Saturday, July 30, 2005
Showered—only 2 men's showers for the entire campground, which we shared with some interns from Bain and Company. Breakfast provided by Mariah (the rafting company): pancake, sausage, sliced fruit, yogurt, cereal and milk, orange juice, water. There was a problem with one stove, so each person got only 1 pancake the first round until everyone had been served. (Everyone griped about this, it seemed.) After breakfast, we got a wonderful introduction and initial orientation to our rafting trip from ? who explained what "lilydipping" was, and more. (It's not the same or opposite of lollygagging.) We had some time to make final preparations for our trip. I bought a Chums eyewear retainer ($5) and a Kap Strap ($3) for fear of losing valuables or semi-valuables in the rapids from the camp store. (They also provided string if you wanted to do it that way instead.) We met our rafting guides; each raft has a guide who sits at the back of the boat, provides paddling instructions, steers, and ensures we have the funnest and safest time we possibly can. We received our life preservers, which stank of body odor at first but later I didn't notice it as much. We started out from the Mariah campground at 10:00 AM. The guides immediately got us paddling basic strokes and commands (forward, backward, turns), and then we rafted for about an hour through fairly easy Class 2 waters. Riding in my boat: me, Antonio, Steve, Travis, Timmie, Greg, and our guide, Ben. Another boat: Rich, Jesse, Remi, Tony, Galen, and another couple not part of our party—a woman and a man. Their guide was Matt with the green and white John Deere cap and the fluorescent orange super whistle and compass attached to his life preserver. Riding in the last boat was Ryan, Scott, Andy, Bryan, Ted, and Emery, and their guide was ?, who seemed to me the most skilled in splashing others, which is a good part of the fun, and it hardly matters when the 95 degree heat dries you out in literally seconds. When we found out the name of our fleet leader was Nancy, discussion immediately wandered to the obvious pun that we were the Nancy Boys. Within the first, say, 15 minutes, the boat I was on got trapped on a rock, which can happen easily if the rock is big and not very visible from a distance. These were easy waters, though since we had just launched we didn't know any better, and I had thought we were doomed to being stranded while we watched the rest of the boats in our fleet continue down the river. Our guide, Ben, looked somewhat panicked the first few seconds, but to my surprise he stepped out of the boat completely and found footing on the rock which had stranded us, and with a couple of big shoves he freed us from it and hopped back in and we were on our way again. It seemed so simple in retrospect, and I felt better when I saw other boats in our fleet get caught in the same situation later on down the river. The paddling was easy because we typically only had to do 2 or 3 strokes to get the boat back to a correct path. Most of the time we're just floating with the current. The paddling is also hard—from the perspective of the entire day. We stopped for lunch, which was self-assembled sandwiches; Pringles; water and lemonade; various ordinary, store-bought cookies. I particularly liked the bread which was soft and thick-cut. After lunch, the rapids were more challenging and more fun, too. At the end of the rapids, a Sea-Doo towed us to the take-out, which is the terminology for the location where boats are removed from the river. (The entry point, conversely, is the "put-in.") In between the rapids are calmer parts of the river, and it's during these parts that you can get out of the boat and swim in the river to cool off from the sun and heat. I can't swim, but I liked the idea of that, so I slid off the side of the boat hanging on to a handle on the side. The life preserver does a great deal in keeping one afloat, so this was a fun and new experience for me. The water at the end of the trip was especially warm, much warmer than at the put-in. Along the way, Antonio salvaged a piece of jagged driftwood which had been floating in the river. I thought for certain through some of the rapids it would puncture the boat or one of us would be thrown about and impale ourselves on it, but luckily none of that happened. Near the end of the trip, I accidentally scraped one of my fingers on a D-ring on the side of the boat during a rowing stroke. A chunk of skin came off and it bled the rest of the rafting trip. It was disconcerting at first, but in the middle of the trip you can't really stop to apply pressure to a small injury like that, so it bled surprisingly slowly for about an hour or two. After the rafting was done, I was surprised to learn that we had to carry our boat in from the water up a short flight of stairs, but it's not that big of a deal—it's about an extra minute or two of work. Mariah guides directed us to cold bottled water and a bus which took us back to camp—about a 20-minute ride, and a good time to take a quick nap. They didn't tell us that the scariest part of the rafting trip was the bus ride back. The bus was really, really old and really, really loud. I didn't know that the bus would be so loud. If I did, I would have sat in the back. The bus ride was scary because I had every expectation that the bus would have a mechanical problem and we'd go right over the edge of the narrow mountain road we were climbing. Or, possibly, our driver (who unscrewed a bottled water and took gulps while driving) would somehow not keep us on the road. But we made it back safely and everyone trudged back to camp weary and wanting food. I immediately took care of the cut on my finger with some clean water, antibiotic ointment, and a finger bandage—thanks to Tony for bringing the first aid kit! I realized after a while that my finger wasn't going to stop bleeding on its own with just the bandage, so I found a napkin and applied pressure for about an hour and it seemed to have stopped most of the bleeding by then. The food was a long time in coming, and I don't know if my expectations were set incorrectly but it seemed like we waited 2 or 3 hours until dinner. The photographer who shot photos of the boats on the rapids showed a slideshow of his photos and pitched his deal: $90 for all the day's high-res photos on a CD-ROM. We learned later that the CD-ROM is not "per boat" but rather the photos of your entire fleet. Appetizers were served: chips, salsa, bean and cheese dip. Finally dinner: steak, salmon, or 2 kinds of chicken; salad; garlic bread; baked potato; brownies; water and lemonade. Beer and wine was available, too, from a nearby counter. A 3-piece band played folksy music, including one catchy song about New Orleans. Later in the evening, some of us went for a late swim and the rest of us gathered at our camp site playing cards or just chatting, thankful that the sun had gone down and things were starting to cool off. This is actually a great time to shower, I thought, since you know you won't be sweating much any more today, so I did. As the evening passed into night, we gathered again at camp looking up at the sky for shooting stars and satellites and planes and constellations. Chaotic hilarity ensued when Galen picked up a cockroach which had unfortunately found its way onto the slice of log we were using as a table, and Galen chased Tony in circles around the camp site. My mind and eyes weary from the day's rafting experience, I felt like I was in a zany cartoon. Bedtime.