before they went in… and didn’t see him until:

After he was already finished. Smiling, which is a good sign!

The crowd.

Finally inside! Celebrating the fact that he is a full fledged polar bear.

Kent said he probably would do it again next year, but he definitely doesn’t have me convinced to do it, even though he took it like a champion.

Would you ever do a polar bear swim?