Yaarr! Paddle faster, I hear banjos!
So, Sunday was apparently Talk Like a Pirate Day. You know, trim the mainsails, pieces of eight, and all that shite, right? Right. However, since I'm keen on bucking trends, I opted to keep my grammar (mostly - there's only so much Proper I can manage before my nose starts to bleed) in check, and actually spend the day at doing something nautical.
In a boat like. Amidst churning (damned! fecking! cold!) waters.
It started out as a whim, really. A student of my friend, Kim, had told glowing tales of his recent whitewater excursion and lit a fire in her head. So she phoned me up and said 'let's go rafting this weekend before I'm too pregger to do it!' She's due in March (long chats had been had with wise, experienced women who assured her that at her present stage, harm was unlikely to come to the baby). 'I've found a guide company up in Bryson, NC - it's never that far to drive'.
Thus, early sunday morning, we set out north towards the mountains. We'd been instructed to arrive no later than noon, so we let nothing distract us on the way there. Well, but for a sudden need for waterproof cameras. I have got a rather fine camera that is waterproof to 1.5m. And I did consider bringing it along, but having never done this sort of thing (I've only other done the sort of floating down a river in which one takes out at the end of it all mildly in one's cups), I decided the chances of me losing it were fairly high (and my experience thus far hasn't convinced me otherwise).
So we made a dash into a shop and bought a couple of waterproof cameras. With film in and everything. We all recall film, right? That brown strippy shite with the wee holes in down the sides? Ah, nostalgia. We arrived at the rafting company with just enough time for last minute preparations before assembling to pick out life jackets and paddles, then proceeding to board the bus.
Once aboard the bus, I wriggled into my life jacket, fetched up my camera to snap a photo of Kim who was grinning and bouncing in the seat beside me, and promptly and with some great gusto, wound the capstan in the wrong direction, sliced through those wee holes in the film, and rendered the camera fairly useless.
I could have used it to defend against attack by an angry trout, but otherwise, it was a block of plastic hanging from my jacket by a rubber strap just waiting to fly up and smack somebody's head. Ah well, eh? It's said that technology is mostly the thing of the younger set, and yet I - brought up with 35mms and 110s - have managed to forget how to use a camera with film in. There are even little arrows on the capstan the sole purpose of which is to suggest to those such as myself that perhaps the direction I'm about to twist the thing will not provide optimum results, and mightn't I rather go anti-clockwise. Or...the camera could be used to smack a cheeky fish or something.
As the bus went its way along the curvy mountain road, the two strapping lads who'd serve as our guides gave us a few brief lessons in how not to be killed by the rapids. They made a point to show us the class V run, which they assured us all would mean certain doom if we should be so unfortunate as to wander into it. After that to bolster our confidence, we disembarked the bus, they brought down the rafts, we carried them to the water, and hopped into them.
So off we were. Of the company, there were six people and a guide (Nick) in one raft, four people in two kayaks (or 'duckies', as apparently the inflatable ones are called) who were on their own, and four people and a guide (Boomer) in the other raft. Myself and Kim were in Boomer's raft.
Boomer and Nick. I've decided they're archetypes. I've met these same fellows dozens of times over, only they were on surfboards, or skis, or mountain bikes, sometimes they were girls. It's one of those subtleties of subculture. To poke a wee hole into this theory, Boomer did say over the course of the trip that he winters in Montana as a snowboard teacher, so clearly there's some crossover. He's been a river guide since the age of seven, learning at the side of his mother who was a lifelong guide herself. He took pride in his ability to thrill people by crashing them into things (he made us to ram the boat into a bridge in order to check it wasn't going to fall down - as a favour to the forestry service) yet explaining to them first what to do to guard they don't get hurt. I don't know that, were I paddling my own kayak, I'd charge into the bridge, but it was amusing to do it in a raft full of people. I nearly got a flying lesson.
Occasionally, we'd beach the rafts, and the fittest of us would climb out and splash about in the water. The children in the other raft did this the most - one boy fell out three times, I suspect he was willing this to happen - their elders...I could say that the water was bracing, and that would be an understatement. It was effing cold. Round 8C. The sort of cold that makes your extremities cry out in protest and then threaten to switch off entirely. Once into the river was enough for me, thanks very much. I had my taste of it, it had its taste of me, and we parted in agreement. Nick, the guide to the other raft, climbed into our raft, then up onto it, and treated Kim and me to a backflip. I was a bit flattered. Nobody else got a show.
The river varied between calm and rapids - usually class II. At two runs, Boomer instructed myself and Kim (we were in the fore section of the raft) to shift forwards and dangle our feet over the sides. 'Riding the bull' he called it. We got soaked. I have mentioned the iciness of the water, yeh? Well, as cold as the water was, the sun was equally as hot - so it all came out in the wash, sort of thing. Round about the time we'd start to think that perhaps we were frying to a crisp, we'd hit a bit of a rapid, and be soundly drenched.
So, with all of this H2O about, you'd think at least somebody would offer up a 'pieces of eight' or something, right? Well. I suppose I did get close...but not exactly in keeping with the jovial yet odd spirit of the event. We'd come to some calm water, and rather than paddling, we were drifting a bit. Kim had been chatting with me about something, and I was looking towards the mountains. As we floated under a tree, there came a crack like a shotgun report. Your man at the 'rutter', Boomer is not one hour after lamenting to us how developers are buying up the camping areas along the river banks and are knocking up posh houses there. I've read that in some parts of the country, this does strange things to public right of way when it comes to paddlers. So, for the space of time in which it took me to react, I did honestly fear that somebody had fired off a shot at us from the trees.
So I bawled out what the fucking hell?! and hit the deck. When I got a laugh, I realised that perhaps I'd missed something. Something such as Boomer whacking the water with his paddle to piss with Nick and amuse himself. Nick...whose raft - rammed to bursting with tender under- 12s - had floated well within earshot of our raft. So...perhaps it was more cursing like a sailor than talking like a pirate, and a clear solid reminder that English is my native tongue, and I'm going to have to be a bit more diligent if I'm going to ensure I don't melt anymore children (I don't take issue with most language - colourful or otherwise - however, other people do take issue, and I do try not to be the verbal bull in the china shop).
The penultimate rapid was a dodgy class II known as The Bump (there's even a road sign suspended in a tree over the rapid, it reads 'BUMP'). Boomer's plan was to come at it starboard and soak me and the other woman behind me, then carry on to the Falls (class III-VI) from port and soak everybody else. Well, the initial plan didn't quite work out as envisioned. Somehow we managed not to be soaked much. The Falls bit worked a charm, though. To look at the photos, you'd think the fellow behind Kim had fallen out, and yet some how he managed not to do, which meant that at the end of the 8-mile run, nobody in our raft had fallen out.
All that was left to do the was to paddle to the shore, which we did with a certain amount of triumph in our hearts. Next time, Boomer, next time. Sodden, thoroughly fagged, and basking in the glow of a fine day out, we tumbled into the bus for the ride back to Rolling Thunder Rafting (where there were pleasingly hot showers).
We stopped for nosh and to snap a few photos of some of the rapids we floated over before heading back to the ATL. Good times indeed.
In a boat like. Amidst churning (damned! fecking! cold!) waters.
It started out as a whim, really. A student of my friend, Kim, had told glowing tales of his recent whitewater excursion and lit a fire in her head. So she phoned me up and said 'let's go rafting this weekend before I'm too pregger to do it!' She's due in March (long chats had been had with wise, experienced women who assured her that at her present stage, harm was unlikely to come to the baby). 'I've found a guide company up in Bryson, NC - it's never that far to drive'.
Thus, early sunday morning, we set out north towards the mountains. We'd been instructed to arrive no later than noon, so we let nothing distract us on the way there. Well, but for a sudden need for waterproof cameras. I have got a rather fine camera that is waterproof to 1.5m. And I did consider bringing it along, but having never done this sort of thing (I've only other done the sort of floating down a river in which one takes out at the end of it all mildly in one's cups), I decided the chances of me losing it were fairly high (and my experience thus far hasn't convinced me otherwise).
So we made a dash into a shop and bought a couple of waterproof cameras. With film in and everything. We all recall film, right? That brown strippy shite with the wee holes in down the sides? Ah, nostalgia. We arrived at the rafting company with just enough time for last minute preparations before assembling to pick out life jackets and paddles, then proceeding to board the bus.
Once aboard the bus, I wriggled into my life jacket, fetched up my camera to snap a photo of Kim who was grinning and bouncing in the seat beside me, and promptly and with some great gusto, wound the capstan in the wrong direction, sliced through those wee holes in the film, and rendered the camera fairly useless.
I could have used it to defend against attack by an angry trout, but otherwise, it was a block of plastic hanging from my jacket by a rubber strap just waiting to fly up and smack somebody's head. Ah well, eh? It's said that technology is mostly the thing of the younger set, and yet I - brought up with 35mms and 110s - have managed to forget how to use a camera with film in. There are even little arrows on the capstan the sole purpose of which is to suggest to those such as myself that perhaps the direction I'm about to twist the thing will not provide optimum results, and mightn't I rather go anti-clockwise. Or...the camera could be used to smack a cheeky fish or something.
As the bus went its way along the curvy mountain road, the two strapping lads who'd serve as our guides gave us a few brief lessons in how not to be killed by the rapids. They made a point to show us the class V run, which they assured us all would mean certain doom if we should be so unfortunate as to wander into it. After that to bolster our confidence, we disembarked the bus, they brought down the rafts, we carried them to the water, and hopped into them.
So off we were. Of the company, there were six people and a guide (Nick) in one raft, four people in two kayaks (or 'duckies', as apparently the inflatable ones are called) who were on their own, and four people and a guide (Boomer) in the other raft. Myself and Kim were in Boomer's raft.
Boomer and Nick. I've decided they're archetypes. I've met these same fellows dozens of times over, only they were on surfboards, or skis, or mountain bikes, sometimes they were girls. It's one of those subtleties of subculture. To poke a wee hole into this theory, Boomer did say over the course of the trip that he winters in Montana as a snowboard teacher, so clearly there's some crossover. He's been a river guide since the age of seven, learning at the side of his mother who was a lifelong guide herself. He took pride in his ability to thrill people by crashing them into things (he made us to ram the boat into a bridge in order to check it wasn't going to fall down - as a favour to the forestry service) yet explaining to them first what to do to guard they don't get hurt. I don't know that, were I paddling my own kayak, I'd charge into the bridge, but it was amusing to do it in a raft full of people. I nearly got a flying lesson.
Occasionally, we'd beach the rafts, and the fittest of us would climb out and splash about in the water. The children in the other raft did this the most - one boy fell out three times, I suspect he was willing this to happen - their elders...I could say that the water was bracing, and that would be an understatement. It was effing cold. Round 8C. The sort of cold that makes your extremities cry out in protest and then threaten to switch off entirely. Once into the river was enough for me, thanks very much. I had my taste of it, it had its taste of me, and we parted in agreement. Nick, the guide to the other raft, climbed into our raft, then up onto it, and treated Kim and me to a backflip. I was a bit flattered. Nobody else got a show.
The river varied between calm and rapids - usually class II. At two runs, Boomer instructed myself and Kim (we were in the fore section of the raft) to shift forwards and dangle our feet over the sides. 'Riding the bull' he called it. We got soaked. I have mentioned the iciness of the water, yeh? Well, as cold as the water was, the sun was equally as hot - so it all came out in the wash, sort of thing. Round about the time we'd start to think that perhaps we were frying to a crisp, we'd hit a bit of a rapid, and be soundly drenched.
So, with all of this H2O about, you'd think at least somebody would offer up a 'pieces of eight' or something, right? Well. I suppose I did get close...but not exactly in keeping with the jovial yet odd spirit of the event. We'd come to some calm water, and rather than paddling, we were drifting a bit. Kim had been chatting with me about something, and I was looking towards the mountains. As we floated under a tree, there came a crack like a shotgun report. Your man at the 'rutter', Boomer is not one hour after lamenting to us how developers are buying up the camping areas along the river banks and are knocking up posh houses there. I've read that in some parts of the country, this does strange things to public right of way when it comes to paddlers. So, for the space of time in which it took me to react, I did honestly fear that somebody had fired off a shot at us from the trees.
So I bawled out what the fucking hell?! and hit the deck. When I got a laugh, I realised that perhaps I'd missed something. Something such as Boomer whacking the water with his paddle to piss with Nick and amuse himself. Nick...whose raft - rammed to bursting with tender under- 12s - had floated well within earshot of our raft. So...perhaps it was more cursing like a sailor than talking like a pirate, and a clear solid reminder that English is my native tongue, and I'm going to have to be a bit more diligent if I'm going to ensure I don't melt anymore children (I don't take issue with most language - colourful or otherwise - however, other people do take issue, and I do try not to be the verbal bull in the china shop).
The penultimate rapid was a dodgy class II known as The Bump (there's even a road sign suspended in a tree over the rapid, it reads 'BUMP'). Boomer's plan was to come at it starboard and soak me and the other woman behind me, then carry on to the Falls (class III-VI) from port and soak everybody else. Well, the initial plan didn't quite work out as envisioned. Somehow we managed not to be soaked much. The Falls bit worked a charm, though. To look at the photos, you'd think the fellow behind Kim had fallen out, and yet some how he managed not to do, which meant that at the end of the 8-mile run, nobody in our raft had fallen out.
All that was left to do the was to paddle to the shore, which we did with a certain amount of triumph in our hearts. Next time, Boomer, next time. Sodden, thoroughly fagged, and basking in the glow of a fine day out, we tumbled into the bus for the ride back to Rolling Thunder Rafting (where there were pleasingly hot showers).
We stopped for nosh and to snap a few photos of some of the rapids we floated over before heading back to the ATL. Good times indeed.