Crash and...Splash?

Summer brings so many good memories. Like how I learned to water ski in 2005, how my family had gotten a new knee board, and how I was the first one to get up on Lake St. Catherine in 2006, when last year my parents got my whole family season passes to the Great Escape. We went to the Great Escape probably 15 times, so we definitely got our money’s worth. Also how last year I got my license to drive my dad’s boat on the lake with him skiing behind. I think the one that comes to mind the most is when my dad, my sister and I went, with people who go to church, went white water rafting because it was something that was new to me and it was an awesome experience. Riding those currents felt awesome.
We each got our own vest, but unfortunately mine had been used recently and was moist and cold. I was so excited about going though; I didn’t care. After we had all paid the price of about $10 per person and each had our own ‘possibly’ damp vest, we ventured outside to find the purple school bus that we were to ride to the site with our rafts hitched to the roof. On another bus that left before us (also purple), that group of strangers had purple rafts while we had the brand new tan and red colored rafts. We laughed because some of the people on our bus were jokingly whining about wanting the purple rafts instead, although we needed to have the newer rafts because they were also the biggest ones that the place had, and we had brought the maximum number of people that could fit on each one.
Our bus finally made it onto the busy street, leaving our cars in the lonely parking lot. We had a long drive to the Hudson River where we were going to be rafting some of the easiest paths there was. The river we went on was called the ‘sissy waves,’ our tour guide had told us when we passed. We past a huge man made dam where gigantic portions of water were spilling out from the big river as if to flood the area. I was amazed, and wished we had something like that in Poultney. I wished we didn’t have to wear the vests on the bus to the site, even if I had gotten warmer with the sun beating down through the windows, because the vests weren’t exactly the most comfortable thing in the world.
At last, we made it to the long awaited destination ahead of us. Six of the strangers who had been on the bus ended up taking the small purple rafts and were supposed to go in the water after the big rafts. I wanted to use a paddle before everyone could get a paddle but had to wait because I wasn’t fast enough to grab one of the slender tan and red paddles. We all had to grab one of the black handles on the sides of the huge rafts and carry them down to the waters edge. If we would have just dragged the raft on the ground, the pebbles and rocks would have scratched and gashed and pulverized the bottom of the raft. We then gently lowered the raft into the slowly rushing water being carful not to scrape the edges on the rock we were standing on.
One by one we stepped in the low grounded raft and felt the cold water rushing to our toes. The people who were holding the paddles had to sit on the outside edge of the raft while the people like me who had been left without a paddle had to sit on the red seat in between the paddlers. Our tour guide pushed us off, and we watched as the other group of people with the other big raft carried their raft down the short hill, mimicking what we had just done.
The area we were in was quite calm to start, hardly any current, a perfect time for the paddlers to practice. We swiveled and twisted from the left to the right before we finally straightened out and got going pretty fast. Our tour guide, though, had us stop and wait for the other group to catch up a ways. The current slowly pushed us forward as we waited for the raft, to come closer with some of my friends from church.
Our group started paddling again and stayed ahead of the other group even when they were trying to over take us. We slowly came up to some more challenging currents that caused us to sway from side to side and bounce into rocks. I wanted so much to be one of the people paddling because I wanted to be doing something other than just holding onto something sitting doing pretty much nothing. The currents slowly became harder as we passed huge rocks that I saw the other group running into. Our rafts were juggled side to side by the constant hitting of rocks. The paddlers were pushing as hard as they could so that we could go fast. After a short while the currents calmed down again and if people wanted to switch with the paddlers and paddle, they did. I switched with my cousin, Karen, who was sitting almost at the end on the right side. Our tour guide was on the end paddling on both sides with one paddle so that if need be, he could steer us out of harms way. I could see my dad directly in front of me paddling right in the front. There was a little time left until the harder currents got closer and closer to us as we quickly zoomed at them. This gave us time to practice with the paddles.
Our practice session was interrupted by the mad currents and water splashing up in our faces. We were franticly shoving the paddles into the fast moving water and pushing into what seemed like nothing. We were laughing the whole time and the people in the front (my dad and my cousin, Aaron) were the ones who happened to be yelling their heads off because we were going into big potholes where we felt like the raft was going to go under. The current slowly tuned down to an almost dead speed. We paddled a little while until all you could see was the calm waters surrounded by the green mountains covered in spruce and pine trees. When you breathed in all you took in was fresh air, no toxic fumes from cars and other polluting items. Our tour guide said that for about 1 mile, we would be floating here so he said that we could stop and just swim for a while. The current was slowly going but we could hardly notice it. We couldn’t see any waves yet anyway.
We all refused to jump in the water. I was the first one to say no, so my tour guide grabbed my paddle, threw it in the center of the boat, and he shoved me in the water. The edge of the raft was so big that since I was sitting close to the center of the raft, I just slid over the edge flipping over ending up going in head first. There was thankfully no ground to hit my head on that I could see so I didn’t get hurt. When I rose to the surface, I found that everyone except for one or two people jumped in after me. They were my cousins so I hoisted myself back up into the boat by grabbing onto the black handles, pushed myself up to the edge of the boat, lifted my leg out of the water and kneeled on the inside of the boat and slipped in. I grabbed my cousin, Karen and with her screaming happily the whole time, pulled her into the water with me. Everyone else thought that they would rather not get pulled in the water so they gently slipped on in.
We were swimming for a while and then we noticed that the other boat was just behind us. They all were standing on the edge of their raft and when it came closer to us, they all did cannonball into the water. Not that we weren’t already soaked, but they gave us a nice shower.
“Alright-y, guys, it’s nearing the time to get back into the boat, unless you want to get chewed up by the rocks. The last part we are coming to has a faster current and more bumps and rocks, so be careful not to fall out,” he laughed. We all jumped into the boat but the people in the other raft thought that it would be funny to jump back into the water and pull us into the water. We made our way back into the raft and picked up our paddles. I took my paddle and started hitting the water with it, flinging the water into their faces. The rest of the people in my boat followed and the other raft retaliated. Even both of the tour guides got in on it but the water fight simmered down as we got closer and closer to the rapids.
I was still on the right side of the raft with my dad right in the front. We slowly came up to the rapids and could easily see that the water was raging with some sort of anger slamming into the rocks with such force. We were all paddling in unison. Splash, swoosh, splash, swoosh, splash, and on and on. We kept going at it with full force with our other group trailing behind us. We hit the first rock with such intensity that my feet almost came out of the plastic pockets below me. I shoved my feet into the pockets again until my toes hit the inside edge. We were hurled from each side of the river crashing in between rocks and the waves of fury. There were so many indescribable waves, like the ones that seemed to be coming toward us but were being pushed at by a different direction of water that was going forward because of a rock. The water that would be going forward would hit the rock and seemed to just curl in around and back into the rock and was going backwards.
Those were the waves that I called potholes because we would be going at a huge rock that was just below the surface and then all of a sudden, once we were over it, we felt as if we were being pushed backwards but kept going forward. The farther we went on the river, the bigger the potholes became.
We came up to this huge pothole and our whole group was laughing, and screaming as if to say, “Bring it on!” We were rocketing forward so fast it seemed like the current would never stop. When we got closer to the pothole, the raft flew up the huge rock and rapidly zoomed down into the pothole. All I could see was my dad stop paddling and he seemed to gradually tip over the side of the boat. We were all laughing and when my dad was rushed to the back of the boat, everyone who was near him grabbed him. I grabbed his vest, the tour guide grabbed his vest and another one of my cousins grabbed him to safely bring him aboard. Everyone else who wasn’t near my dad was franticly paddling to keep the boat going straight. He was laughing hysterically the whole time, that is, until he inhaled the water and then started coughing. He began to blush horribly. He very carefully climbed to the front of the boat with paddle in hand, trying not to fall overboard again.
“I though I told you not to fall out of the boat!” yelled the tour guide.
The water was still going forward at full speed and up ahead we saw huge quantities of water hurling up at this huge rock that elevated out of the water like a ramp. Our tour guide told us to aim for the huge rock and we started paddling violently. We were straightened out behind the huge rock and were paddling at light speed to try to jump over it. To me it looked as if the ramp came too far out of the water, and that we weren’t going to make it. We tried anyway. We all felt the boat hit the front edge of the rock and we were all leaning backwards. We were slowed down by the rough surface of the rock but still launched forward. The boat slowly stopped and we ended up having to push off the rock with our paddles to bring us off and into the fast moving waters again.
We were flung back onto the currents and ended up landing backwards on the river. With much struggle, we ended up turning the raft around. The boat gradually got faster as we neared our final rocks. We ended up seeing a photographer standing on a big rock above the surface but very near to the shore. He was taking our pictures and we were then thrown over rocks sending water flying everywhere. The water currents hastily came to an abrupt halt as we paddled through open waters. We aimed our boat to the landing dock where we would get off and carry our boat back up the hill for someone else to take. We all turned around and waited for our other group and saw them being thrown through the air as well. The same flying water came out from underneath their boat as well. I could tell that the pictures the photographer was taking had to be good…and funny too. They ended up paddling over to where we were and unloaded their boat with paddles in hand. We all laughed at how fun it was and wanted to go again. We told the other group how my dad had fallen out of the boat as we carried our boats up the rocky hill where we found more purple busses. Some of the tour guides climbed a ladder to get on top of two of the busses. We were all holding the boats by the black handles and lifted one end high in the air where one of the tour guides grabbed the end and heaved it onto the boat with our help. We did the same thing for the other raft and all loaded onto one of the purple busses.
We were driven back to where we had left our cars and viewed our pictures. We unfortunately didn’t buy any but laughed at them.
That was simply just my summer last year, a month or so before school had started. I can’t wait for my church to hold another white water rafting day.