Polar Bear day 2007

February 10, 2007. Not exactly our crowning achievement, but I'd say a reasonably successful year, given the circumstances. The second Saturday in February is something of a holiday for me and the rest of the Quincey chapter of the Polar Bear Club. Generally, the big Polar Bear Splash is just one event (albeit the biggest spectator event) of Quincey's Tip-Up Festival, a celebration consisting of a parade, a pageant, snowmobile races, ice fishing and ice sculpture carving, amongst other events. However, the 2006 festival didn't make a whole lot of money, thus was unable to finance the 2007 festival. Ultimately, the festival was canceled.

This spelled disaster for our little rag-tag group of thrill-seekers, as the festival was an excellent source of advertising and word-of-mouth buzz. Who's going to take it upon themselves to hang out at a frozen lake just to watch a bunch of people run their adrenaline off the charts. If you're there anyway, enjoying the festivities, then Polar Bearing is definitely a stop you have to make. But to make a special trip for it? Also, because the festival was canceled, we were worried people may assume the jump was canceled, too, thus people wouldn't know to come out to jump, providing for a smaller group of Polar Bears. These were obstacles we though might cripple the Polar Bear Splash of 2007.

At this time, it's probably best for me to initiate the uninformed as to the exact nature of Polar Bearing, as many people are still unaware of the intense nature of the event. What we do on the sencond Saturday of February every year, in the dead of Winter, is go out to Marble Lake in Quincey, Michigan, and a fellow by the name of Charlie brings his chainsaw. Charlie cuts a hole in the ice covering the lake, about ten foot by ten foot. The rest is pretty uncomplicated. Two by two, we plunge into the freezing water, paddle across the hole and are lifted back out of the icy goodness, like a line of confused otters mistaking a hole in the ice in the middle of Hodunk, USA for Noah's Ark. Of course, there are EMTs on shore, just in case, but we've never used them. This provides for an adrenaline rush so intense, you have to question your own sobiety. I haven't experienced too many extreme sports, but I have been water rafting, and this is a very similar rush as that is. I don't think I can do justice to this experience with words, it's something that must be done to be understood.

Anyway, my good friend John, who got me into this madness nine years ago, is the president of our chapter of the Polar Bear Club. So upon hearing of Tip-Up's cancelation, he knew he had to take it upon himself to make this year a success. He did his best to advertise, appearing on numerous local radio shows and taking out newspaper ads. Pretty much all of our core regulars returned, and even a few more showed up. Unfortunately, this was was of our smallest years since I've been a part of this, only having about 15 people participate. However, John did a fanastic job with the print media, as we had newspapers covering us from all over West Michigan. One of the things that probably hurt us was the weather, which happened to be negative 17 degrees that day, which always makes it tough to jump into freezing ice water. However, it's hard to be disappointed with the result.