LEFT: (l-r) Gary, Duane and Ed have left the water.
So, I’m at town hall for a meeting of the bonfire committee — which surprisingly — is in its eighth year. Unfortunately, I’m not going to actually be at the bonfire this year (I’m the one that spends most of the night feeding the fire and keeping the crowd away from doing the same) due to a previous and incredibly ill-timed commitment.
(For those of you so interested, this year’s event will be held December 8. It starts around 4-ish, Santa comes downriver on his 40-foot North Pole Cruiser around dark, magically lights the town Christmas tree and then takes pics with all the good kiddies. Bring your own libations, snacks and lawn chairs.)
Regardless … the impetus behind the bonfire is none other than councilman Eddie D. Ed hands me a sign-in sheet and says, “You going?”
Usually when Ed says that, my knee-jerk response is, okay, because Ed always does the kind of stuff I like to do. He’s the kid my mother always asked if I’d follow off the Brooklyn Bridge. The answer, mom, is yes. (By the way: the other cohort of our triumvirate, Duane, is not at the bonfire meeting, though he has been doing the bonfire since its inception, as well. Duane brings Santa down every year, and has already been victimized into saying, yes, to what I am about to say yes to).
It seems I’ve said yes to a charity polar bear plunge on the following Saturday (which, as this is written, was yesterday). Now, I’ve dived in both northern and southern extremities of the Atlantic Ocean; i.e., sub Arctic and Antarctic. However, I was always clad in the latest drysuits, and with the exception of some frozen snot, and a frozen face between moustache and chin, didn’t suffer too much. But this is a bathing suit-only swim.
Saturday dawns the coldest day of the new winter. Air temp is 34 degrees, but there’s a wind gusting to 20-plus knots, which gives a windchill of about 24. The wind is out of the north and blowing the bay out off the beach. It’s low tide anyway, so this also means we’re going to have to walk at least a football field’s length in water up to our knees before we can “safely” submerge. The water temp should be in the high 40s, but because it’s so shallow the cold has had its way, and it ain’t. I’m not sure what the water temp is (I measured it the day before at between 37 and 43), but it’s damn cold.
There are a surprising number of people here to see this first-time-ever event (it’s to raise money for the Peconic Bay Medical Center ER— and I’m told it raises around $30,000). I guess watching the 75 or so idiots who are going in provides quite a spectacle, having a sort of Christians-to-the-lions feeling about it.
Anyway, to make a long story endless, we make the plunge, make the painful slog back to the beach, where we change into something somewhat warm (an aside: Duane looks and acts like he does this on a regular basis, dressing casually as he acknowledges his fan base. That’s why we refer to him as Da Man).
The event appears to be unbelievably successful. So much so, that I guess they’ll be doing it again next year, and I guess by then, the memory of the pain will have subsided enough to mandate that I partake again. And I know Duane and Ed will be there — along with all the other lunatics — as well.
The things we do for civic consciousness.
(PS: Thanks to all of you who donated!!
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