I spent my summer rafting, and I got paid for it. At some point during the preceding school year I discovered that I was getting burnt out, and the thought was that rafting was about as far as I could get from any of my numerous nerdy tendencies. So I looked online and applied to about 4 different companies. Only one even considered my application, and I've resolved to blame this on the fact that Harvard gets out for the summer about 3 weeks too late. After spending much time on a telephone trying to convince Andy Neinas that I could join training halfway through, I ended up with River Runners, on the Arkansas River in Colorado. Training ensued...
Training was like being a pancake: you know you're going to get flipped, it's just a question of how (sun)burnt you get first. And that, besides a few stories, pretty much sums it up--no one besides yours truly had enough experience on the river to know the importance of putting suntan lotion on sandalled feet. Perhaps I'm not giving the others enough credit. A lot of them had experience kayaking, and so were used to having half their bodies imbedded in a plastic tube. That might explain some of the foot-burn thing. But far more interesting than the sun was the water, or more specifically, novice guides on the water. I had considered myself a fairly experienced oarsman before this, but I learned that most of what I had done with my family was benign splish-splash when compared to the Arkansas River at high water. I think I'd only done maybe 2 class IV rapids before the Arkansas River. Suddenly here I was running one after another, and, to boot, I was also standing by helpless as some guys who'd never been rafting before tried to take us through. I swam more than once.
The only real hair-raising swim I had during training was in Brown's Canyon, on Seidel's Suck-hole. This class IV rapid was one of the most entertaining on the river. There was a little spot where people would hike in and sit, watching the rafts go by and hoping for a show. And they got one, most days. If Seidel's were followed by a rapid of any consequence, it would undoubtedly be classified as a V. As we found out by trial and error, there is one and only one line, and any deviation lands you smack in the middle of a roaring hole which flips, conservatively, a quarter of all boats that hit it (this at high water). The situation was somewhat amusing, in retrospect. The trainers would make us pull over and scout the rapid, offering no assistance in reading the water (we'll let you learn from your mistakes, they said). Then, we'd all hike back up to the boats, except for the trainers who under no circumstances were going to participate in this "carnage quest."
On this particular day, I was along for the ride as Travis was attempting to get us all killed. He screwed up. To be fair, we all screwed up at one point or another. Some, like me, got lucky and made it through without flipping. Some didn't. Travis didn't. That's not entirely true. The boat "dump-trucked" and Travis stayed in, but no one else did. I was underwater before I was aware of being out of the boat. I had the bad luck of falling right into Seidel's Suck-hole, and despite the life-vest strapped around my chest, I was slammed to the bottom of the river. I remember being swirled about madly by the current. I guess it was probably something like what a chew toy feels like in the mouth of an excited puppy. Anyway, I remember telling myself to relax and just allow myself to be tossed around by the river, because there's really nothing to be gained by fighting it until you know which way is up, and in the mean time, you waste oxygen. Eventually, the river spit me out 15 or 20 yards downstream. The ordeal lasted maybe 10 seconds max, but as anyone who knows will tell you, it feels like forever when you're under there. I came out fairly unscathed, besides a bruise on my right ham the diameter of a softball.
I have one other story from training that I like to tell. I'll warn you in advance that it is slightly fabricated. You might wonder what I am doing, telling made-up stories about what I did last summer. Well, it's like this: As a guide, I relied on about half my salary in the form of tips from the 'mers I took down the river. Now there is some debate as to whether anything you do on the river can possibly affect the tip you get--some people seem to stiff you no matter what, and others tip you even when you finally get fed up with them and refuse to say anything to them the rest of the trip (some guides seem to do this frequently; I only had this happen once--with a church group, I might add). Anyway, in addition to taking the 'mers down the river, you're also expected to entertain them with bits and pieces of local color. I usually talked about geology and then told some rafting stories. Well, I had a great story from training, but it didn't happen to me, and the 'mers will be damned if they want to hear a story about what happened to some other guy. So I fabricated it and replaced Robbie with me. That's it. And now that I've gone and told it a thousand times to eight thousand people, I don't feel like changing it, and besides, you don't want to hear a story about what happened to some other guy, either.
So at one point during training, Jesse and I are along for a ride in a paddle-assist (oar) boat. Mikey, an experienced guide (and a stunning bassist), is at the oars. It's high water (a little early this year), and we're just above Spikebuck Rapid. Happy as can be, we crash through the first looming waves, and we take on some water, which is not a problem, since all rafts these days are self-bailing, meaning the water just drains out of holes between the tubes and the inflated floor. Pretty soon, Jesse feels something against his leg. Looking down, he lets out a yelp and jumps up on the tubes. It's a snake, in the boat. I'm immediately up on the tubes as well, 'cuz this snake's pissed. He's squirmin' around and tryin' to jump out of the boat (but he couldn't make it), and he's snappin' at our legs 'n stuff. So here we are, in the middle of a class IV rapid, with a friggin' snake mad as hell in the bottom of the boat. Mikey's yelling at us to get the hell down and start paddling 'cuz here comes a doozie, and he needs help moving the boat. But man, there's this snake in the boat, and hooie is he mad. I don't care, says Mikey, forget about the damn snake and paddle. Jesse and I are thinkin' we'll take our chances swimmin'. But Mikey, skilled guide that he is, gets us to a lull in the rapids, and leans forward to have a look. Y'know, says Mikey, I'm not sure, but that there looks a bit like a rattler. Forget about paddlin' boys, watch out for that snake. Don't have to tell us twice, man. We're already standin' here on the tubes. We try gettin' the bugger out with a paddle, but all it does is make him madder. Pretty soon the lull gives out, and we're in the thick of it again. One more time, Mikey's yellin' to forget the snake and paddle, but he already said it was a rattler, and we weren't gonna get bit. So we drop into a hole, and wham, we all get nailed down into the front of the boat with the snake. AIEEE!! we scream and jump back out, but the snake, by some miracle, was gone. He must of been knocked back into the river by the wave.