Thursday, October 6, 2011

tempting fate

Last weekend we figured we could get away with risking our lives since we don't have kids yet. We drove down to West Virginia to raft the Upper Gauley River, ranked 3rd in the WORLD for 1 day white water trips! I've gone down the Grand Canyon before and wasn't sure about this, because that I did on a big pontoon & this I had to do with a paddle...meaning I was in charge of my own fate. Scary. But I'm happy to report that I didn't fall out of the boat once. Not once. Jamey didn't either...this year. But last year (his 1st time) he fell out twice. Muah ha ha ha The sad part for me was we camped out Friday night & I thought I was sooo smart & just wore my glasses so I didn't have to "get ready" for bed in the tent & take my contacts out with dirty-gross-smokey-smorey-hands. I just packed my contact case. Turned out I packed the wrong one & I was the geek going down the river with her glasses on. I bought Chums. It was a low-point.

 we are the 1st two in the front right of the boat. glasses girl

 we are minutes 1:11 to 1:53

We went with about 40 kids from Jamey's med school. So the video has all 6 boats. 3 of the boats either capsized or lost some folks from their groups and we had to paddle paddle paddle to go save them. Lots of adrenaline. Before every rapid our guide would coach us whether to swim left or right if we got pitched so as to avoid undercut rocks and other deathmongers. Joy. We had so much fun even if it was raining the entire time and 40 degrees or below.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

deathmongers is my new favorite word. Melanie Wellman is a deathmonger.

I've got it down already!

Come seeeeee usssssssssss.

Dave said...

That river looks awesome! What's the name of it so I can go one of these days?

Dave said...

Nevermind, I should read more carefully. :)

Shelise said...

Wow, you're so brave. I'm sure Kyle would love for me to do something like this with him but I'm WAY too scared. Fun times I'm sure and great memories made.

We are... said...

WOW! I'm glad you got that out before you have kids! ha ha ha. I was so much more adventurous once upon a time. Good for you!!! And I'm so impressed that you stayed upright!