Baptism
Not in any religious sense, but since this is the beginning of my blog, and it relates to water - I thought the title fit. Here is the true story of eight people self-selected to participate in an adventure. Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting REAL:
This past Sunday, I set out on an adventure with six of my bunkermates and one of their former roommates. The eight of us headed to wild wonderful West Virginia for a night of camping and a day of whitewater rafting. We arrived in time to set up tents, gather wood and play some frisbee before darkness came. Time came to start the fire and that's when the trouble began. Arguments erupted regarding kindling (fat wood vs gathered twigs vs paper towels), starting methods (magnesium-shavings-and-spark lighter vs lighter gun), and structure (chimney vs teepee vs hybrid). Miraculously, a fire somehow evolved despite all of our efforts. Then it came time to cook and eat.
Apparently there was great misunderstanding regarding the number of people expected to participate in the meal as we had enough food to feed 80, but only had 8 folks to eat it. We had brats, burgers, speidies, asparagus, potato salad, two types of pasta salad, southern Georgia caviar, chips, smores, and brownies. Apparently the only thing we didn't have enough of was the girlie drinks (and that's only because Rex and Chris were drinking them...). I think the asparagus was the biggest hit of the evening - who knew that it was such a campfire treat? The evening ended with the traditional reading of Cosmo by the campfire (mention this to any of us men that were in the group and I guarantee a slight cringe as we recall one of the more, shall we say, "bent" articles that was read).
I didn't sleep too well that night. Seems that one of the tents got "over heated", which led to much giggling by it's occupants. It also turned out that what I thought was a flat spot was actually angled just enough to bug me. Strangely enough, the night seemed interminable yet 5:30 am came too quickly. I reluctantly arose and began the arduous process of decamping (ok, so it was really quite simple except for the fact that it had rained during the night and the tent was wet and I dreaded the thought of getting home late and having to take it back out and hang it to dry). The other campers also began to rise and pack the cars up and enjoy breakfast. Once again, there must have been some confusion over the number of people that were expected because some Central American country's entire day's output of bananas was waiting on the picnic table (later in the week I'm hoping to get some of Kris' vanilla banana bread I heard about). We managed to leave the campsite only five minutes past our expected arrival time for rafting (6:30 am).
Once at the Ace Davidian Compound, we received the requisite paperwork agreeing to the fact that we are complete idiots for doing something so dangerous (yet somehow sane enough to be signing such paperwork) and that we won't hold anyone responsible should Darwinism rear its ugly head (and neither will our kids, grandkids, etc, etc). We then rented our wet suits - yes, I had to get a youth size. After a couple of failed attempts, I managed to get the wetsuit on the proper way (you mean the knee padding goes on the front?!?). Then headed over to get my helmet and paddle. Of course, I had to be different and picked the only red paddle in the group (more on that later). I also deposited my keys in the proper basket and was told that I could upgrade vehicles if I got back to the basket first (I was hoping for a two-seater so that I could leave some of my bunkermates behind, but, alas, that wasn't to be). We all boarded the 7:30 Marathon bus and headed toward the river.
On the way to the river, we were taught about rafting, the local community, the Gauley river and bad humor (although some of us are already experts in this last item). We were also assigned a guide, ours was Ken. The long bus ride gave me and the other first timer in our group plenty of time to get nervous. Once we arrived at the place where we were to put in, we were given a final opportunity to relieve ourselves and to back out - I took them up on the first offer, but not the second. Then it was time to find our raft and meet our guide.
We decided to stay together as a group, and since there were eight of us, we couldn't fit on the smaller blue rafts. So, we ended up with a big yellow boat that came to be known be various monikers such as the party bus, the school bus, and the short bus. Ken gave us about five minutes of lessons on dry land and then we carried the boat to the water. We all climbed about and set out for an eight hour tour, an eight hour tour. The water starting getting rough, the tiny raft was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew...
Okay, so courage may be stretching it a bit, but we were all troupers. The Upper Gauley was incredible. Challenging rapids followed one after the other. We lost a passenger or two along the way but we also rescued a couple too. Everything was going along fairly smoothly until Ken forced me to forfeit my red paddle because he said it ruined our uniformity (Ken would later come to regret this move). Then came the disaster at Sweets Falls.
Sweets Falls is the last rapid before we stop for lunch. It is a Class V+, which means that mother nature really wants to throw you for a loop. Looking at the video afterwards, it doesn't seem like one of the more challenging Class V+ rapids, but it is the one that decided to toy with the yellow bus. Somehow we managed to run the falls sideways and too far left, which was not the best move. The raft went down the falls and at some point became a catapult and threw everyone up into the air at once. The story was that I was the only one besides the guide not to fall out of the raft. It is probably more accurate to say that I was the only one to land back in the raft. Upon landing, I quickly gather my wits (after a moment of looking around and realizing that the only other person on the raft was Ken and thinking Oh S***, he might ask me to do something at any moment) and began to look for people to rescue. The only person that I saw was Rex, one of the more expendable people in our group, but I figured I might need some help doing what Ken asked, so I would pull him in anyways. Well time stopped. Rex was between the raft and a boulder and the raft was moving at lightning speed about to crush Rex into the boulder. I tried pulling Rex in, but apparently he's not quite the strength trainer that he's been advertising himself as. Finally, with time running out, I managed to haul his sorry carcass into the raft. I immediately turned my attention to another raft-mate in peril, Jilian. I began pulling her into the raft, but Rex quickly brushed me aside so that he could take the credit for being a hero (check out the DVD and see who really rescued this damsel in distress). Ken had managed to get one of our other crew into the raft and we set out to park the raft and have lunch.
There was one rock and a rapid between us and our destination - no problem. Well, we got to the rock and the left side of the raft started to climb the rock. Our four-person crew was determined not to be dumped into the raging river by the yellow bus. We all climbed the left side of the raft and somehow managed to get it to go back into the water. Over the rapid we went. We parked the raft and found out that all of our crew was safe and that lunch was moments away. Of course, all of this happened right in front of all of the groups that had already stopped for lunch, so our group provide great laughs for the other groups. It also happened right in front of the camera man, so it was captured for posterity. I blame the entire incident on the fact that I was forced to give up my red paddle - we were fine before that. Also, I was spared by the river gods because they knew that it had not been my idea to give up the paddle - peer pressure had worked its evil influence. Those peers paid dearly for their pressure!
At lunch, a couple of the greedier members of our crew managed to get chastised by the lead guide for taking the tuna, chicken AND burger (not tuna, chicken OR burger). We got to enjoy the sights of other rafts experience spills at Sweets Falls (though none so spectacularly as we had earlier) while we finished our lunch. Then it was back on the yellow bus for more rafting adventures on the Middle and Lower Gauley.
These sections of the river offered more relaxing stretches where we could enjoy the scenery. They also offered some fun rollercoaster like sections. We experienced a short period of rain (which was surprisingly annoying given the fact that we were already soaked). A few of the braver sorts floated through a small rapid without the raft. Several of us also went cliff jumping off of a 200ft cliff (ok, so maybe I added an extra 0). It was fun hearing the girls and Chris scream. The yellow bus made also made several more rescues during this part of the trip.
On the final rapid of the day, Ken forced us to surf. There had been an opportunity for this earlier in the morning, but we had all just kind of not even tried. Basically it involves trying to ride the crest caused when falling water meets the water below. Well, in the afternoon, we really had no choice but to give it everything we had (Ken had a menacing knife pointing to his own chin and we were afraid of what might happen if we gave up again). We all fought like hell to get back to the crest and do some surfing. We suddenly had the strength of ten Grinches plus two and got to ride the wave for about 2 seconds before we got spit back out and returned to our lazy ways of yore. We parked the yellow bus on the beach and headed for the real bus that would take us back to civilization (or as close to it as you can get in west by god virginia).
Upon boarding the bus we were handed cold soft drinks (it is stretching things too far to call Coors and Coors Light beer) in order to help numb us to the perilous journey that we were about to take back to the Ace Davidian Compound. The bus ride back was amazing; through some truly desolate areas (oddly enough, even if the house looked more like a pile of kindling than a house, it still had a satellite dish). One section of an "S" curve we had to back up because there was no room for the bus to make a turn (guess that should really be called a "Z" curve). We arrived back at the compound safely at around 5:30, exhausted from a full day of rafting, screaming, yelling, swimming, etc. We all took showers (except Rex surprisingly enough) with Chris taking longer than the ladies (not surprising at all), put on dry clothes and hung out until the DVD was ready to be shown. It was great seeing the highlights of our trip - it was good for a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, there was no popcorn...
After viewing the movie and saying goodbye to Ken about 100 times, we headed to get something to eat. Jilian led us to a great BBQ place, which we found despite vague directions from several sources. We fed our appetites and headed back home. Luckily Rex (remember, he didn't shower) decided to ride back in the station wagon rather than the minivan. Once on the road, all of my passengers promptly fell asleep - comfortable in the fact that they were in good hands with me at the wheel (fools!). We arrived in b'burg in the pouring rain and unloaded the minivan. I turned around to say goodbye to my passengers, but two of them had already fled in their mini. Rex absolved himself of any guilt associated with me wrecking on the way home by telling me to be careful.
I made it home shortly before midnight, in the midst of torrential rains. I unloaded the minivan, got the tent out to dry in the basement and went to bed thinking that my water adventures were over. Not bloody likely. I got up the next morning, woke up G&M and headed to work. It was still raining and the roads were flooding. Soon after getting on the road I got several calls from my co-workers saying that the bunker was flooding and that we were being evacuated. I turned the car around and headed home, thinking I could get some much needed sleep (yeah right).
After taking G&M to school, I went down to the basement to check to see if there was any water. Of course there was - one or two inches of standing water. We vacuumed it up, dried things off, moved things, etc. A small stream remained from one corner of the basement to the drain in the floor and we just had to clear its path and wait for it to dry up. When G&M returned from school we took a tour of our flooded city - lots of brown water where water shouldn't be. G&M definitely won't be playing soccer this week, since their field was under water!
Thankfully the weather has cleared, the water has subsided and no one was injured. I'm sure I'll be up for another rafting trip in the future, but for now I'm appreciating being dry! I promise my future postings won't be so long winded...
This past Sunday, I set out on an adventure with six of my bunkermates and one of their former roommates. The eight of us headed to wild wonderful West Virginia for a night of camping and a day of whitewater rafting. We arrived in time to set up tents, gather wood and play some frisbee before darkness came. Time came to start the fire and that's when the trouble began. Arguments erupted regarding kindling (fat wood vs gathered twigs vs paper towels), starting methods (magnesium-shavings-and-spark lighter vs lighter gun), and structure (chimney vs teepee vs hybrid). Miraculously, a fire somehow evolved despite all of our efforts. Then it came time to cook and eat.
Apparently there was great misunderstanding regarding the number of people expected to participate in the meal as we had enough food to feed 80, but only had 8 folks to eat it. We had brats, burgers, speidies, asparagus, potato salad, two types of pasta salad, southern Georgia caviar, chips, smores, and brownies. Apparently the only thing we didn't have enough of was the girlie drinks (and that's only because Rex and Chris were drinking them...). I think the asparagus was the biggest hit of the evening - who knew that it was such a campfire treat? The evening ended with the traditional reading of Cosmo by the campfire (mention this to any of us men that were in the group and I guarantee a slight cringe as we recall one of the more, shall we say, "bent" articles that was read).
I didn't sleep too well that night. Seems that one of the tents got "over heated", which led to much giggling by it's occupants. It also turned out that what I thought was a flat spot was actually angled just enough to bug me. Strangely enough, the night seemed interminable yet 5:30 am came too quickly. I reluctantly arose and began the arduous process of decamping (ok, so it was really quite simple except for the fact that it had rained during the night and the tent was wet and I dreaded the thought of getting home late and having to take it back out and hang it to dry). The other campers also began to rise and pack the cars up and enjoy breakfast. Once again, there must have been some confusion over the number of people that were expected because some Central American country's entire day's output of bananas was waiting on the picnic table (later in the week I'm hoping to get some of Kris' vanilla banana bread I heard about). We managed to leave the campsite only five minutes past our expected arrival time for rafting (6:30 am).
Once at the Ace Davidian Compound, we received the requisite paperwork agreeing to the fact that we are complete idiots for doing something so dangerous (yet somehow sane enough to be signing such paperwork) and that we won't hold anyone responsible should Darwinism rear its ugly head (and neither will our kids, grandkids, etc, etc). We then rented our wet suits - yes, I had to get a youth size. After a couple of failed attempts, I managed to get the wetsuit on the proper way (you mean the knee padding goes on the front?!?). Then headed over to get my helmet and paddle. Of course, I had to be different and picked the only red paddle in the group (more on that later). I also deposited my keys in the proper basket and was told that I could upgrade vehicles if I got back to the basket first (I was hoping for a two-seater so that I could leave some of my bunkermates behind, but, alas, that wasn't to be). We all boarded the 7:30 Marathon bus and headed toward the river.
On the way to the river, we were taught about rafting, the local community, the Gauley river and bad humor (although some of us are already experts in this last item). We were also assigned a guide, ours was Ken. The long bus ride gave me and the other first timer in our group plenty of time to get nervous. Once we arrived at the place where we were to put in, we were given a final opportunity to relieve ourselves and to back out - I took them up on the first offer, but not the second. Then it was time to find our raft and meet our guide.
We decided to stay together as a group, and since there were eight of us, we couldn't fit on the smaller blue rafts. So, we ended up with a big yellow boat that came to be known be various monikers such as the party bus, the school bus, and the short bus. Ken gave us about five minutes of lessons on dry land and then we carried the boat to the water. We all climbed about and set out for an eight hour tour, an eight hour tour. The water starting getting rough, the tiny raft was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew...
Okay, so courage may be stretching it a bit, but we were all troupers. The Upper Gauley was incredible. Challenging rapids followed one after the other. We lost a passenger or two along the way but we also rescued a couple too. Everything was going along fairly smoothly until Ken forced me to forfeit my red paddle because he said it ruined our uniformity (Ken would later come to regret this move). Then came the disaster at Sweets Falls.
Sweets Falls is the last rapid before we stop for lunch. It is a Class V+, which means that mother nature really wants to throw you for a loop. Looking at the video afterwards, it doesn't seem like one of the more challenging Class V+ rapids, but it is the one that decided to toy with the yellow bus. Somehow we managed to run the falls sideways and too far left, which was not the best move. The raft went down the falls and at some point became a catapult and threw everyone up into the air at once. The story was that I was the only one besides the guide not to fall out of the raft. It is probably more accurate to say that I was the only one to land back in the raft. Upon landing, I quickly gather my wits (after a moment of looking around and realizing that the only other person on the raft was Ken and thinking Oh S***, he might ask me to do something at any moment) and began to look for people to rescue. The only person that I saw was Rex, one of the more expendable people in our group, but I figured I might need some help doing what Ken asked, so I would pull him in anyways. Well time stopped. Rex was between the raft and a boulder and the raft was moving at lightning speed about to crush Rex into the boulder. I tried pulling Rex in, but apparently he's not quite the strength trainer that he's been advertising himself as. Finally, with time running out, I managed to haul his sorry carcass into the raft. I immediately turned my attention to another raft-mate in peril, Jilian. I began pulling her into the raft, but Rex quickly brushed me aside so that he could take the credit for being a hero (check out the DVD and see who really rescued this damsel in distress). Ken had managed to get one of our other crew into the raft and we set out to park the raft and have lunch.
There was one rock and a rapid between us and our destination - no problem. Well, we got to the rock and the left side of the raft started to climb the rock. Our four-person crew was determined not to be dumped into the raging river by the yellow bus. We all climbed the left side of the raft and somehow managed to get it to go back into the water. Over the rapid we went. We parked the raft and found out that all of our crew was safe and that lunch was moments away. Of course, all of this happened right in front of all of the groups that had already stopped for lunch, so our group provide great laughs for the other groups. It also happened right in front of the camera man, so it was captured for posterity. I blame the entire incident on the fact that I was forced to give up my red paddle - we were fine before that. Also, I was spared by the river gods because they knew that it had not been my idea to give up the paddle - peer pressure had worked its evil influence. Those peers paid dearly for their pressure!
At lunch, a couple of the greedier members of our crew managed to get chastised by the lead guide for taking the tuna, chicken AND burger (not tuna, chicken OR burger). We got to enjoy the sights of other rafts experience spills at Sweets Falls (though none so spectacularly as we had earlier) while we finished our lunch. Then it was back on the yellow bus for more rafting adventures on the Middle and Lower Gauley.
These sections of the river offered more relaxing stretches where we could enjoy the scenery. They also offered some fun rollercoaster like sections. We experienced a short period of rain (which was surprisingly annoying given the fact that we were already soaked). A few of the braver sorts floated through a small rapid without the raft. Several of us also went cliff jumping off of a 200ft cliff (ok, so maybe I added an extra 0). It was fun hearing the girls and Chris scream. The yellow bus made also made several more rescues during this part of the trip.
On the final rapid of the day, Ken forced us to surf. There had been an opportunity for this earlier in the morning, but we had all just kind of not even tried. Basically it involves trying to ride the crest caused when falling water meets the water below. Well, in the afternoon, we really had no choice but to give it everything we had (Ken had a menacing knife pointing to his own chin and we were afraid of what might happen if we gave up again). We all fought like hell to get back to the crest and do some surfing. We suddenly had the strength of ten Grinches plus two and got to ride the wave for about 2 seconds before we got spit back out and returned to our lazy ways of yore. We parked the yellow bus on the beach and headed for the real bus that would take us back to civilization (or as close to it as you can get in west by god virginia).
Upon boarding the bus we were handed cold soft drinks (it is stretching things too far to call Coors and Coors Light beer) in order to help numb us to the perilous journey that we were about to take back to the Ace Davidian Compound. The bus ride back was amazing; through some truly desolate areas (oddly enough, even if the house looked more like a pile of kindling than a house, it still had a satellite dish). One section of an "S" curve we had to back up because there was no room for the bus to make a turn (guess that should really be called a "Z" curve). We arrived back at the compound safely at around 5:30, exhausted from a full day of rafting, screaming, yelling, swimming, etc. We all took showers (except Rex surprisingly enough) with Chris taking longer than the ladies (not surprising at all), put on dry clothes and hung out until the DVD was ready to be shown. It was great seeing the highlights of our trip - it was good for a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, there was no popcorn...
After viewing the movie and saying goodbye to Ken about 100 times, we headed to get something to eat. Jilian led us to a great BBQ place, which we found despite vague directions from several sources. We fed our appetites and headed back home. Luckily Rex (remember, he didn't shower) decided to ride back in the station wagon rather than the minivan. Once on the road, all of my passengers promptly fell asleep - comfortable in the fact that they were in good hands with me at the wheel (fools!). We arrived in b'burg in the pouring rain and unloaded the minivan. I turned around to say goodbye to my passengers, but two of them had already fled in their mini. Rex absolved himself of any guilt associated with me wrecking on the way home by telling me to be careful.
I made it home shortly before midnight, in the midst of torrential rains. I unloaded the minivan, got the tent out to dry in the basement and went to bed thinking that my water adventures were over. Not bloody likely. I got up the next morning, woke up G&M and headed to work. It was still raining and the roads were flooding. Soon after getting on the road I got several calls from my co-workers saying that the bunker was flooding and that we were being evacuated. I turned the car around and headed home, thinking I could get some much needed sleep (yeah right).
After taking G&M to school, I went down to the basement to check to see if there was any water. Of course there was - one or two inches of standing water. We vacuumed it up, dried things off, moved things, etc. A small stream remained from one corner of the basement to the drain in the floor and we just had to clear its path and wait for it to dry up. When G&M returned from school we took a tour of our flooded city - lots of brown water where water shouldn't be. G&M definitely won't be playing soccer this week, since their field was under water!
Thankfully the weather has cleared, the water has subsided and no one was injured. I'm sure I'll be up for another rafting trip in the future, but for now I'm appreciating being dry! I promise my future postings won't be so long winded...
posted by r.m at 11:47 PM
2 comments
