The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

     I took the ALS #24hourIceBucketChallenge today. Holy crap! I was anticipating someone throwing down the gauntlet and my boy Michael J did not disappoint. I thought I was ready. But, holy crap! That was damn cold. I'm still waiting for my boys to drop back down into my shorts. The funny part was that my wife and I had to drive around for over an hour to find a bag of ice! We don't have an ice maker here in Germany. Not yet. That will be in the new house. And our ice trays make like 3 cubes each. So I figured I would just go to the tanksteller (gas station) and buy a 12 pounder. Wrong.

     I am in view of the Alps, Austria is literally twenty minutes from here. Its 55 degrees Fahrenheit today...in August. Believe me, they are very familiar with ice around here. They like their beer cold and their sodas colder.  Yet, finding a bag of ice took me over an hour. We went to five different stores: three supermarkets and two gas stations. You can't just climb a mountain and chop out a bag of ice from the closest mountain glacier, they melted a few decades ago. You can't yodel to the next town and order up some Alpine ice, because no one yodels anymore, not since John Denver passed away (God rest his soul). I am no wuss. I wasn't going to jump in a cold lake or the cold-ass river in the mountains, about twenty five minutes from here. I have done those things and will do them again, probably on Thursday. But, I wanted to live up to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and I couldn't find any ice!

     Needless to say, we found bags of ice at the gas station on the other side of town (its a big town, but only two gas stations, and only one with ice, wtf?!). We asked my neighbor to do the honors of pouring while my wife filmed it. You can watch it below. I thought it would be fun, but it was shockingly cold.

Take the challenge. It's for a great cause. Visit the link below to learn more about how to fight ALS.

http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html