Polar Plunge

On Feb 8, Russell participated in the St. George 2013 Polar Plunge to benefit the Special Olympics.  He participated with a bunch of guys from the Fire Department.  The weather was really bad that day; it was only about 39 degrees outside the water and it was raining and even snowing at one point.  Perfect time to jump into a pool of freezing water right!  Here's Russell to tell you all about his foolishness!

I was sitting at home one night when I got a text from Eric Dansie asking me if I wanted to do the Polar Plunge with the Fire Department. At first I was like "heck no that is crazy." He kept texting me funny emails and how fun it would be, so I took the plunge and said I would be there. I was excited at first then Tiffany said, "If you get sick you get to stay at you mom's house." So I wussed out a little and told her that I would just take pictures and watch. Boy was I in for a big surprise when I got there that morning. I got done working out that morning and started to drive over to the pool and it started to snow. I thought there is definitely no way I am getting in that water now. As you can tell from the pictures above, I got to the pool and saw Nick and he had on a pair of Turn out pants. I was like that is an awesome idea. He then proceeded to tell me that we are all wearing them when we jump into the pool. Oh boy I thought, I have no choice but to jump in now. If I did not jump in I would be the laughing stock of the Fire department, so I grabbed a pair of turnouts and put them on.

The idea that the guys had as you can see from the picture above, was to put on our pants and take off our shirts and dive in that way. As we waited to jump in we took some fun pictures with all of us and a lot of people were way excited to see that we were jumping in topless. Did I forget to tell you it was cold outside and the cold wind that blew by did not help either. Eric also bought little fire hats to wear when we jumped in the pool. To make the pool even colder, they dumped in a lot of crushed ice.

  

Here were are getting ready to jump in the water and  lining up to swim across the pool. Capt. Nelson said one, two, three and one after the other we dived into the water. As I jumped in and hit the water I thought holy $&;%#$ it is cold! As I was swimming I was pushing ice out of the way. I have never swam so fast in my life to get to the other side of the pool. Here we are at the end and Capt Hafen is the last one to get out. He was doing back strokes to the other end of the pool. Needless to say I was glad that I was able to do it and jump in to help raise money. We all had a blast.