POLAR BEAR CLUB

Home in PC
Overnight low of 28* (wind chill 22*)

They say the end is near. Depending on how much time you spent outside lately, in Florida, you could take that two different ways. Florida has frozen over and some may think THE end is near. The optimist in me says the end of the cold is near. It has to be. Since weather records began, there has never been a winter in Florida that was as real a winter as this winter. It's never been this cold for this long.

There are homes in Miami and points further south where people have no central heat installed.
Airports in Tampa, Fort Myers and Miami have cancelled countless flights because they don't have de-icing equipment. And closer to home (ours) boat owners have had to take steps to winterize their boats for the first time ever. To keep my engine block from freezing and cracking I took my Dad's advice and purchased a shop light and Home Depot and placed it in the engine bilge. It worked nicely, as the standing water in the bilge stayed fluid when ice had formed all over our dock and the topside of the boat. Kathy's birdbath is more like an Audubon ice rink.

Last night my Arizona Cardinals entered the NFL playoffs, at home, against the Green Bay Packers. Very few people outside of Arizona and a little known neighborhood in South Florida gave the Cardinals a chance. When Red Birds scored the game winning touchdown in sudden death overtime, our house erupted in joyous screams reminiscent of last year's Super Bowl season. The air temperature Port Charlotte was 35*. My neighbor and fellow Cardinals fanatic, Chuck, and I fulfilled our tradition of the victory splash. We drove from my house to his and jumped in his pool. At the last minute, Chuck had "cold feet" but I persuaded him with a polar "bear hug" and pulled him in to the frigid depths below. Five seconds of hell, a lifetime memory. We love our Cardinals through thick and thin, for better or worse, in sickness and health and through the heat of the Arizona desert or the arctic blasts of South Florida. Go Big Red!