Going To Extremes: Would You Swim Here?

Many of you have probably seen people tweet about how cold it is in the Southern part of the United States right now. I realize it’s December, so logically, it’s supposed to be cold, right? No. It doesn’t usually get this cold here. I’ve lived in Atlanta for over ten years, and I can confirm that this is very unusual weather. I even wore gloves in my house last night because my heater couldn’t keep up. This news article suggests we might break some records here with the low temperatures.

I’m sure there are people around the world who laugh at us Southerners because we are such wimps when it comes to cold weather. @Minervity, who lives in Sweden, often talks about the freezing temperatures there. Every now and then he’ll tweet a picture of the snow on his car or on the street, and it blows my mind. I can’t even imagine seeing that in real life.

Well, obviously I need to broaden my horizons a bit because it seems there are people in Russia who would think Sweden’s cold temperatures are equivalent to a warm summer day. Apparently winter swimming is very popular in Russia. These swimmers pictured below are swimming in the Yenisel River when the temperature was -36 degrees Celsius. Guess why they did it? Just for fun. Yeah, I know! Call me crazy, but I don’t think that would be fun. Now granted, they do live in Siberia. Maybe there isn’t a lot to do in Siberia so they have to swim in this weather to get a rush. I don’t know, but more power to them! All I know is if I put on a bathing suit and got in that river, holy baaaaaajezus, I think I might die. :)

Image Credit: [Toronto Sun]