The adventure for my fourth trip into the lake begins the night before when I dyed my beard blue – to match my Speedos, naturally. It didn’t end up as dark as I would have liked, but still got the job done. I touched it up a little again the next morning and suited up for the day.<\/p>\n
My folks came up for a visit that morning and we got some lunch before heading to the lake. I had pre-checked in the night before and we got there around noon for the 2 o’clock jump. We wandered around a bit before I decided to strip down to my Speedo.<\/p>\n
It became quickly apparent that I wasn’t the weirdest person there. Which I think is really saying something.<\/p>\n
We staked out a spot neat the lake to get some good photos and I jumped up and down to keep the blood moving. It was 65 degrees out – which is amazing for February but still a little chilly with as much skin as I had exposed.<\/p>\n
Finally, it was time. The first wave of jumpers hit the water and I left my folks at the beach with my bag of clothes and headed to the line up.<\/p>\n
The moment of truth and I was super excited.<\/p>\n
I took a running jump and cannonballed into the 40 degree water.<\/p>\n
I surfaced and gasped a few times to try and catch my breath. When I finally had enough breath back, I took a deep one and held it.<\/p>\n
Then I did an underwater flip. Why?<\/p>\n
Because I’m a badass. Sheesh, how many times do I have to go over that?<\/p>\n
I surfaced again and made my way to the ladder. I was a bit in shock as I made my way back to the beach – looking for my folks and my clothes.<\/p>\n
Only, they weren’t there.<\/p>\n
I wandered back and forth along the beach looking for them – which was a little difficult since I didn’t have my glasses.<\/p>\n
I was a uncomfortable for a bit – but quickly air dried. In very little time at all I stopped shivering and wasn’t even cold.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Mom tracked me down and said they had gone looking for me – and I’d just missed them.<\/p>\n
I found a place to sit and got my warm-up pants and shirt on. I didn’t bother with the changing tent since my speedo was pretty much dry.<\/p>\n
We headed out and stopped to get hot chocolate – and a doughnut which I proceeded to dunk in my hot chocolate. \u00a0We were at Dunkin Doughnuts, after all.<\/p>\n
Back to my place and a change of clothes – then out to dinner before they headed back.
\nGreat weather, crazy day, and a pile of fun. I keep trying to recruit people to jump with me, but so far no takers. Even one of my buddies who jumped last year skipped this time – though it was very cool that he came out to watch anyway.<\/p>\n
I don’t know if I’ll jump next year – though 5 years would be a nice stopping point.<\/p>\n
The best part? I’m pretty much immune to cold for a while afterwards.<\/p>\n
Do your worst, Ohio weather – you’ve got nothing on a full body dip in ice water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The adventure for my fourth trip into the lake begins the night before when I dyed my beard blue – to match my Speedos, naturally. It didn’t end up as dark as I would have liked, but still got the job done. I touched it up a little again the next morning and suited up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1963,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions\/1963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}