Once again it's that time of year where Eric asks me to jump in some freezing cold water to raise money for a worth cause and challenges everyone to collect as much as they can in donations. If you would like to support my plunge effort you can donate on Eric's site through PayPal or send Eric a check as detailed below. Please email me to let me know what you're donating so I have a running total- and THANKS !
Without further cajoling, I'll let you read on. You can also catch this on: http://www.hodska.com/plunge11.htm and note- as a bonus, I'll post pictures Margit takes of me doing the deed (which I hate, I hate cold water) on my blog (http://rochpunk.blogspot.com).
Hi All,
It’s, once again, that time of year. No, it’s not the holiday season I’m talking about. It’s that time of year when I attempt to recruit a number of you to join me in January in jumping into Long Island Sound. “Why would you do something that stupid?” you may ask if you have never done this. If you have, you are probably thinking right now “I was dreading this letter!” Let’s start with a brief history of the event. In 2005 when the Tsunami hit the south pacific, I thought that we could use the Plunge as a way to raise charitable funds for the American Red Cross, which we did quite well. In fact, that year, we organized simultaneous Plunges in Cleveland, New Mexico, and California. In 2006, we continued this terrific annual event, but decided to make it beneficial to someone closer to home. I wanted those that donated to see directly where their generous funds were going. We raised money for a young boy battling cystic fibrosis. The funds we raised helped offset some of his extensive hospital bills and paid for a well needed vacation to Disney. How cool is that! In 2007, we continued the trend of helping children directly in need by donating funds to a family with overwhelming hospital bills due to testing and procedures with their two autistic kids. The money this time paid for the kids to attend a leading autism medical specialist in Boston, one that their insurance wouldn’t pick up. In 2008, the plunge was in honor of Jacob Rainey, a young boy from Stratford, CT battling Kawasaki’s disease. Anyone that attended the plunge that year saw first hand from Jacob and his mother Kathleen how this simple event had so positively affected their lives. In 2009, we raised funds for a family from Farmington whose mother was hit by a drunk driver while riding her bike and has been left a quadriplegic. Last year, the benefit of the Plunge was a young man from Trumbull who was also struck by a drunk driver and left with insurmountable medical bills.
This year, we will be raising funds and awareness for Help Our Military Heroes (HOMH) www.helpourmilitaryheroes.org, a charity set up by my good friend Laurie Hollander who has sons in the military. The funds will benefit disabled veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, many of whom have lost limbs, by purchasing vans and vehicles for these disabled veterans and have them adapted to each soldiers needs. According to Laurie, "Vans cost from $15,000 to $35,000 each which is an incredibly imposing sum of money for many vets. We make sure all the money raised makes it to the vets." I feel this is an extremely important cause this year (they all have been) as we can easily forget that we still have young soldiers over in the Middle East fighting a war for us daily. This is something that is to easy to lose track of, especially as we deal with domestic issues now like the recession – BUT, it’s important that we don’t forget this and that we do our part to support our soldiers. In fact, Laurie said that if we raise over $4000 from the Plunge, she will go in sans swim suit! OK, maybe she didn’t say this but I feel $4000 is a solid goal anyways.
I realize it’s a pain in the ass to raise charitable funds, so at the very least, we are still raising awareness to this cause just by participating or coming out to watch. The goal is still to try and raise a minimum of $100 each. In the four years that we have done the Plunge, we have raised over $64,000, thanks to all of you who have contributed and/or participated. One of my favorite things about the Plunge is the way that it makes those attending smile – even those of us that are stupid enough to Plunge.
If you plunged last year, you need to come back out this year as you were jipped. Last year was close to 50 degrees and sunny out. You want the real deal – the single digit, snow on the ground, wind whipping New England winter weather!
Here is the official information on the upcoming Plunge for:
When: Saturday, January 15, 2011
Where: Southport Beach on Pequot/Beachside Avenue (Exit 18 or 19 off i95)
Even if you are not plunging, please come down, support the event and watch us plunge, even if it’s only me.
Please e-mail me at ehods@earthlink.net if you are planning on being there so I have an idea of a head count.
Each plunger should make an effort to raise $100 to be donated to “Help Our Military Heroes”. You can send checks to me, bring them with you to the plunge, or donate through paypal at www.hodska.com . If you donate through paypal, please send me an email informing me of this, and note it in your paypal donation so that I can then keep track of each individual donation. Email Eric if you want details on sending him a check!
Showing posts with label polar plunge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polar plunge. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Polar Plunge 2010
I just wanted to thank everyone who donated- your contributions added 610.00 to our overall total and Eric was very psyched at your generosity !
There's video- and yes, I dove underwater this year. A good clean dive. See the video here
There's video- and yes, I dove underwater this year. A good clean dive. See the video here
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
2010 Polar Plunge
Once again it's that time of year where Eric asks me to jump in some freezing cold water to raise money for a worthy cause and challenges everyone to collect as much as they can in donations.
I'm going to go a step further this time and ask you all to consider also making a donation effort to relief funds for Haiti at the same time you commit to making a small donation to this cause. There are many great charities that are collecting.
If you would like to support my plunge effort you can donate on Eric's site through PayPal or send Eric a check as detailed below. Please email me to let me know what you're donating so I have a running total- and THANKS !
Without further cajoling, I'll let you read on. You can also catch this on: http://www.hodska.com/polar10.htm and note- as a bonus, I'll post pictures Margit takes of me doing the deed (which I hate, I hate cold water) on my blog (here).
2010 Polar Plunge (Eric's words from here on out)
This year we will be raising funds for Trumbull resident Alex Convertito. On September 6th, 2009, Alex, a member of the Trumbull community, was critically injured in a two car motor vehicle accident on rt. 8. He was ejected from his vehicle and as a result received severe spinal injuries. Alex, 22, has undergone substantial surgeries to stabilize his spine and restore movement and feeling to his lower extremities. For Alex and his family, the road to recovery is a long one paved with extensive rehabilitation. He is about to once again undergo another spinal stabilization surgery. As you can imagine, the costs of this keep building and insurance only covers so much. It would be very cool if we could help offset some of this debt.
The deal is we meet at Southport Beach (directions below) at 12:45pm on January 16th and take a dip in The Sound at around 1pm. If you are taking The Plunge, your goal is to try and raise $100 to donate to the cause we select. The past few years, we have sent a local child battling cystic fibrosis and hefty medical bills to Disney, we assisted two autistic children in seeing one of the top specialists around, we helped pay the costs of a young boys medical bills from his fight against Kawasakis Disease, we also gave some financial aid to a woman cyclist who was struck by a hit and run car, and in the very first Plunge, we sent close to $50,000 to the American Red Cross to aid those in the Tsunami. Let's keep this great thing rolling. In these tough economic times, it's important to still support a worthwhile cause. And at the very least, whether Plunging or not, you will have a laugh. If we raise over $5000 I will do something stupid again. One year I wore a speedo which in January in icy cold water can be quite embarrasing. This year, I will be the first one in and the last one out - if we raise more than $5000.
So here’s the deal:
Meet at 12:45pm on Saturday, January 16th at Southport Beach (directions below).
Alex’s father’s employer, Fletcher Thompson, Inc. has compassionately established a 501c3 account in Alex’s name. Any contributions donated to this fund will be tax deductable and go directly to offset the cost of Alex’s medical expenses and equipment.
Contributions can be made payable to:
Fletcher Thompson Health and Family Services
Memo on check: For Alex Convertito
You can also donate through the Paypal link on my site http://www.hodska.com/paypal.html – if you do this, please note “Alex Convertito Donation” in the subject or notes. www.hodska.com/paypal.html
If you don’t plan on Plunging, come out anyways to support us fools that are and have a laugh!
I'll bring the coffee and hot chocolate. I hope you can make it!
Cheers,
EH
I'm going to go a step further this time and ask you all to consider also making a donation effort to relief funds for Haiti at the same time you commit to making a small donation to this cause. There are many great charities that are collecting.
If you would like to support my plunge effort you can donate on Eric's site through PayPal or send Eric a check as detailed below. Please email me to let me know what you're donating so I have a running total- and THANKS !
Without further cajoling, I'll let you read on. You can also catch this on: http://www.hodska.com/polar10.htm and note- as a bonus, I'll post pictures Margit takes of me doing the deed (which I hate, I hate cold water) on my blog (here).
2010 Polar Plunge (Eric's words from here on out)
This year we will be raising funds for Trumbull resident Alex Convertito. On September 6th, 2009, Alex, a member of the Trumbull community, was critically injured in a two car motor vehicle accident on rt. 8. He was ejected from his vehicle and as a result received severe spinal injuries. Alex, 22, has undergone substantial surgeries to stabilize his spine and restore movement and feeling to his lower extremities. For Alex and his family, the road to recovery is a long one paved with extensive rehabilitation. He is about to once again undergo another spinal stabilization surgery. As you can imagine, the costs of this keep building and insurance only covers so much. It would be very cool if we could help offset some of this debt.
The deal is we meet at Southport Beach (directions below) at 12:45pm on January 16th and take a dip in The Sound at around 1pm. If you are taking The Plunge, your goal is to try and raise $100 to donate to the cause we select. The past few years, we have sent a local child battling cystic fibrosis and hefty medical bills to Disney, we assisted two autistic children in seeing one of the top specialists around, we helped pay the costs of a young boys medical bills from his fight against Kawasakis Disease, we also gave some financial aid to a woman cyclist who was struck by a hit and run car, and in the very first Plunge, we sent close to $50,000 to the American Red Cross to aid those in the Tsunami. Let's keep this great thing rolling. In these tough economic times, it's important to still support a worthwhile cause. And at the very least, whether Plunging or not, you will have a laugh. If we raise over $5000 I will do something stupid again. One year I wore a speedo which in January in icy cold water can be quite embarrasing. This year, I will be the first one in and the last one out - if we raise more than $5000.
So here’s the deal:
Meet at 12:45pm on Saturday, January 16th at Southport Beach (directions below).
Alex’s father’s employer, Fletcher Thompson, Inc. has compassionately established a 501c3 account in Alex’s name. Any contributions donated to this fund will be tax deductable and go directly to offset the cost of Alex’s medical expenses and equipment.
Contributions can be made payable to:
Fletcher Thompson Health and Family Services
Memo on check: For Alex Convertito
You can also donate through the Paypal link on my site http://www.hodska.com/paypal.html – if you do this, please note “Alex Convertito Donation” in the subject or notes. www.hodska.com/paypal.html
If you don’t plan on Plunging, come out anyways to support us fools that are and have a laugh!
I'll bring the coffee and hot chocolate. I hope you can make it!
Cheers,
EH
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Sunday, January 04, 2009
New Year's Review, Part I
I'm late doing this. It's already 2009 and here I am just getting around to looking at 2008.
This blog is primarily a place to keep a record of my training and racing. It might surprise you, given the ridiculous and exhaustive detail with which I catalog all my races- really, I need ten paragraph for a race that was 19 minutes long ?- that I've never kept any sort of training journal or record of my races. At the end of the first full year I worked with Eric, he asked me to send him an excel spreadsheet with all the races I could find that I'd done on it. I know I had more than 50 entries on the sheet and that was only what I could find on the internet.
Things change, as Troy Aikman would say.
This was a very unusual year for all of us. It's hard, when your 403B is melting faster than a snowpile along the shoreline, when the Middle East is burning again, when the value of the homes we live in decreases daily, when maybe your job hangs in the balance- you get the picture- to remember that this was an historic year in good ways as well. We had a woman and african-american running for one party's presidential nomination and we elected our first black president. Regardless of your politics, it was a monumental redefinition of our process, suggesting that we may finally, in the 21st century, be emerging as a cultural capable of dismantling the artificial barriers we've erected around the halls of power. Although as Prop 8 in California reminded us, for every two steps forward, we are perfectly capable of taking one back, that inclusivity at the individual level can be highly selective, that we can love and hate at the same time.
I'm never sure what's more perplexing about human nature, its generosity, or its penury of compassion.
I saw the better part of human nature yesterday. Eric has been holding a Polar Plunge now for five years to raise money for charity, starting with the tsunami victims- I can't believe it's been that long. It was cold yesterday- I ran for two hours in the morning, and the whole time I was wondering if the weather would deter people from coming. We've had worse- colder, darker days, but Eric made a change this year that was key- he held the plunge at high tide, instead of in the morning.
The truth is though, that if he held it at 4 AM I think he'd get just about the same turnout- Gus with the dog, Denny, Eric's dad on the camera, Baker there for moral support, plus dozens of others, all crazy enough to run into the nasty cold water of the Sound. Most of us only know the cause that the Plunge raises money for through Eric each year, but I think we're all happy to do it because a) Eric's a great guy, and anything he's willing to put himself out there to support has to be worth it- look at the tremendous work he's done helping to take Ride for Rick from an idea (his) to reality b) it feels good to do good. I think your soul or whatever you want to call it can be a dark and evil place and you would still get a charge out of reaching out to good for others in a group of like-minded people.
The fact that there was snow on the beach this year stopped no one, and if fact all I heard from anyone this time around was that 'it wasn't that bad.'
There were other good moments- and of course the Plunge was actually this year, but hey, it's my blog...
An American stood on the podium and took away eight gold medals. CSC finally, in their exit performance, won the Tour. We had a presidential election that was not marred by allegations of voter disenfranchisement. The nation finally seemed to get the message about 'green energy'.
I don't know. On balance, I'm glad to see 2009 come in, even though I've never been a big believer in arbitrary divisions of time really meaning anything, and we have a lot to see before we raise our hands and dance like we just don't care.
Oh yeah, I did a few races. More on that later.
This blog is primarily a place to keep a record of my training and racing. It might surprise you, given the ridiculous and exhaustive detail with which I catalog all my races- really, I need ten paragraph for a race that was 19 minutes long ?- that I've never kept any sort of training journal or record of my races. At the end of the first full year I worked with Eric, he asked me to send him an excel spreadsheet with all the races I could find that I'd done on it. I know I had more than 50 entries on the sheet and that was only what I could find on the internet.
Things change, as Troy Aikman would say.
This was a very unusual year for all of us. It's hard, when your 403B is melting faster than a snowpile along the shoreline, when the Middle East is burning again, when the value of the homes we live in decreases daily, when maybe your job hangs in the balance- you get the picture- to remember that this was an historic year in good ways as well. We had a woman and african-american running for one party's presidential nomination and we elected our first black president. Regardless of your politics, it was a monumental redefinition of our process, suggesting that we may finally, in the 21st century, be emerging as a cultural capable of dismantling the artificial barriers we've erected around the halls of power. Although as Prop 8 in California reminded us, for every two steps forward, we are perfectly capable of taking one back, that inclusivity at the individual level can be highly selective, that we can love and hate at the same time.
I'm never sure what's more perplexing about human nature, its generosity, or its penury of compassion.
I saw the better part of human nature yesterday. Eric has been holding a Polar Plunge now for five years to raise money for charity, starting with the tsunami victims- I can't believe it's been that long. It was cold yesterday- I ran for two hours in the morning, and the whole time I was wondering if the weather would deter people from coming. We've had worse- colder, darker days, but Eric made a change this year that was key- he held the plunge at high tide, instead of in the morning.
The truth is though, that if he held it at 4 AM I think he'd get just about the same turnout- Gus with the dog, Denny, Eric's dad on the camera, Baker there for moral support, plus dozens of others, all crazy enough to run into the nasty cold water of the Sound. Most of us only know the cause that the Plunge raises money for through Eric each year, but I think we're all happy to do it because a) Eric's a great guy, and anything he's willing to put himself out there to support has to be worth it- look at the tremendous work he's done helping to take Ride for Rick from an idea (his) to reality b) it feels good to do good. I think your soul or whatever you want to call it can be a dark and evil place and you would still get a charge out of reaching out to good for others in a group of like-minded people.
The fact that there was snow on the beach this year stopped no one, and if fact all I heard from anyone this time around was that 'it wasn't that bad.'
There were other good moments- and of course the Plunge was actually this year, but hey, it's my blog...
An American stood on the podium and took away eight gold medals. CSC finally, in their exit performance, won the Tour. We had a presidential election that was not marred by allegations of voter disenfranchisement. The nation finally seemed to get the message about 'green energy'.
I don't know. On balance, I'm glad to see 2009 come in, even though I've never been a big believer in arbitrary divisions of time really meaning anything, and we have a lot to see before we raise our hands and dance like we just don't care.
Oh yeah, I did a few races. More on that later.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Polar Plunge Tomorrow
The Polar Plunge is tomorrow and I'll be diving into the water down in Southport for charity at some time between 8:30 and 9:00 AM (http://www.hodska.com/plunge2008.html). We're supporting a small boy with Kawasaki's disease. If you're reading this there's a good chance I already asked you to donate 5.00 to the cause. If you'd like to donate, Paypal Eric Hodska- http://www.hodska.com/paypal.html
I'll post pictures tomorrow when I get them. It's gonna be cold !
I am going to work to get my whole body under the water this year. It's always easy in your mind, but hard in reality, to actually get under that frigid, nasty water.
I'll post pictures tomorrow when I get them. It's gonna be cold !
I am going to work to get my whole body under the water this year. It's always easy in your mind, but hard in reality, to actually get under that frigid, nasty water.
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