Trondheim Fjord

Last week at church I overheard a conversation between Harald Myhren and Terje Dorr, in which Terje said something about going to an "ice bath" in the fjord. I asked if he went in the fjord this time of year and he said, "yes". I asked where and he replied to a place called "Sjøbadet" (sea bath). I asked when he would be going again and he said "Saturday". So I told him I was interested and to call me. We made arrangements to meet at the church at 2 p.m. on Saturday. At the appointed hour on Saturday, we met and I changed into my swim suit with a pair of sweat pants and sweat shirt. We (Terje, Nancy and I) then drove to a location near the place where he goes. He said you used to be able to drive right up to the small house the swim club has on the fjord, but they are now building a new highway that goes between the fjord and the train tracks, so we had to park (in a no parking area--but he put a note on the window saying "we are at sjøbadet. Went there at 2:30, shall be back in 30 minutes") The note must have worked, as I did not get a ticket or get towed. We had to walk about 300 meters, going down a small path between the construction area and the railroad tracks, climb up a ladder on one side of the new road surface and down on the other side, then again down a small path between the construction and a few buildings, then finally came to the bath house. There were dressing rooms to change in, a large deck area, a diving board about 10' above the water and two diving platforms about 15 and 25 feet above the water--we did not use either of these. There was also a set of stairs that went down from the deck to the water--we used these. It was not like diving into the Columbia River, as we just went to the bottom of the stairs (which was under water). At this point we were about up to our waist in wate, then sat down and submerged the rest of our body in the water, came up and climbed back up the stairs to change. The wind was blowing and there were white caps on the water, but we did not swim away from the stairs.