The River Wild

This weekend I went white water rafting for the first time. It was great fun that I will never ever do again. Before I break down the events, let me tell you that I really hadn't given much thought to it beforehand. I was told that we were spending two days on the water and there would be camping overnight and there would be imbibing of alcohol. I figured it would be a large raft manned by one or two guides while we floated down a wide river. Nope. Here are the highlights from our trip:

• On the bus ride to the launch point we were packed in with 50 people who were chugging cans of beer. We can see the river on our left and my friends start screaming with laughter when they spot people whose rafts are stuck on the rocks. I see that the rafts fit only two people, so clearly we weren't going to have a guide ride with us. I start to get nervous, but I think to myself: "If these guys can do this drunk, it can't be that hard."


• We arrive and receive a brief orientation along with a life vest. No helmets. I remain calm.


• We hit the water all at once and within 10 minutes there's a major pile-up. Several rafts are stuck on the rocks and the people behind them ram into them and capsize. We barely make it through but I see a girl in front of me get thrown in and get stuck under our raft. I start screaming that she needs to be saved but there's nothing we can do because the current is pushing us. I am now completely freaked out. I'm pretty sure she made it but I am totally and completely freaked out.


• Jeff and I pull over to the shore so I can calm down. Several other boats pull over with us and some people are just as horrified as I am. However, some rafters are still having a great time. A bunch of drunken twenty-somethings pull in laughing and shouting that their cooler full of beer fell into the river but they saved their tequila. They also managed to save a bag full of marshmallows which they chuck at everyone floating by.


• We head back out after I calm a bit (it's not like you can go back up the river) and meet up with our group of friends and stop for lunch. They give you a dry bag full of sandwich fixings, which I'm not a huge fan of but I chow down like a champion. A woman and her eleven-year-old son pull up and she's completely and totally wasted. She laughs a lot, falls out of her raft and complains that she lost her margaritas. Her son just sits quietly and looks completely mortified.


• As I eat my lunch I take stock of the other rafters floating by. I see a guy with a blender on top of his cooler, he throws us otter pops. Everybody has water bazookas and they feel great as we are repeatedly hit with them in the heat. Several rafters are wearing wigs, funny hats and masks. This is starting to feel more like burning man than a sporting adventure.


• We continue on and I feel like we're getting better at this rafting thing. It's not all that physically strenuous but it is mentally challenging. Good communication is essential and since I'm sitting in front of the raft I act as the lookout for rocks and rapids. Jeff sees a side of me he rarely sees: loud, bossy and screaming. This is because I have no intention of capsizing or getting caught on the rocks without a fight. Sometimes Jeff already sees what I'm yelling about, sometimes there's nothing he can do when something is coming our way, but sometimes it helps because he's staring slack-jawed at rock formations (he has a PhD in geophysics). Fortunately, Jeff has thick skin and I suspect he thinks it's cute when I bark out orders.


• We approach the large rapids known as "Mother". A young man stands on the rocks (did I mention the temperature is about the same as the surface of the sun?) waving an orange flag around. He's not helpful as all I can focus on is the sound of rushing water. Just like at Disneyland there is a camera awaiting us as we go down Mother:

Many of the pictures I saw of other people showed only feet flying up in the air.

shortly after Mother we make it to camp having only getting stuck on the rocks a couple of times and without capsizing. In fact, it turns out we were the only ones in our group to not have capsized. This turns out to be a lucky thing for us as it turns out my back pack wasn't strapped down to the boat and our car keys were inside. Oopsy.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post (maybe) as the saga continues...