It has been on my calendar for a few weeks now to attend what I believe is the 13th annual Polar Bear Plunge held at Sandy Point State Park to raise money for Maryland’s Special Olympics. A girlfriend of mine had a team with her Rams Head co-workers and I had agreed to be her dry buddy at the event standing by with warm clothing, jackets, and of course, the Flip to capture it all on film. (Check out our brief home movie of the experience: Polar Bear Plunge 2009) Knowing full well that the event was to draw around 13,000 people, another girlfriend and I planned to drive into the park around noon, an hour before the first plunge was to take place.
Ever the optimists, we proceeded along the back road, past all the other Plungers parking on the side of the road and continued to the gate of the park only to be told by a rather gruff police officer that we needed a permit to enter the park. “Are you attending the Plunge” he asked. This was one of those moments where we could have said any number of things followed in a redneck accent by “here’s yur sign,” but we kept the sarcastic comments to ourselves. We did not have the necessary permit to enter the park and turned back around to hightail it to a shuttle location so we could get back to the park in time to watch our friend plunge into icy Bay water on a day with a 27 degree wind chill factor.
By the time we got back to the park we had 10 minutes to spare and nowhere in the sea of Plungers could we find our friend. We saw plenty of people in bikinis, speedos, costumes, funky hats, team uniforms all surging toward the Bay. But no friend. Via text message we learned we missed her plunging and went on a mission through the massive parking lots filled with buses to try to find her team’s bus headquarters. No luck. We go to the Rams Head Live stage. No friend there, but we did see a young lady dressed in a polar bear-esque bikini complete with polar bear paw gloves on her hands. It was…interesting.
Another hour, multiple text messages, two bags of popcorn, two fortune cookies, and three laps around a tent filled with wet, mostly drunk people later we decided to call it a day. Feeling somewhat defeated in not finding our friend we made our way back to the line to get on the shuttle. Turns out the line was a chaotic mess of hundreds, possibly thousands of people, waiting for buses. Thinking it would be faster to walk our way out of the park and call for a ride, we hoofed it. It was blustery, brisk, we passed a dead raccoon in addition to another form of unidentifiable road kill and finally made it to a meeting place where another girlfriend came to our rescue with her Jeep. Needless to say, we walked off the popcorn.
In the end, a valiant effort was made by all and we are very proud of our plunging friend and the thousands of others who raised money in today’s annual event.
