A preview to an Indoorsmen’s Guide to the Outdoors (September)

I promised Aaron that if he gave me a few days off of work I’d write a preview for the next issue, so here it is.

I am a fairly active person, granted I haven’t been very active since moving to this fine state in May.

But I ran the St. Louis half marathon in April 2007, worked at a summer camp the summer of 2004, rode a camel in Israel in 2001 and got attacked by a dog while snorkeling in the Abaco Sea last summer. I have a permanent scar on my foot from kicking hard coral reef while snorkling in the Red Sea, have floated in the Dead Sea, learned to surf in Australia and I’ve led 40 10-13-year-old girls on a 3-day canoe trip and camp out, twice.

But when my friend, Kelly, from Dallas came to town a couples weeks ago and wanted to go white water rafting, I was a little afraid. Mostly because it had been cold and rainy for the previous 8 days and i’m a bit of a klutz.

It was a cool 56 degrees and I was about to take it to the cold mountain waters. I begrudgingly ask Kelly how she talked me into this as I climb into my wet suit, that was still wet from the adventures had the day before. After being fitted for a life jacket and given a helmet i heard a rumble in the distance, i glanced at the people around me to see if they had heard it…..thunder. I gathered that a couple people around me had heard it due to the soft whimpering that was now uncontrollably exiting their pursed mouths.

We slowly climbed into the bus that would drop of us off at what would surely be our sudden deaths. Common sense says to get out of the water when you are in a thunderstorm not enter it. The thunderstorm quickly approached and had engulfed our bus just as we pulled out of the parking lot. The quarter mile drive to the drop off zone was passed by nervous laughter circulating the vehicle.

Brian the lead guide (and the guide of my raft) lead us through the safety instructions on how to properly fall into the rapids and all the different possibilities of rescue. I guess Brian had an inkling into my clumsiness, because his eyes only left mine to quickly scan the rest of the bus twice during his safety instructions. Needless to say, the stare down and the storm had me worried.

While pushing off from the bank the storm started to clear and blue skies were visible just south of us. I let out a huge sigh of relief, one disaster had thus been averted, now all I had to do was survive the three hour trek down the Royal Gorge. Which I did - there were several heart pounding “geronimos’” and many close calls on my end. Brian (who was cautiously sitting on my left) and the gentleman sitting in front of me had to pull me back into the raft mid-fall, not to mention the countless times I fell into the raft. Overall it ended up being a lovely day with 70 degree weather, however I think I’ll wait until next summer before trying my hand at rafting again.

Kelly and I getting ready to go out on the Rapids.

editor’s note…This story nor anything else written by me is in the September issue, this is just intended to get you psyched up for the issue due out on Friday, Sept. 5th.

Posted by: becky. in Sports | Permalink