I so want to go to a polar bear plunge – one of those events where a whole bunch of people run into a body of water in the middle of winter to raise money for a charitable cause. They look like a lot of fun, based on the photos I’ve seen. One of the bigger events, Plungapalooza, is held at Sandy Point State Park in Maryland. According to Google Maps, it’s a shade under an hour’s driving time to Sandy Point State Park from my house.
The reason I bring it up is because I saw an article in the “Fit” section of the Express on Tuesday about this year’s Plungapalooza event that happened on January 24. They ran three photos of the event with the article. Two in particular caught my attention:
Photos: Jonathan Newton/TWP (left), AP/Baltimore Sun/Monica Lopossay (right)
In the photo at left, these three women and the one man look like they’re having loads of fun in the frigid water (it was 37 degrees outside, and who knows how cold the water was). And in the photo at right, this woman looks like she didn’t quite know what she got herself into. I can’t tell in the photo on the right whether she’s in the water yet or not. What I don’t quite understand, though, is why these people are wearing winter hats. I mean, yes, it is winter. It was the middle of January. But if you’re wearing a bikini, as the women in both pictures are doing, what’s the point? And especially if you’re going to run into frigid water on purpose. That hat’s not going to do you a bit of good. It’s particularly amusing in the photo on the right, because the hat looks like the kind of winter hat girls really wear, and it appears like she’s really wearing it in a vain attempt to stay warm (while otherwise wearing a bikini). In the photo on the left, the oversized hat, coupled with the loud pink feather boa, looks like it’s obviously for show.
Still, it certainly looks like fun, doesn’t it? And yes, I do want to go. But not to go swimming, mind you – I’m WAY too much of a wimp in the cold for that. No, I want to take the Kodak out for a wintry whirl, and hang out with the other photographers and bloggers to get the best action shots possible of people raising money for a good cause. That would serve many purposes. First of all, it would be a lot of fun to shoot. Secondly, the event raises money for a good cause. And lastly, by way of a photo set on Schumin Web, it would give some added publicity to the event.
So we’ll see what happens, I suppose – maybe for the 2010 event, I could muster up a plunging team to go with!