Well, not really it wasn't that bad, but it makes for a great title
After almost 1 year of blogging silence i finally have time to report some stuff.
Ok onto the good stuff; I went whitewater rafting yesterday in West Virginia. But before i start my obviously exaggerated near death experience, i must tell you that there was a storm (named Ernesto) over the weekend around the east coast of US (namely Virginia/DC). Now, how does that make a difference? Well it converted the easy 2.5 rapid to approx. level 4.
So i was there with my friend and his wife; btw, these guys were more experienced than i was but i rated myself the best as i believed myself to be a pretty good swimmer and given a situation this skill would help me or so i thought! Now before we started, the rafting guys teamed up people into groups with a guide assigned to them. This guide would be the one to command everyone on what they need to do, e.g. paddle forward, backward or shift one side, etc. But for some odd reason (which became apparent later) they put all Indians there (7 of us) on one raft with this "guide" who probably wasn't older than 21.
Now, I really don't care who was on the raft but these 4 guys who joined us were all complete mama's boys. None of them knew how to swim, didn't seem to be in any decent shape (no offense) and just refused to do anything the guide told them to. Onto the guide, the dude was pretty chill, and probably more than he should have been. I mean he as a guide needs to tell people what exactly needs to be done, but instead he probably felt he could handle the raft by himself.
Yea that didn't happen.
Now i am not saying that the guy didn't know what he was doing, i am sure he grew up around the area and probably is pretty darn good himself but he sure wasn't a great
Guide. But to his credit this stuff happens so i got no problems.
Alright continuing the story; i have been told (and I can be completely wrong here) that when you hit a high rise rapid you should always go in with the boat's front end towards it (oh btw, me and my friend volunteered to sit right in the front
) Anyways, we went through couple of easy rapids having fun (although a fat guy kept falling on my friend's wife). But even during all this easy stuff, i wasn't too sure that we were being steered properly, because we were constantly hitting tree branches, dead roots and big rocks, while the other rafts were doing just fine.
A little while later, our guide told us that we were progressing towards this big surge of water which lead into the "rocky steps" as they call it in WA, and asked us to paddle forward hard. Now let me tell you something about myself, when i am in these adventure sport type "things", i give my best to it, i mean i was paddling like there was no tomorrow. But ofcourse the 4 mama's boys were busy splashing the water rather than putting some muscle in. And guess what because of that the week paddle power Vs the boat weight, we weren't balanced on both sides and our raft turned sideways right before the surge and in a microsecond we were all lifted off the raft and thrown in the middle of the rocky area. While in mid air my biggest fear was that i might get stuck beneath the raft, but fortunately i was thrown pretty far from it.
I suddenly remembered my awesome swimming skills and tried to swim upstream (yea thought i could), but soon realized i was going no where and wouldn't be able to reach the raft. Meanwhile my friend held onto the flipped raft by the side rope trying to stay afloat. A few moments later when i looked up i saw a guide from another raft trying to flip the raft over. My friend was on the other side of the raft so he didn't see him, and let me tell you if it wasn't for me screaming at him like a little girl, the guide would have flipped the raft onto a already badly injured person, pushing him back onto the rocks. Although his wife was smart and just let go of everything and started floating on her life jacket (or she was pure lazy
). So after saving one life and accounting for another, i thought i should save mine, so i started swimming toward the other rafts and duckies (a local slang word for this one man kayak sort of tube boat).
One of the guides threw a rope towards my friend, who missed it so i thought i should try and catch it. But instead the guide felt like i could save myself (which i did) and pulled the rope back for another try at my friend. Anyways after almost 15-20 minutes in there, I had taken in a lot of water and had failed to reach any of the rafts (primarily because with the life vest on you can't really swim). So i decided that i needed a plan B.
Right up front I saw a dead root approaching pretty fast and decided to go for it. But i almost missed it while trying to avoid a head on collision with it. Luckily though i grabbed onto one of the extended branches and tried to pull myself up. Now it can't be that easy, so while i was trying to pull myself up, there was this huge tarantula sitting next on the same branch I was holding onto. But I wasn't gonna let go!, but i didn't wanna die to spider sting either.
So ... ? Well nothing i just pulled myself up onto the other side of the root, at the same time tyying really hard not to agitate the multi-legged creature. Man, let me tell you that feeling to be able to sit and breathe,
priceless!
From there on i jumped onto another raft that was passing by and started rowing upstream towards my friend who was stuck on one of the rocks and was pretty banged up. That rowing effort was pretty tough but all the guys in this raft were just amazing. Even after we managed to get right next to him, he refused to move as his leg was hurting real bad. Eventually one of the guides jumped in the water and pulled him along and then onto my newly found raft.
Now for those who think this ain't a big deal and it happens while rafting, i must tell you it was a really high surge and we all fell on the rocks directly, any wrong landing could have had disastrous results (yea, i am exaggerating a bit but it could have happened
).
We all pulled over to the side, took a breather in and then went back to our raft to complete the ride. Now i was hurt badly around both my knees and i knew it was gonna be even worse the next morning (it is right now) but i wasn't gonna stop, because frankly it was fun and a cool experience.
The mama's boys, were petrified to death, and couldn't understand what had happened to them. Btw, they were screaming at top of their lungs while in water. Now you would think going through all this, these guys would want this not to happen again, atleast for the rest of the day. But instead trying to put some effort, this time they stopped doing anything at all. Well, I just dove off because I was tired after the swimming (well the trying to swim) for a long time and the upstream rowing effort, hence i wanted these guys to pull their weight. But sadly even after telling them aggressively to put a muscle in, they just didn't do anything more than the usual splashing. We almost fell again, twice! Either way the guide, me and my friend pulled hard to get us through and without any more adventures.
As soon as we touched the shore all four of these guys just started jumping off, my friend had to ask them to chill and get off one by one else they would topple us over again. Man they were some really big *#$#@#&.
Anyways, all in all it was fun. I enjoyed it.
I got my money worth, and tomorrow at work this will make a great topic for discussion
