Our friends, whose vacation we crashed, brought their 2 daughters along and somehow these conniving young ladies conned Tina and I into going WHITEWATER RAFTING with them!!
What were we thinking?!
They used sneaky tactics saying little things like, “You’re not chicken are you?”, “Is that a yellow streak I see on your back?”, “You’re not too old to have a little fun are you?”. You know, the kind of taunting that only an immature high schooler would fall for.
“No! I’m not chicken! If you can do it I can do it”! I blurted out. Ooops – did I say that out loud?
Oh and did I mention it couldn’t be class 1 or class 2 rapids. No. It had to be at least class 3 rapids! Tina and I have only rafted in our swimming pool before. The raft in our swimming pool had no class at all… (?).
Well, if I’m going to die then at least I’m going to get it on video. I bought a chest strap for my GoPro (really an SJ4000), called my lawyer to confirm my last will and testament was up to date then signed some legal form with very tiny print at the rafting office. Let’s do this thing.
Here’s how it goes.
- FIrst they cram you into an old school bus that probably is no longer street legal.
- You sit in little kid seats that your legs no longer squeeze into.
- You drive to the launch point listening to corny jokes the driver tells (the one about the Wyoming cowboy shooting the Californian was especially not funny!).
- They strap a life vest on you so tight that you can’t breath.
- Then tell you to get in the boat and shove off.
I didn’t like that vest strapped so tight. I loosened mine to the point I could easily slip out if I needed too. Much like seat belts, I want to be thrown safely from the car in an accident. So too in a life vest, if it gets snagged on a tree I want to slip out of the life vest and float to safety. Right?
Anyway, I loosened it enough to breathe at least.
Whitewater rafting turned out to be a blast (except the part where I almost died in the freezing cold water after being told it was safe to jump in and swim around a bit – dumb – that jump into the cold water was a shock to the system. It took me a couple of minutes to start breathing again!! ).
Once you jump out of the boat it is almost impossible to get back in these big rubber rafts by yourself. They need some handles on the inside you can grab ahold of to pull yourself up, but they don’t. So the procedure, as explained by our guide, is that your boat mates grab ahold of your life vest, shove you down in the water then pull you up over the edge into the boat. If it hadn’t been for my new found Romanian friend, Konstantin, Tina and the old guy ahead of me could have never pulled me back in. Thanks “K”.
Here’s a little sample of the action.
The moral of this story is, don’t yield to peer pressure -or- whitewater rafting is actually fun!
That should have taken care of your bath for the week.