Adrienne G. (2L)
As I write this I’m sitting poolside in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida for Spring Break, so a concept like jumping into a frozen lake for charity is even more completely foreign and insane to me than it was when I actually attended the Minneapolis Polar Plunge just a few weekends ago. However, there were some very brave souls from the University St. Thomas School of Law who took the plunge hosted at Lake Calhoun in Uptown to benefit the Special Olympics. Team St. Thomas Cat-Cicles included Salena Tumini, Blake Hatling, Charlye McMillan, Mark Davis, Shaun Parks, Lee Peterson, Seth Dickey, Alex Ginsberg and Claire Tralle and others that I probably missed (i.e. if you’re not listed on the Facebook group). Seriously, cheers to you guys, because I don’t know if I could do it. I mean, they actually had to break the sheet of ice covering the lake in order to make the event even possible.
I’d heard of Polar Plunges before but had never even been to one, let alone participated. People from all over the Twin Cities area attended, dressed up in all manner of costumes and themes and took the dive. Probably the most impressive thing I saw was a group of blind students who fearlessly walked right up to the platform, handed their canes off to the attendant in the water and jumped right in. It was pretty amazing, and there I was, snapping photos and shivering in my hoodie, winter coat, warm hat and gloves on the shoreline.
