A few hours prior to going ice fishing Friday, I Googled how to survive if the ice should give way beneath my feet. I watched as a professor who studies hypothermia submerged himself in an icy lake for minutes then, calmly but with chattering teeth, proceeded to tell the cameraman how one should act if one ever finds himself minutes away from a cold, wet death.
The first step was to calm down, he said. You will naturally overreact to the freezing temperatures and rush to extricate yourself from piercing liquid around you. Don't. If you flail about you'll tire quickly. Your muscles will stop working. You'll become exhausted. You will die.
You have a short, maybe five minute, window before your core temperature dips into the danger zone. To get out, you simply begin to kick your feet so they rise to the top of the water (this looks hilariously like the first lesson of a swim class for 5-year-olds but without the bubble blowing). Use the energy from your kick to push your body on top of the ice and viola, you're in the clear. Well, maybe not in the clear but at least you're out of the water.
So this was running through my mind as I sat on the ice Friday. I figured I could handle a quick dip in Lake Nepco, if it came to that. Fortunately it didn't.
No, my dip came roughly 19 hours later in a nearby pond. That's me second from the left.
After fishing on Friday, I visited a nearby bar for some post-fishing beers. In my sauced state I agreed to jump into the water at a Polar Plunge for the Special Olympics the following morning.
It was a chance to test out the professor’s survival technique. Dressed scrubs (it was the hospital’s team) I Karate-kicked by way into the icy water.
Then the air rushed from my lungs in one swift gasp. I’m still not sure whether I drank any of the pond water. I wasn’t calm. In fact, I was the first one to run from the frigid water. Fortunately, I could run out and wasn’t forced to pull my body onto the ice itself.
I don’t know how I’ll do should I ever fall into a frozen lake. But after jumping into one, I’m pretty sure I’ll take every precaution to make sure that never happens.
