THUNDER BAY – Ice, ice baby.
Jari Kemppainen and his daughter’s partner, Jesse Williams, may have started a new Christmas Day tradition – ice ping pong.
The pair, looking for something fun to do after the presents were opened, carved holes in the now frozen-over Cloud Lake, took the plunge and played an impromptu game of ping pong, a celebratory drink at the ready to mark the occasion.
Kemppainen said it was a tribute to his Finnish roots.
“Living out here in the middle of nowhere, Mother Nature gives us a blank canvas. So, there’s not a lot of things to do in the long winter nights, so we get creative,” Kemppainen said.
“We always have a rink out here for everybody to use. We usually have some alumni come out and play hockey. But this year, for the mild Christmas weather that we’re having, we thought we’d throw in another sport and my son-in-law, his background is from Tobago. So we thought maybe we’d try some ping pong.”
It was chilly, but worth it.
It wasn’t a very long game, he added.
“I could tell you hours, but I’d be lying,” he said, speaking on Friday with Thunder Bay Television.
If anybody’s ever done a polar bear dip, it’s a polar bear dip. It was not a lot of feeling on the bottom half, a lot of excitement on the top half.”
The big question? Who won the match?
That will remain between Kemppainen and Williams for now.
“We weren’t counting scores. We were just having a friendly series.”
Kempainnen said his son-in-law is always up for a challenge and was eager to take part.
