300 Club

Dave stared at the monitor with Joe and Alex peering over his shoulder. Joe leaned forward and and watched as the number on the screen dropped another tenth of a degree. It was going to happen eventually, and no amount of wishing or praying would stop it. But at least once it was over, he would have his glory and a funny looking merit badge.

It hovered at -99.8 for a while, then dropped to -99.9. Dave turned around with a smile carved across his face, and it ate away at Joe. “Come on buddy. It’s going to be great.”

Alex patted him on the back. “It’s one of the most exclusive clubs in the world man. You’ve got to do it.”

Joe leaned forward. “Are you guys sure that this is accurate. I mean, when was it last calibrated?”

“I did it yesterday. You’re not getting out of this.”

“This is really stupid, you know. Really stupid.” Joe walked back to the far end of the room and looked at the map pinned up against the wall, putting his finger over Madison, Wisconsin. “It’s 180 degrees warmer back home. My wife is probably at a barbecue and my son has a baseball game later today. Why did I come here?”

“Because you’re at the bottom of the world man, living in the most hostile environment on the plant. That’s so hardcore, who wouldn’t want to?” said Alex.

“Yea, how many people can claim they know what a 300 degree difference feels like?” chimed in Dave.

“Far too many, and they don’t need me. And why can’t wear my underwear?”

“Dude, do you have any idea what’d happen to you once that shit freezes. It’s be like having a hundred razor blades all around your junk. You don’t want that, dude.”

Joe nodded, and Dave turned around, focusing back on the monitor. “Any second now...and we’ve got it. Minus 100. Alex, crank up the sauna!”

Alex left the room and Joe sat down next to Dave. The number dropped a to -100.1. “Won’t we get frostbite?”

“On the lungs perhaps. Just wear your face mask.”

“Does everybody?”

“Most. I forgot mine once, and it wasn’t all that terrible.”

Joe sunk back into the chair and watched a bad action movie with Dave until Alex came back.. “Sauna’s officially at 200!”

Dave went back to the computer and clicked off the screensaver. “Minus 101.3. This is going to be a good one.” He turned to Joe. “Time to strip.”


There were ten men and one woman in the sauna, all with towels wrapped around them. With each breath, Joe struggled to breath the hot, humid, air further funkified by the other sweating bodies. Dave, still coordinating everything, looked at his watch. “We’re almost there. Everybody ready?”

Joe reached down and felt his orange face mask sitting next to him. When he looked back at Dave, he had begun clapping, and started a countdown as he looked at his watch.

“Five...four...three.” Joe removed his hand from the mask and joined in the clapping. “two...one...go!”

Everybody dropped their towels and poured out the door, Joe caught up in the middle, with adrenaline surging through his body, ran naked down the hallway. In the entranceway, steam clouded the air and Joe felt a shiver creep up his spine even before the door opened. Once it did, the wind assaulted his naked body and the feeling of a million needles momentarily paralyzed him. It took a push from the woman behind him to get going, and once he made it outside, Joe took off, following the rest of the group towards the pole.

He tried to catch up with them, but as soon as he took his first deep breath, he felt his lungs freeze over. Joe reached up towards his face and realized he had forgotten his mask. He turned around and looked back towards the entrance; it was too late now.

Joe pushed forward, slowing down, trying to keep his breaths as shallow as possible, but every time he sucked in some air, he felt his lungs freeze a little bit more. By the time he reached the ceremonial pole, he could feel the sweat on his skin freeze and each swing of his arms seemed to crack the skin just above his shoulder. Ahead of him, Joe could see a couple people round the geographic pole just a couple steps ahead of him. He pushed forward and circled all 24 timezones in a matter of seconds. But when he turned around, the door back to the station appeared almost miles away. I’m going to die. Fuck.

Joe slowed down to a trot and tried to keep his breathing as slow and steady as possible, extracting as much oxygen from each breath before a new set of the coldest air on Earth came rushing back into his corpuscles, sending those cells into a cryogenic hibernation, hopefully to someday wake again.

Before long, he gave up his trot and began walking. Joe thought he was the last one out there, but before long, he heard somebody come up from behind him. It was Dave. He was covered in frost, with the frozen water even clinging to his eyelashes. Joe tried to blink, but his eyelids, like Dave’s, were too stiff to close.

Dave slowed down and stayed next to Joe, he too had forgotten his mask. He stuck with Joe all the way back to the entrance where the relative warmth of the building hurt his lungs even more than the cold, and they immediately began coughing as they walked back to the sauna.

Everybody was trying to warm back up and unfreeze their lungs, but they all smiled. They had done it. They had earned their patch.

Alex sat down next to Joe and extended his hand. “No face mask. Dude, you are fucking hardcore!”