Arctic Circle (66° 33′ 39″)

I recently had the honor to reenlist one of my co-workers this past week. We held a quick ceremony outside on a deck, snow was coming down and the temperature was hovering around 23.6 F (wind chill temp: 5 F). Then it was off to do what he wanted to do to commemorate his saying "yes" to four more years in the "Nav", jump into the Norwegian Sea. The water temperature was a balmy 39.2 F. Needless to say, there were those who thought we were a little bit off our rockers. Two other people joined us for our night time dip, so we couldn't have been too loony if others are willing to join, right?

Amazingly enough, the dip wasn't as bad as I imagined it was going to be. In fact the worst part was after the fact, the opening of the van door let in a blast of cold air that nearly knocked me back into next week. Fortunately, we then headed inside where a sauna awaited us. All ended well with a nice meal and plenty of toasts of Aquavit. We started off with a starter of smoked salmon, folowed by a fish soup in a wonderful creamy broth. For the main course we had three types of fish: smoked cod, salted cod, and baked halibut. To finish things off we had a nice dessert cake, coffee and Larsan XO cognac.




Here's my triumphant post-dip picture with a glass of Aquavit. Another Norwegian experience not to forget!