The monkey made me do it

"W-O-M spells victory!"

In a random but tremendously serendipitous time/place merging (who am I to deem them wrong or right?), I had the distinct pleasure of being elected guide of a large whitewater raft containing many of my beloved friends and ushering them down the Deschutes River in Oregon. They still talk to me, but just barely.

The position was awarded to me because I was the only person out of our 7-man (well, actually 5-woman 2-man) raft who had been rafting before... TWICE. Who knew two times down a river equaled expertise? And to be honest, all that I remember from my first trip was being amazed that I had made it out alive. Steering? A mystery. River maneuvering? Beyond my comprehension. But I grabbed the oar with gusto and promptly steered us into a tree.

A big tree. With many low-hanging branches that trapped the raft and us in a very uncomfortable position, laying flat on our backs with dead sticks poking in uncomfortable places. I hollered "BACK" and tried to rally the troops into paddling us out of it, but they were already mutinous and cursing. Eventually we made our way down the river, me giggling and messing up my left and rights (this is not good when there are many large rocks to be paddled around and we turned into them instead of away from them). I did my best to inspire blind confidence out of my crew, but my crew was my friends and they knew me far too well for that to go over with any success. I don't think the giggling helped much either. I named our raft the "Well-Oiled Machine" and made up cheer-rific catch phrases for the "WOM" that soon had the crew threatening to beat me with their paddles.

Soon, despite my best intentions, we developed a sense of the river and actually made it through a few sections with the current, passing some of our fellow boats. We became giddy with our success and I practiced spins on the smooth sections of the river, finally figuring out the system and discovering tricks to get us into the rougher water without the rest of my crew figuring out what I was doing (some of them were slightly less adventurous than I, but I decided that was only a result of their lack of experience and that they would come around if I exposed them to enough danger). The Deschutes has at least four large sections of rapids, each with terribly memorable names that I can't for the life of me recount. One was related to the Devil, that much I remember... The first big one that we encountered was very scary and we took it straight on, like the WOM that we were. We executed it flawlessly, bumps in all the right places and nobody fell overboard. By the fourth one, my friends were listening to me exclusively, concentrating on paddling when needed and keeping their feet in the boat while I chose the course.

Suckers.

The final rapid on the Deschutes is called the Boxcar. This one I remember because it is gigantic and scary and the name makes absolutely no sense. All of the rafts in our group pulled to the side of the river before the rapid and the guides (yes, they called me their guide!) walked downriver to look at it from the side and plot their path. There was a large rock formation in the center of the river, and the main current swept just to the right of it, cascading down into a giant whirlpool to the immediate right. The left side of the rock was slower and had more obstructions, so I decided to take the current to the right and try and sweep past the whirlpool (there was also a large drop as the current hit the rock - it seemed like it was over 10 feet but that could have been the viewing angle). There were locals sitting in beach chairs overlooking Boxcar, laughing at the rafts being thrown around by the river and occasionally getting up to rescue the folks that went overboard. I hiked back down to the raft and gave a very brief explanation of the rapid and our route to my trusting friends.

I didn't tell them that I was planning to take it backwards.

I had experimented with the concept on the last rapid, flipping us around mid-bounce and going in reverse for the last half of it. My friends hollered, but I passed it off to them as a mistake. We also took part of it sideways, but the manuevering was much more difficult and the threat of submerging was higher (but the bounces were better and I managed to get everyone splashed).

We approached Boxcar cautiously, giving the raft ahead of us plenty of time to get clear of the melee. Finally I yelled "ALL FORWARD" and we took off like a shot towards the center rock, hearts beating wildly and mad smiles on our faces (you have to be a little mad, I think, to pit a piece of rubber against a gigantic frothing river). The crew paused a little when I didn't tell them the expected "right back/left forward" command... I yelled "ALL FORWARD" again and their residual WOM training overpowered the doubt a little longer - then we hit the rock. I leaned all of my weight on my paddle and whipped the raft around, ignoring the yelling from my cohorts. Once they figured it all out we steered down the curve of the central current backwards and used our momentum to whip around again at the base of the drop and face the remainder of the rapid going roughly the right way. They were yelling, screaming with glee at the thrill of the bounce, the unorthodox ride that had taken us over the most exhilarating part of the rapid and left us breathless and glowing.

I was standing in the back of the raft the whole time, with little to hold on to. The paddlers had the center seats to tuck their feet under, I was unsupported at the point with nothing more than a rope to grab when things got rough. So when we hit that final bump after coming though Boxcar (just when I had begun to relax and was concentrating on steering us out unharmed), I was unprepared. I flew into the air and over the side of the boat with paddle still in hand, miraculously grabbing the rope as I came down behind the raft (I have no idea how high I went, just that I was up there long enough to think "Hey, I should grab that rope"). My friends pulled me in, but the shorts I was wearing lost their drawstring in the current and had their own timetable for coming out of the river. That did not correspond with my body's timetable for the same event. Yes, the locals saw my heinie. Having one hand on my paddle and one hand on my friend, I was not able to remedy the situation until halfway on the boat. I suppose it's all some sort of river-god revenge for my backwards Boxcar, but it was a little embarrassing to be hanging out for that long when I knew full well the beach chair boys were paying close attention!

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, besides the teasing and frequent declarations of "Woman, I can't believe you took us down that shit BACKWARDS." Oddly enough, I have never been asked to repeat my guide duty and still hear of it whenever we see each other again. But I still think they're glad to have done it, there's no faking the looks that were on their faces after we came through the spray.

posted by LadyJay @ 9:38 AM