8th Annual Passion Plunge
fred and i left the house at about 10:15 am to drive up to hull, ma for the passion plunge on saturday. it was kind of amusing when we started to pass my mom's car on rte 3 while she was also driving to hull. we rode right along side her for a couple minutes, me hanging out the window, waving papers, before she noticed us. at first she thought we were just jerky drivers who couldn't make up their minds and scowled and then she noticed it was us and started frantically waving. i thought it would've been funny, in a bad chevy chase movie sort of way, if i lost all of my papers and they got stuck on my mom's windshield making her lose control of her car and getting stuck under an 18 wheeler as a result. realizing that would only be funny in a movie, i quickly closed our window and my mom followed us the rest of the way there. which is good really because i noticed later that ben, being the only person with my mom, was holding the navigation papers ever so seriously and he can't read.
we got there first and registered. it was nuts in the beach house at nantasket. 700 plungers were there and at least that many spectators. fred and i both got cheapy backpacks and a nice shirt and then we waited around for everybody else in our group. i saw a couple people i know from different goups in the worcester area. collin, one of my favorite athletes, from shrewsbury was also plunging.
finally our costumes and the rest of our group showed up. we were plunging as the pied piper and the rats that followed him. mrs. t was the pied piper and since katie made her costume, hers was brilliant. she had a pink feather that had come off of the pink wings i had worn to the bowling tournament a couple of weeks ago. (a dare of sorts.) but the rat costumes were horrid. granted they were going to be submerged in salt water and then tossed, but for the amount of sewing the woman who made them did, they could've been more rat=like and presentable. the costumes were essentially big sacks with elastic around the top and bottom and a weird filmy tape for a tale safety pinned to the asses. the masks and hoods were alright but we had to cut holes in the sacks for our arms. luckily, katie had come prepared with scissors. unlike me, who had had her hands on a pair that morning and then assumed that mrs. t would remember when she brought the costumes. somewhere along the line of arm-hole cutting katie's gingerbread men scissors broke in two so when we got to my costume, she stabbed one scissor into a side while kris stabbed my other arm hole out. i wish my mom had gotten a picture of that; it was probably pretty amusing to see.
we walked around the building, some of us bare-legged, others bare-armed, for the costume parade- they always make us do parades at these special olympic events. and then we waited to plunge. at about 1:30 we walked the 100 yards from the bath house to the beach. we were herded through this path that was lined with ropes like sheep, or lemmings. you could see the water approaching, ever closer and ever closer, but you couldn't slow down before you walked in, you just kind of had to... do it. what was scary for me was that a girl about my age, who must have been the first to plunge, was coming back being carried between two emts while i was just about to go in. i told fred to keep an eye on me and then that was it, we ran into the water.
immediately my legs were tingling and went numb. katie and mr. t were on their way out of the water while we were on our way inm we kept walking and walking and then realizing we'd never get anywhere before we'd have to go back we just fell in. i went forward, fred backwards. he went all the way under, but as i had had a really bad cold all week i didn't want to get my head wet. everything else went in though. into the 39 degrees water. even my hair was wet. and then we got out.
it was the weirdest sensation i ever felt, a weird mix of being able to feel some parts of my body and not others. my legs, having been submerged the longest, felt like they'd absorbed all the water they'd been in contact with and felt three times heavier and thicker than they did before i went in. my mom was holding our towels and had gotten lost amongst the crowd so fred and i had to trek back to the bath house drip, drip, dripping in the 25 degrees air. luckily for me, mrs. t was done with her towel and so let me use hers once we got back. i changed behind it in the middle of the locker room with every other women who plunged and that was that. i have never been so grateful for thermal socks in my life. somebody gave us a plastic bag and i dumped all our clothes in it and then back to the group.
finally my mom located us, laden with five towels that never got used, and lamented that she just held the camera over her head and hoped to get some pictures of us as she couldn't see anything for the crowd of over a thousand spectators. she took one more picture of me and fred, our faces and hands red and purple. and that was it. the storm was impending so we all booked it home.
i still couldn't feel my feet, so i stripped them of shoes and socks and planted them on the dash right over the vents looking like a women giving birth.
my mom treated me and fred to lunch here in randolph and then she and ben went home.
it was all pretty fun, and i think now that i know how it works, we could probably get much better pictures next year. and lesson learned, wave ferociously, and do a little marco polo with the person carrying your towels right before you plunge.
