Freezing, for FISH

By ADAM LAPIERRE
News staff writer

Impeccably well-timed with an afternoon hail storm, about 20 Hood River Valley High School students stood shivering on the marina’s moorage dock shortly after school Monday. After waiting in the cold for a couple stragglers to join the party, the students disrobed down to board shorts and bikinis and, following teacher Troy Tactay’s nearly perfect 9.9 Flying Burrito, plunged into the balmy 41-degree river.

Crazies around the world find great satisfaction in cutting holes in frozen lakes and rivers and rejuvenating their bodies by swimming in the icy water; but these 20 students were not a newly formed Hood River Polar Bear Club. Like watching a video in reverse, they leapt out of the water as fast as they had jumped in and were clothed and off the dock even faster.

How an AP calculus class jumping into frigid water in a hailstorm relates to their vice principal possibly getting a tattoo is not as distant a connection as it sounds.

HRVHS kicked off its annual canned food drive this week, and the contest between all seventh-period classes is, at least by some, taken quite seriously. Tactay’s class has won for something like 10 years in a row, and although the prize for this year’s winners is a modest doughnut, pizza or cinnamon-roll party, the pressure is high for the school’s top math geeks to perform.

What about all the cold water? An anonymous donor pledged to donate money for the food drive for each person who took the plunge. In a matter of about 30 seconds the class raised $1,000, which will be translated into a number of cans through an advanced mathematic theorem the class will solve once their brains thaw out over the weekend.

The school’s overall goal is to raise 100,000 cans of food between now and Dec. 15; all of which will go to FISH food bank and the Hood River Christmas Project.

If students can raise 95,000 cans they are promised a dance as a prize, but the real benchmark they are aiming for is 150,000 cans. If they reach that goal Vice Principal Todd McCauley has pledged to make his very first tattoo an eagle.