Sorry for the delay, folks. Okay, more about my trip. There were five boats on the water in our group, one giant, red “sweep boat” used for all of our supplies, four smaller, green, “oar boats” in which the guests could sit and watch the scenery go by as attractive, muscled young men rowed them through the river (“Scenery? What scenery?” — more on that later) and one very small, yellow “paddle boat” which because of it’s diminuitive size and inexperienced paddlers (read: us) tended to take the rapids at a much more exciting clip. After the first day, when I realized I’d be getting wet (read: cold) anyway, I might as well be on the paddle boat, where at least I’d be moving and thus, warming myself up. In the picture, you can see me and my cookie-monster coat smiling third from the right (click on the picture for a bigger version.
Of course, that was before the rapids. Once you hit the rapids, all bets are off. The paddle boat is always manned by one of the aforementioned attractive young river guides (more on them later) who has a larger, rudder-like paddle, sits in the back, and spends most of his time yelling at the paddlers thusly: “All Forward! All Back! Right Forward, Left Back! All Back hard! Come on, guys, All back hard! Shit!” in a desperate, usually futile attempt to make us a) listen, b) work, and c) not tip over. On this day (which note, is a different day than the above picture) our boat was manned by Ty, the most recently-minted of the attractive young river guides (don’t give me grief, people, he was 18!) who unfortunately also had a cold, and was losing his voice, so often “All Back” just didn’t have the carry it needed to be heard over the rushing sound of whitewater. I don’t remember precisely what happened. I do know we got caught in a hydro (water rushing over rock) going backwards, and we were all paddling, but began to tip backwards. I saw feet rushing towards my face. I think they were my own…
Things happened pretty quickly after that. I do remember being in the water, holding onto the boat and the paddle for dear life, and trying to climb back in, but not being able to get any leverage or help getting back in because the person closest to me weighed about 60 pounds and no one could move him out of hte way to pull me back in. I was terrified of banging into a rock. My uncle describes the scene:
Your feet went up over your head and you did a backflip — but I’ll never forget, you grabbed onto the lifeline [the safety line surrounding the boat] before you even hit that water.
Obviously, my instincts were entirely focused on NOT getting wet. I don’t remember being mostly in the boat. I do remember my feet floating out behind me, so that can’t have entirely been right. However, the fact remains that when I finally did get back in the boat (with the assistance of a bariatric surgeon and a young poultry farmer who I landed on top of in a very romantic-comedy cute-meet fashion), I was only wet up to my waist. Cookie-monster was pretty dry.
Amazing, huh? I was however, slightly bruised (and still am! Do you think I should get an X-ray and see if I cracked a rib?)
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