#1: New Year's Day Polar Plunge

I am kicking this blog off with a splash.

The point of this blog is to document trying one new thing every day - or almost every day.  I'm allowing myself a little wiggle room there.

The goal of this blog is to push me to establish new habits and routines, by way of checking in often and connecting with all the beauty that life can be.

The title of this blog?  It's a kind of stupid title with some personal significance for me, and I think that's how you're supposed to name blogs, right?

The "new things" that I will document here may be big, or small, or anything at all.  Sublime, ridiculous, profound and mundane.  Sometimes it may just be a new photograph.  But it'll be new.

So, without further ado: New Year's Day.  11 AM, Manzanita Beach.  Air temperature: 39F.  Water temperature:  -12F?  I don't know.


This wasn't my first Polar Plunge, nor, honestly, was it the worst I've seen it at Manzanita Beach.  I've been jumping in the Pacific Ocean here since I was a baby, in all kinds of weather.  At least today the sun was out.

But this is my first time participating in Manzanita's annual New Year's Day Polar Plunge, a semi-organized lark that drew maybe 100 other idiots and their largely supportive families.  (Hence in the pictures you see a large crowd of mostly clothed people.)

Mill around in winter weather gear for half an hour.  Strip down to skivvies and crowd around a not-nearly-large-enough bonfire for a group photo.  Then the countdown.

Right as they did the countdown I was starting to re-tie the drawstring on my swim trunks.  As we hit "go" I found myself pushed along by the crowd and never got my drawstring tied back up.  So I was at maximum risk of full moon fever during the entire plunge.  Fortunately matters stayed contained.

A mad dash out into the surf, up to about my knees, then I threw yourself headfirst at the nearest wave. Done. But then I started to feel it: that felt good.  I could do another.  And another.  Okay, three waves is good, don't stay out here all day.

I dashed back up the beach to the fire, dodging spectators with cameras, to stand by the fire long enough to remember it was way too small.

I started to feel the hypothermia hit.  Cold in the core, fingers and toes blast-chilled.  The wind was up. I chittered into my clothes as my wife and son stood by to help, then ran ahead them back to the car to heat up.


It was a nice way to clear out the cobwebs.