It was a wild ride down the Kings River, but I’d seen worse. My old stomping grounds was the Umpqua River, so I’ve seen some gorgeous places with colliding rivers. We used to use the undertow to pull us down and then shoot us back up by the rocks. You had to be patient because sometimes it would keep you down there a while. One time I was down at the bottom, and it was just keeping me down there and I started thinking I could breathe.
Well from what I knew, that was a precursor to drowning. Many thoughts went through my head about what to do in an undertow, so I wiggled like a fish and eventually began to rise to the surface. I don’t know how I held my breath that long. But that’s not the story I wanted to tell.
I want to give my buddy Ingrid a thank you for giving me one of my favorite birthday presents. A ride down the Kings River. I thought that it would be fun, and I didn’t regard the rapids to be much over a class 4 at any point, so I went. It was good year for water, so the rapids were rolling.
I had played a trick on Ingrid a year before. While she was busy discussing how I didn’t have any friends that were willing to go sailing with me, and I was agreeing with her. We were paddling our way down the river because we were stuck in irons. She should have been suspicious that I was so agreeable. I just kept saying ah ha, ah ha and just kept paddling, she didn’t see it coming.
Her hand was dangling from the boat and just barely touching the surface. I drug her hand over some tree branches by the shore and she jumped up and I laughed for a half an hour. She had just told me about how she doesn’t like the bottom of the lake and that there’s no way of telling what was down there.
That is the extent of my nefarious ways. Just like when I get amused when people drive the wrong way downtown. My twelve-year-old is still running the show. I just try to keep a lid on it.
That was an awesome ride on the river. I only went twice. Once with you and once with my nephew. It was a lot of fun and I felt extremely exhilarated but safe. However, I had never been caught in a whirlpool. I don’t even like to think about you being caught down in the depths of one. And you never told me that. Or if you did I blanked it out because it was too disturbing!
Fun Fun