Mark 2 Outing

It's Tuesday. I had a hard time rolling out of bed this morning because every muscle in my body is screaming in agony because of it's over-use yesterday. Ok, so not every muscle, but my back, shoulders, and arms are all about useless. I'm finding in hard to do simple things like wash my hair in the shower or even pick up a fork to eat. They are simply done.

You must be asking yourself why? We went rafting. In any normal group of people, I would make sure that I got to sit in the front of the boat, but on this trip, I didn't get a choice. We had 3 people on the paddles, plus the guide. It was a boat big enough for 8, we had 6, and 2 of them weren't eaven rowing.

To the river we go. It started out pleasent enough, it was some slow moving water, not much of a current and we were learning the commands so we would know what to do if we got into a situation that required a bunch of commands in a row. The other boats and ours got into some splash fights and we got a small cooling down from the mild spray that was bounced into our raft.

Then the fun began. For a little over 3 hours we had slow currents, fast rapids, some swimmers (both volunteer and not), waves pouring over the side and a complete drenching of everything that you had on. I didn't bother taking off my shirt when I climbed into the water at one point because it was soaking wet anyway.

A visiting volunteer was accompanying us because of extra spots that we had in the boats. Alan was taking great joy in watching every wave that came over the front of the boat land right in my lap. He was damp, but nothing compared to the complete dousing that I had taken... until... Coming into the biggest rapid on the trip, our boat took a sudden lurch to the left. A wall of water, like Moses parting the red sea, dove over the front of the boat and I was convinced I was going swimming. At the last second, the current caught the boat and we lurched to the left, throwing Alan from his seat, almost throwing Robby from the boat, and landing the full force of the wave right into... not my chest. I was missed by almost the full wave of water. Alan however, was not so lucky. He could not have been more completely soaked by the wave that washed over him. There was nothing dry on him left to be found.

As much joy as I took in watching him get drenched, I later took the full force of a wave right in my face and came through sputtering incoherently. Robby road through a rapid on the outside of the boat, on purpose, and Mike seemed to enjoy just being out on the water.

Sunburned and with a story to tell, we had lunch at the Imperial Restraunt in Maupin, then headed home. My food sitting heavy in my stomach, my eyes barely remained open to get us home and there was little complaint from anyone when it became time for lights out. They/We were exhausted.