A Dip Worth Taking

For everything there is a season,
but every once and a while we can get away with things...  

Chicago's infamous windy chill has yet to snap me into the reality of the impending winter.  In fact, the temperature reached a high of 79 within the past few days.  Yeah, I know!  I couldn't believe it either!

During this brief jaunt back to summertime, I walked around campus clad in sandals and short-sleeves.  While I did tote around a light sweater*, I was eager to take advantage of this odd warm snap any way I could, and my friends pitched an idea worthy of some consideration:  an afternoon at Lake Michigan.

Earlier in the school year, a few of us enjoyed walks down to the lake** where we would throw a frisbee around and jump into the water for a swim.  Late August through early September this was not only a reasonable activity, but actually a quite popular pastime for a number of Hyde Park residents.  Whether or not those other swimmers were caught in traffic yesterday as the President's motorcade made its way around the neighborhood, one thing was certain: they sure weren't in the lake when four of my LSTC friends and I ran screaming into what we would later refer to as an ice-bath.  That's right, my friends--the five of us conquered a late-October Lake Michigan, and it felt great.  

Chaaaaaarge!

As we walked back to LSTC renewed, refreshed, and wiiiiide-awake, a light rain kicked up and so began Chicago's return to a weather pattern indicative of autumn: within a few hours the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and it was pouring.  Still, for everything there is a season, and in this season we got away with a short swim celebrating new friendships, warm-weather, and living within a mile of a vast, beautiful, and bone-chilling Great Lake.  

"And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Genesis 1:2b

*Felt too strange not to at least have the option of layering, it being the end of October and all!

**I'm still not convinced that the title "lake" does this enormous body of water justice.