Doah, water is cold

I pulled a Tony today. Let me digress for a minute to explain; a few years ago, Tony and I were doing a survey near a frozen lake in Omaha and he decided to "walk on water". He being from California and having never seen snow was very proud of himself with his seemingly superhuman ability to walk on water (frozen lake). I chuckled and continued surveying...CRASH!!! "AHHHHHAAGGGG!!!!" a womanlike shriek ripped through the air, I spin around half expecting to see Tony drowning in freezing water...but only his boot broke through the ice and only up to his ankle...and even funnier, there's no water underneath the ice...yet he's shrieking like a little girl with a skinned knee, thinking he's about to die. I laugh and throw snowballs at him because his boot is caught in the ice and he can't get away...I'm mean ;)

Fastforward to today. I was trudging through snow about a foot deep while taking measurements for a school project, dragging survey equipment behind me. I was contemplating how fun it is to kick snow around and at the same time I was trying to breath smoke rings with the vapor from my breath...GALLOOOOOSH!!!! I fall about 3 feet thru ice into water. My breath is sucked away...but I catch myself so I don't fall all the way in. I'm up to my waist in frozen water, brain goes fuzzy for a second and my breathing is in short gasps...I try to push my way out but the ice breaks under my hands and I sink deeper, my legs are flailing, trying to find something solid to step on...I lay to my side...sweet... solid ground, I roll out of the water onto the snow... this sucks, my pants are totally soaked, my boot is full of icy water and now I'm sitting in snow. Aw double, my digital camera was in my cargo pocket and now it's totally drenched. I try to figure out what happened, apparently there was a underground water cistern full of muddy well water without its lid on, the surface of the water at the opening froze and snow covered the ice...no way I could have seen it. But the opening to the tank is only 3 feet wide and the field is couple acres wide, sooo...the probability of me stepping on that exact spot is...my luck sucks. I stop swearing like a sailor and now I'm giggling like a schoolgirl; An old hunchbacked Afghani man wearing rags looks at me with his non-blind eye and gives me the "you poor guy" look. I smile stupidly back with a dumb toothy leer and he snickers and shakes his head. I contemplate my situation...well, I'm dry and warm from the waist up...I may as well finish this survey because it's a huge hassle to get to this site. The other engineer looks at me quizzically...wanna go home? No, I chuckle...lets get this over with. One hour later we're still surveying, my boot felt like it was sloshing full of really cold water but now I can't even feel the numbness...maybe I need to take my boot off. "Uh, I'm going to check out the interior of the building to see what we can renovate." (It's not heated but it's not windy either). One hour later we're done, so we talk to the principal about what we want to do to fix her school. I hop in the vehicle and take off my boot...my foot is totally pink and beyond numb, so I dry it off and crank the heater all the way up and feeling slowly comes back...wooo hooo!!! No frostbite or chilblain! But my pants are totally muddy which stinks because I just had these pants washed and pressed yesterday, there's $3 down the drain. I check the memory card from the camera when I get back to the office and the memory card works...hoorah! I wonder if the camera will work when it dries out or I'll ever get warm again as I nurse my warm cup of java...at least I fell into a water cistern full of ground water and not a septic tank...but my officemate is telling me it doesn't matter, that I smell like rotting trash and to get out, so I'm gonna leave and take a long hot shower and scrub for a while.