vidalert
So my girlfriend and I took a trek to Seward today to check out the Polar Bear Jump Off Festival. Those of you outside Alaska who are wondering what the hell that is should know that the festival is based around the PLUNGE! What is the PLUNGE, you ask? The PLUNGE is where participants dress up in their goofiest creations and jump into the frigid waters of Resurrection Bay during one of the coldest months in Alaska. Crazy? I would have to agree, but the participants (jumpers/plungers) do it for a good cause. Cancer research. The entire weekend is loaded with things to do at the festival, but the PLUNGE is the flagship event.
So before we left this morning, I decided to check the weather sites to see what we may encounter along the way. I almost scrapped the trip, after reading the reports. There were blizzard warnings on the island of Kodiak and storm warnings all over Southcentral Alaska, and it was currently snowing in Seward with the forecast calling for six inches. I really wanted to get some photos and video of the event, so we tossed a sleeping bag, extra jackets, and other survival type stuff (insert visual of Rambo holding up his knife here) into the truck, and we began our journey to Seward. First I had to make a stop.
We stopped at Fred Meyer to give the ol’ troublesome truck a fill up, and then we pulled around back of the store because I had to replace my windshield wipers. This is where the trip got interesting. Trying to get the old wipers off the truck sparked a nice little verbal Bout between us and I ended up mangling the driver side wiper to the point where I almost ripped the whole wiper arm off the truck and threw it across the parking lot. We then drove down the street to a Chevron station. The silence was deafening along the way.
At the station, one of the attendants came out and popped the damn things off my truck in no time at all and replaced them at $14.95 a shot. We were running late, but finally on our way, and the uncomfortable silence continued to loom. Before getting completely out of town, I stopped at a McDonalds. It’s amazing how two Sausage McMuffins and two hashbrowns can make everything all better (insert visual of a Band-aid being applied to a skinned knee here). Of course I wasn’t the one eating that stuff as I enjoyed a cranberry muffin from NutriSystem earlier in the morning.
So now that we were talking again, my girlfriend took it upon herself to nag about my speed all the way to Seward. We did run into whiteout conditions a couple of times on the way there, so I tried to accommodate her requests at those particular times. Anyone who has witnessed that knows how intense it can be. Yes, both whiteout conditions and nagging.
Wow… I’m really rambling on here. Ok, so we get to Seward, and we head for the Small Boat Harbor just in time to catch the event in progress. The PLUNGE! I take out my camcorder and it really starts to snow. I mean it was coming down, as you can see in some of the video. I look around and everyone with nice photography equipment has their hardware wrapped or covered with plastic. It was apparent that I was unprepared. I fired off as much video as I could before the anxiety of losing my camera to the elements overwhelmed me. My Nikon didn’t even make it out of the backpack. So… The video you are watching here is a minute and 49 seconds of roughly three minutes of total footage. That is what we drove over four hours round-trip for. HA!
We stayed in Seward for maybe an hour, then high-tailed it out of there before someone decided to close the pass. The drive home was a lot slower than the trip there, as the weather over the pass was getting worse. The trip was fun, but I think next time… I’ll plan a little more wisely.
So by all means… Enjoy my crappy video!
Respect to ya’ all (insert visual of Ali G flashing finger signs, gang-style, here)!
e
