Completed: 1. Participate in a Polar Plunge
Every year, an official and organized polar plunge occurs in Northern Virginia at Tim’s Rivershore Restaurant supported by the Prince William County Police Department to benefit the Special Olympics Virginia.
This year was pretty much the opposite of polar, with temperatures in the 70s. We signed up in early January, not expecting mid-February to be so warm. Though the water was in the 40s, I feel like mother nature went easy on me.
Me and my sister before we entered the water:
Because the restaurant doesn’t have parking and we got there early out of concern that the organizers would move up the plunge time because of the impending thunderstorms, we had a lot of time to kill at the restaurant. A test to my limited patience. After a few hours of people watching, it was time to plunge… at the same time the clouds started to roll in, naturally. At first, the organizers were letting small groups plunge one by one, but then the dark clouds started to produce rain. I was anxious to get this thing finished before getting electrocuted by lightning. They finally gave up on the one-by-one strategy and let us all go in.
Finally. I ran in and tried to move as quickly as possible. It was super fun. Despite the higher temps, I lost feeling in my legs at the halfway point. On my way back, a drunk stranger splashed water at me for no reason. So I splashed him back in the face because I’m generous with reciprocity.
Kris joined us, but had no interested in going into a frigid body of water, so he was our documentarian.
Once we were finished, we immediately ran to the shuttle, got in our car and the skies opened. A hail storm hit about 20 minutes after we got out of the water. We got out just in time.
It wasn’t very polar, so I’m not sure this even counts, but nevertheless, our little team raised over $400 (the entire event raised $85,000). It didn’t turn out exactly the way I had expected it to with the mild weather, but I’m glad we participated in the fundraiser.
-Lyssa