The Plunge!

I will start by saying, that this was NOT my finest hour (or day for that matter). On Saturday I participated in the Polar Bear Plunge in Sea Isle City, NJ. The point of the event is to jump into the ocean in the middle of winter, just to say you did. In order to pull this off you have to get drunk enough that you aren’t worried about the cold weather or the freezing water. In that respect, I passed with flying colors. In any other measure of human being, I failed pretty miserably…

The day started off well, a hearty breakfast to “lay a base” for drinking. Eggs, home fries, and toast was the breakfast I chose and it was pretty delicious. A fine start indeed…the first problem I noticed was that is was goddamn freezing outside. Normally this time of year in NJ it is about 40 degrees, but Saturday was 30 degrees with a strong wind, so it felt like it was 14 outside. My brain immediately began dissecting this problem, and in logic that can only be described as fundamentally sound, it decided that I needed to drink more to compensate for the c old weather. (What could be the flaw in that logic?)

We arrive at the house for the pre-plunge festivities around 10:30. I had my guido outfit on (no pictures yet, maybe tomorrow) and I was ready to start drinking. The only problem was, I forgot that I can’t really drink that much….Don’t get me wrong, I can drink, but it is usually beer. The specialty of the plunge this year was Jameson and Jagerbombs, which was a problem because whenever you invite one of those guys to the party, there is always trouble. Now both of them show up…I am totally screwed. I started out by drinking some beer and then doing some shots, I am certainly feeling good, but not that drunk yet. Then all of a sudden, the Jameson shots start and then………….nothing. I literally don’t remember anything from 12:30 – 6:30.

I woke up in a bed, with about 20 around me and cheering that I moved for the first time in about 2 hours. I obviously inquire about what happened during this horrendous black-out and find out that I started chugging Jager from the bottle (never a good idea) and finished the bottle of Jameson before 12:30. After that I was a drunken mess, but it really got bad after I jumped into the ocean. I think I went into a state of shock and simply couldn’t function. I stumbled back to the house and puked for about 3 hours. It sounds pretty terrible, but when you can’t remember a damn thing, it really isn’t that bad.

At this time I would like to publicly apologize to my fiancée, who took care of me in my time of need….ladies and gentlemen, the Polar Bear Plunge 2010. Here’s looking forward to participating in (and remembering) 2011!

The evidence: