Ice Swimming 1

Yeah, I did it. I'm damn crazy, but I did it. I went swimming in a hole cut out of a massive ice lake, and it was F***ing cold. But you know what, let's back up for a minute. How exactly did this turn of events come to take place? Well I'll tell you.

I applied for housing freaking late. I kinda applied to the program late so it made some sense, but still.And you know I didn't really care at the time, but that was because I didn't really imagine there were huge differences in the available housing. I figured hey if my place is a little crappier and more sucky than some of the others it's really no big deal. I was dead wrong. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass of u and me. Well this time I assmed. I was the only one who was made an ass of by gosh. My living spot is called karjamaentie 12, meaning building 12 on the street named karjamaentie. Karjamaentie is the last road of housing in Joensuu, about 4-5km from the University. And by 12, I mean 12/12. That is to say I live in literally the farthest location from the University I possibly could hahaha. damn it. The bus is fairly reliable, but not free, and it stops running at like 1040pm on weekdays and 1210am on weekends. This means that I have to stay on the floor in my friends' apartments when I wanna stay out, these friends live like 1/2 a kilometer away from the city center and university!! I'll be it, I pay probably more than 100 euros/130 USD less than they do a month in housing, but really?! Anyways, that's not the point.

At this point you might be wondering how this has anything to do with the topic at hand, which seems to have changed from Ice Swimming to living situation. Well here it is. Karjamaentie really isn't close to anything, EXCEPT ice swimming! BOOM bitches, take that! You had enough? Take that! Your awesome bars and clubs and university and food options and skating rinks are nothing! I can just jump right into that icy ass water any time I want! I knew I got put here for a reason, anyways..

So basically some of my friends from my Bioenergy Markets and Policies class(which is freaking hard) were going to go ice swimming for one of their birthdays, and they invited me along. One of my friends from that class was also put here to live, so we walked to the ice swimming together at about 5pm(already dark of course).

Before I continue, let me explain real quickly how ice swimming generally works around here just so we can have a clear idea. Basically you go, pay like 5 euros, and you go into a sauna by the lake then get out and go get into the lake.

So let us continue. At this point I had never been in a Finnish sauna, but I assumed it was probably more intense than saunas I had been in back in the States, so I had been hydrating all day. Drinking tons of fluids, because I just imagined getting weak and dehydrated was not a good combo with shockingly cold water. This mean that on the 30-40 minute walk there, I had to pee like a freaking race horse. Holy crap I had to go. You know I had not been in this situation yet either. The temperature at this point is -2 degrees F, there is snow everywhere(not quite as easy to cover tracks), and we're pretty much in the middle of somewhat of a neighborhood. I really don't care to have anyone see me because I'm not sure what the rule of thumb is about that here, but you know I had to go!!

Really people go in semi public all the time back in the states(I know I do). Well anyways, I was on a mission,  so I decided to go for it. We came to a bridge over a frozen lake(they're all over the place here, you think it's a big field or something at first then you realize there's a pretty massive bridge over it.). Beside the bridge there are two sizable wooded areas that kind of dip into the ground a little bit. "Perfect" I say to myself, then continue to tell my friend Alex to go ahead of me and I'll catch up to him. There's two big sidewalks on the road we're walking on and over the bridge(sidewalks are huge here btw.). As you might notice in my previously posted pictures, anything that gets plowed here has pretty sizable snowmounds right beside it because the snow builds up and sidewalks are no exception.

This means that in order to get from the sidewalk, and into the woods before and beside the opening/start of the bridge, I had to climb over a 1.3 meter snow mound that made a boundary between the sidewalk and the woods. You know what? I'll include a couple pictures just to give you a good mental image: note that the black lines on the left represent the road going one direction, and the black lines on the right the other direction. The two lines are where the tires go, often times the only black part of the road you can see is where the tires drive. In this case with the cold weather the roads were completely white, but I put black lines just for the sake of argument.

Here we go, theres a diagram, and here is a nice example of the kinds of snowmounds near sidewalks after they've been plowed. Anyways, the snowmounds are always much harder then the usual snow because it's been packed down after the plowing process, so I could very easily climb over one to try and finally reach the woods after much hesitation. So I climb the snowmound, then step off the well packed snowmounds into the natural untouched, unpacked, unplowed snow of the wooded area and suddenly sink all the way down to my waist in snow.....holy crap! This is not good at all. I still have half a mind to push through and still take a pee at this point but soon realize that if I stayed there for more than a couple seconds, the snow would start melting around my legs and make my pants wet. In the negative degree weather, that would be -unimaginably- uncomfortable. I quickly climbed out of the snow and dusted myself off, completely defeated by this situation. Epic fail, and I still have to pee. My British friend is still waiting for me in the middle of the bridge. I come walking up to him at a quickened pace with snow all over my pant legs. He says to me "how did it go?" I say, "Lets just walk fast." And we're back on our way.

My gosh, this has turn into a long blog. I'll post another with the rest of the story soon. BOOM