the thin line between optimism and delusion…

(continued from below – this is Saturday night at dinner after bowling for hours)

Sometime in the course of dinner Steve tells us that he is planning on
going to Long Beach on Sunday to jump into the ocean with his cousin
Adam, who lives around there, for the annual meeting of the  Long Beach Polar Bear Club.
Libby and I get really excited and decide that we want to go too.  The
only problem?  My flight was set to leave at noon on Sunday. 

No prob, Emily knew the phone number for Delta, so I called and changed my flight to Monday morning. 

After dinner we went to Japas 38,
a ridiculously fun Karaoke bar.  These people were serious about
karaoke.  The song book was in English, Korean, Phillipean, and
Japanese.  Steve had some difficulties finding his song before I got
him out of the Korean section and back to the English part.  We are
really good at Karaoke.  You can’t imagine. 

Sunday morning I woke up, and thought, THERE IS NO WAY I AM JUMPING
INTO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN THIS MORNING.  Because, you see, I’m allergic
to cold water.  Yeah.  But I changed my flight.  GAHHH!!!

It took some work, but eventually, Steve, Libby and I were all on the subway with our egg and cheese bagels on our way to Queens.  Steve’s cousin Adam picked us up in Queens and drove us out to long beach.  Adam is a high school PE teacher and basketball coach.  Once in the car I sort of started to freak out.  I did stop by Duane Reed and pick up some claritin to make sure I didn’t break out into hives, but hives or no hives I was not excited about getting into the water.  I told them that I didn’t want to do it, but that I wouldn’t chicken out.  I knew I was trapped. 

Long Beach is a super cool place.  Very cute and would be so fun in the summer time.  Once we got out to the beach my dread intensified.  I told everyone that I hated them for bringing me.  Seriously, I was FREEZING with my pajama pants, tshirt and fleece and shoes on, and I did NOT want to  strip down to my bathing suit (actually, jennifer’s bathing suit).  The wind was all over the place, and there were THOUSANDS of people. 

Also, I was devastated by the fact that they ran out of t-shirts and sweatshirts before we got there.  Which meant that I wasn’t even going to have any proof of this adventure.   But I think I can order one online. 

They had a table with coffee, and baked goods you could buy, and I tried to make myself feel better withe some coffee.  But even the coffee got cold pretty quickly.  I was in dire straits.

I wish y’all could have seen the ocean.  The waves were HUGE.  I am convinced that if you had gotten far enough into the water you would have been immediately ripped out into open sea by tide.  Crashing waves.  CRASHING.  Huge.  White.  Capped.  Crashing.  Waves. 

I really didn’t think I was going to be able to take my clothes off.  We got to the beach around 1, and the time to Polar Bear was 1:30.  There was a stage, and the radio station was blaring music, and a priest was praying, and there was a huge clock counting down the time till 1:30.  When the countdown got to ten minutes the crowd started to get excited.  There were all kinds of children running around in their bathing suits with no shoes on, and I wanted to yell at them that they were going to catch their death of cold but I refrained. 

When the countdown got to two minutes they started blaring horns and we were in the middle of throng of people working themselves into a frenzy and I was about to have a heart attack.  Seriously, group mentality is really powerful. 

So after a few seconds of deliberation, libby and I looked at each other, laughed hysterically, and started stripping off layers.  Taking the shoes off was the hardest, but we were caught up in the moment and it was quite a rush.  Once we were standing in our bathing suits, libby and I linked arms and fought our way through the mass of people, the bystanders, the parents, and the soaking wet people who had already rushed into the surf. 

One of the things that kept me moving was the fact that the sopping wet people all had smiles on their faces and they were excited.  So libby and I threw ourselves into the crashing waves, we made it to the second level of crashing waves, a little past our waist, while shrieking and laughing, and then ran back out of the water as quickly as possible. 

My legs were on fire.  ON.  FIRE.  But the weird thing?  I was warmer when I got out of the water than I had been before I jumped into the water.  Besides the fact that my legs were on fire, and I couldn’t feel my feet, I wasn’t near as cold as I had been before.  Libby and I put our pajama pants back on, and found Steve and Adam – who did dunk their heads under, and we went back down to the water to take some pictures. 

We found a nice mom to take our picture, and as we posed with our towels at the edge of the water, a HUGE wave crashed up onto shore, soaking our feet and the nice mom who was taking our picture.  My pajama pants were soaked midway up my calf.  I still couldn’t feel my feet.  Actually it was about an hour after I finally put my shoes back on before I feel my feet, although my legs stopped being on fire much more swiftly. 

Overall, it was an awesome day.  I might have more to say about it later – but right now I’m going to the trails to enjoy this wonderful weather, even if it is a little cold for my liking, obviously I’ve handled colder.