A Facebook event created in early December has a simple title, and an equally simple mission: "I am going to drink Lake Michigan." More than 11,000 people have RSVP'd to the happening, which is set to take place this Saturday at 2pm at Montrose Beach.
The drinking of the lake will be done by Tim Mack, a 23-year-old from Mount Prospect who graduated from Loyola University last year. He's said that he's planning on drinking the entire lake until it's empty—all 6 quadrillion gallons of it.
"When I saw the lake on a recent trip into the city I thought to myself, 'Why hasn't anyone drank that yet?" Mack told us. "My team doctor and scientist have worked together to build special water coolers that can filter lake water quickly and completely," he explained. "I will drink from one cooler using my favorite mug until it is empty. Once it is emptied I will move on to the second cooler while two of my team members take the empty cooler and refill it at the lake."
Mack said that he tried drinking unfiltered water in his early stages of training (because a purist approach will look better to the observer), but after he became terribly ill he decided to change course.
His team doctor, Tim Curley, is not a licensed physician, but that doesn't have Mack concerned. They've known each other for a long time, he says, and they have the "same knowledge and tips from Google that any big shot doc can get from an expensive degree."
We think it's pretty clear that Mack isn't expecting to drink Lake Michigan in its entirety—that would be incredibly delusional—but it's a pretty good joke that unexpectedly went viral. When he created the event on December 6, he only invited seven friends. By the end of the day, more than 2,000 people RSVP'd. He also set a 10-minute time limit for drinking the lake because "if it is cold on Saturday we don't want to keep everyone standing around for too long."
In any case, if you're super bored on Saturday afternoon you can go watch a man drink some shoddily filtered lake water. If you don't want to hike out to Montrose Beach in the middle of January, Mack will be streaming his guzzling on Periscope at @timedrinkslake. We wish him the best of luck with his ill-conceived (but patently hilarious) stunt.