OKC Kayak Word Soup

Well, it does not happen often, but every once in a blue moon, I get a complaint or two. I happened to get one of these this morning. Luckily it was from a friend. She expressed her displeasure with my lack of posting to the blog. I hemmed and hawed and pulled many an excuse from the recesses of my mind and another deep crevice or two of my body. She was not buying this. “I have been reading my daughter to sleep with this every night, and you have not posted in something like ten days!!!” she angrily retorted. Reading your child to sleep with my blog? Seriously? What kind of sick freak would read that crap to a child? Well, I guess I have heard of it putting a person or two to sleep before.

Anyway, after calling the Department of Human Services on this gal for child abuse, I started to type some more on the “Greatest Adventure Ever” story from my Grand Canyon Trip. (Still no pics until I find the cord to my camera! ….sorry.) If you have not read the last two installments you may want to go back and read the last two blogs first.

When we last left off, our time in the raft was just beginning. After frantically inquiring about safety tips and pointers from nearly everyone in the crew, I was aboard Tom Robinson’s raft. The one piece of advice that I clearly remembered was from Angela, “Hang on with BOTH hands!). White knuckled I would be for the rest of the day as I secured my death grip on the two ropes strung from the bow. I also made it practice to search for any potential entrapment hazards such as misplaced ropes, or other items that I could get tangled up on.

The group was real good at looking after each other. All the boats in the group would watch out for the rest, lining up before the rapids in a fashion that would ensure that a strong boater was both first and last into the rapids. Oh, who am I kidding, you don’t get here unless you are a real darn strong boater.

Right off the bat, Tom queried his crew to see what they had on in terms of clothing, since a dip into the 50 degree water would mean about 15 minutes worth of survival time without wetsuits or drysuits. We made it a habit to check and recheck each other for buckled lifejackets. Everything on the raft had to be secured beyond belief with webbing straps, so that the rapids would not wash it overboard. Many a story was told about gear lost to prior capsizes as well. The daily rigging of the rafts took nearly two hours to accomplish this.

Finally, we were underway and about to try our luck in one of the bigger rapids. Most rivers are rated on a scale of 1-6 with 6 being nearly certain death. The Colorado through the Grand deserved a rating scale all its own, being classed from 1-10. We would see some class nine action twice during our adventure. This truly was the mother of great North American rivers. From a distance, the large waves were capped into standing haystacks, capped with white foam where they curled back upstream. They seemed to lash out at anything traveling downstream, like the tongue of a hungry monster. As we entered the tongue of the rapid, the raft began to lurch up and then drop forcefully off the back off the wave, only to take the elevator ride up the back of the next one. The water was loud, and the adrenalin flowed through us with an equaled strength. “Here we go,” Tom shouted as we entered the biggest drop of the rapid. The raft lurched upwards, as I gripped the ropes tighter while simultaneously body slamming the front of the raft in a somewhat feeble attempt to bring the raft back down to earth. We sailed over the set of waves into the calmer waters, as I let out a big whoop of both excitement and relief. My raft mates looked at me a bit foolishly as they informed me that this rapid is so small that it is not even rated. Whoops!

Well, once again my creative writing time has expired. More of the story is yet to come.

I have to go read another complaint email from the webmaster about my lack of updating the blog. Seems he has programmed a new message from staff into the home page of our website. Check this out to find out why I now am offering free foot massages with every purchase.

Until next time,

Dave