“After removing his fur coat and boots, the 65-year-old entered the pool, crossed himself and momentarily placed his head under the freezing water.”

— News report of Vladimir Putin last week

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In our two-person household, where every body of cold water is a challenge to our respective womanhood and manhood, we rate the temperature of the water according to a simple formula: my penis length minus her combined nipple length. If the answer is negative, that’s officially cold in our book.

I was reminded of this last week, seeing a photo of Vladimir Putin celebrating Russian Epiphany (Jesus’ baptism) by dunking himself, full immersion, in the ice-cold water of Lake Seliger, 250 miles north of Moscow. You’ve got to wonder how the Russians view our own leader’s display of manhood, jetting off to Florida and bashing a little ball around a golf course. Somehow it doesn’t have the same cachet.

Finland, 1962. I’m the “musta parta” (black-beard)./

Aside from childhood dips in the English Channel, my first exposure to really cold water was in Finland. I spent 10 weeks there as an engineering exchange student in 1962. The first weekend, my host invited me to his lakeside cabin where, every evening, we all — mom, dad, girls, boys and me — shed our clothes and steamed our bodies in the sauna before leaping off a dock into the lake. “Cross your arms over your chest when you jump!” I was instructed. I assumed this was some sort of primal Scandinavian ritual, but the truth was more mundane: “That way you won’t have a heart attack.” The water was icy cold, but it took a few moments to register after the heat of the sauna. By the time I started to shiver, we were racing back to re-broil ourselves before repeating. With time out to whip each other with fresh-cut birch twigs — that really was part of the ritual. I never felt so clean.

Then there was Doe Bay, on Orcas Island, Washington State, where a hot spring had been enclosed in a concrete pool on a cliff up above Puget Sound. Same idea — heat up, cold down — except the transition involved scuttling nakedly down a steep muddy trail to the water — by the time we made the bay, we were already freezing. Give me a lakeside sauna any day.

None of this is a patch on the exploits of Lynne Cox, of course, She’s the woman who — 30 years ago — swam the two miles from America to Russia, Little Diomede island to Big Diomede Island in 40 degrees F water. A few years later, she braved over a mile of Antarctic waters clad only in a swimsuit, cap and goggles. Her book Swimming to Antarctica is a fine read for when you’re sitting cozy and warm in front of a fire.

Google “health benefits cold water” and you’ll find yourself in a weird and wacky world, everything from legitimate (MD) backed evidence to some very far-fetched claims. Tony Robbins — the flamboyant “self-actualization” guru — recommends cold water therapy for essentially everything: lymphatic and cardiovascular circulation, weight loss, reducing muscle inflammation and — duh! — increased happiness. I take Robbins’ recommendations with a grain of salt, ever since medics treated 21 of his “Firewalk Experience” participants for burns during a July 2012 event in San Jose. (Twenty-one?! One, I can understand, but what impelled the next 20 to follow???) I got a chuckle from the laconic comment of the local fire chief who was interviewed for the story: “We discourage people from walking over hot coals.”

It’s starting to get light outside. Time to wrap this up and head down to the beach for our brave skinny dip in the Pacific. Okay, not that brave, not Putin-brave. We’re in Mexico.