Polar Bear Plunge Milwaukee 2009

Well, I decided to go to the lakefront on New Year's Day with my inlaws and do the Polar Bear Plunge again (I did it back in 2007).  My wife and daughter were going shopping so I took my 6 year old son with me.  I had talked him into doing it as well (kids don't seem to have any kind of temperature guage on their skin so I thought he'd do fine).

Well, it was a little colder this year than it was 2 years ago but we went more prepared.  I had boots along for the walk back to the car, hot chocolate for waiting to go in and also the trip home, cookies for an energy boost, extra towels and even some plastic to put down on the sand so everything didn't get wet/sandy.

I had read in the paper that there was some ice you had to go across to get to the water but I never expected what we saw.  The ice was about 10 feet wide and 2 feet tall.  Then, you had to climb or jump down into the water which had floating chunks of ice in it.  Further out in the water were what we referred to a "icebergs".  After looking at all that, I told my son that he wasn't going in and neither was I. 

One brave (or crazy) sould jumped in and tried to make it to the iceberg but only got about 2/3 the way out to it and had to turn back.  Of course, at 12:00 noon, about 2,000 people worked their way over the ice and into the water.  Some just jumped in and got right back out.  Others jumped in, waded out a ways and then came back out.  And a select few dove completely under (they say you have to go in completely for it to "count").

I guess I'll try again next year.  Here's a link to the video I took of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyXzvIX2fCE