vituperation

“What’s rule number one?” the guide called over the roar. Some twenty feet from us, water raged down the spillway, starting the five-mile stretch of the middle section of the Ocoee River. A fine mist hung in the air, cool and pleasant, giving the slightest hint of what the river would feel like.

“Hold your t-grip,” the six of us said in semi-unison, holding up our paddles and demonstrating the proper grasp.

“Good. And if you fall out?”

“Legs forward, downstream. Feet out of the water if possible.”

“Right. Legs together. Especially you men, unless you feel like performing a move we call ‘romancing the stone’.”

We laughed, nervously. With nary a fanfare, the raftload of people in front of us pushed away from the ramp and into the rolling waters, and it was our turn. As one, we lifted our boat and carried it into the eddying river. While the guide held the raft steady we climbed in.

I was put in the front because my previous trip down the Ocoee some fourteen years ago gave me experience. In the front, you have nowhere to wedge your feet, nothing to keep you from falling out of the boat when it gets rough. Staring at the raw power of the churning water, thinking about how I was about to ride a wildly bucking bronco with nothing to keep me from pitching off, I wondered what the hell had been going through my mind when I sent out the email inviting everyone to raft this river.

I considered faking a heart attack, but before I could clutch my chest and collapse, we pushed off and the water had us.

At this point, the 90 minute trip becomes a blur of fear, pain, worry, and a heavy dose of if-I-live-through-this-I’ll-never-swim-again, so I’m going to summarize for you.

On the third rapid, maybe fifteen minutes into the trip, our guide took us through and steered the raft over by the shore, waiting for all the other rafts belonging to our outfitter to go through. Then, he took us back into the rapid, either to surf it or to pick up some speed.

As we pulled into the bottom section of the rapid, another raft crested the top and came down onto us. Onto me, actually. Foolishly, I tried to stop a 150-pound raft carrying 7 people and being pushed by the force of a whole river by holding out my arms and attempting to halt their progress.

I failed miserably.

Something wrenched in my right shoulder in a sunburst of pain as the boat didn’t even slow and mowed me down. The last thing I saw was a bunch of strangers sitting frozen, their mouths uniform little ohs of surprise, then it was going over me, the vinyl bottom sliding slickly up my face. The front of that boat ended up in the lap of the person behind me. I lay in the dark wetness underneath and waited for my shipmates to push the other raft off, my shoulder letting me know that something was wrong.

We began to row again, free of the other boat. I mentioned my shoulder to the guy sharing the front with me, but didn’t tell him how much it hurt because I didn’t want to look like a wimp. It’s a guy thing. I rowed four more miles, my shoulder bitching the entire way.

By Monday I knew I needed to see a doctor, so I went to Dr. Judy’s office in hopes that I could get some decent anti-inflammatories. Dr. Judy wasn’t there, so I saw the nurse practitioner. She xrayed my shoulder and immediately scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon because the xray, while not showing actual damage to soft tissue, indicated by the position of the bones that I’d torn a ligament.

Fortunately, she was wrong, and the orthopedic surgeon told me I’d most likely bruised or strained my rotator cuff. Sure enough, I’ve already regained about 75% of the range of motion for that arm, though it still hurts and anything that involves weight — even raising a book out to the side — hurts like a motherfucker.

But I digress.

We surfed another couple of rapids without incident, though I don’t remember much beyond wishing it was over because of my shoulder and because it was WAY scarier than I remembered. Then we hit another of the big Class IV drops and our boat stood up on edge. I was on the high side and rode it out. The guy in the front with me and the woman behind him weren’t so lucky. They both went over the side. Just before he was swallowed by the white, the guy’s eyes found mine.

Then they were both gone.

The rest of us in the boat were pretty fucking terrified while they were under, because we all remembered how the guide had said the first couple of seconds were most important if someone fell over, because they would still be close to the boat. I felt it particularly, because I’d invited them. I’d driven them. I’d be the one who had to drive home alone and explain to their families if something happened to them.

An eternity later — time stops in a critical situation, it seems — they both popped to the surface about fifty feet downstream. It took another five minutes or so, but we finally got them both back into the boat, bruised and shaken. There’s still debate over who was most scared by them falling in: them, or those of us who were still in the boat.

Our guide also fell out of the boat once, on purpose, and let us drift away. None of us cared for that.

By halfway down the river, three of the four of us who went on the trip were injured in one way or another. The fourth got hers near the end, when she opted to “ride the bronco” by sitting on the front end of the boat and holding the rope strap through the rapid named “Hell’s Hole”.

“No one on my boat has ever made it through,” the guide said.

She was not deterred.

We rode Hell’s Hole and she made it through. The guide dove to the front of the raft, grabbed her, and threw her into the water.

“I told you no one ever made it through!” he chortled.

She landed on a rock when she hit the water, and he dragged her over another one getting her back into the boat.

By trip’s end, we all nursed various wounds. I thanked God I survived, and planned to never set foot near the Ocoee River again. Twelve hours to the minute from when we’d left, I pulled back into the office parking lot to drop off the two who rode with me.

I went home and started looking at the picture I posted in my last entry, and a strange thing happened. Despite all the pain in my shoulder, the worry at the thought my friends might have died when they fell in, and the fear that I myself might have died if I’d gone over, I realized something.

It had been fun. Scary as shit, but fun.

So fun that on Tuesday I sent out another email, and am taking a different group back to the Ocoee in late July while Robyn’s in Maine.

I hope my shoulder’s healed.

I’ve got another couple of pictures for you, from the trip. They’re big, so you have to click to see.

This one cracks me up. Please note that EVERYONE in the boat is smiling and looks like they’re having the time of their life, save one, who looks like he’s about to shit himself. He isn’t, he’s just reacting to the shock of the 58-degree water.

Or that’s what he tells people.

I just like this one, because I think it’s a good picture of me, and those are few and far between.