iam(still)kevin.

I went camping this past weekend with a big group of friends, had a lot of fun (except for one part, more on that later). We stayed at an unofficial campsite on Cle Elum Lake, a couple hours east of here.

It started out a little sketchy - we gave a ride to Elliot, a new acquaintance, who had gone last year (I didn’t go the year before), but we left a couple hours later than we had planned, so we didn’t get near the area until around 9:30 PM. We headed to Site 1, where they camped the year before, just as it was getting full dark. A bit of a hike is required, following driving through some sketchy/rocky terrain - which we did, very slowly, in a Passat wagon. After parking… somewhere, we were convinced by our new friend that it was just a little ways down the river, but maybe a bit of wading would be required - turns out it was not really a little ways down the river, and we waded through knee deep snow-melt (i.e. freezing cold) water, only to decide this was perhaps not where the campsite was found, and turned back. Later we found out that one of the other campers, driving a pickup truck, had seen our car, but didn’t think it was us since he was looking for my car, not C’s. We also found out the next morning that Site 1 was under 10 feet of water.

At that point, I decided to try my phone, got a hint of an analog roaming signal and checked voicemail to mostly hear the directions to Site 2, which did not involve fording rivers in a car (did i mention it was a passat, and not a truck?). We followed the directions as well as we could until we made it to another place my phone got a weak signal, deciphered the rest of the directions, and finally made it to camp. Drinking ensued.

The next day, we got up at the crack of noon and had some Batter Blasted pancakes (review: They taste like Bisquick pancakes. Not too shabby for coming out of a can, and great for camping). We were also shown the trees that showed where Site one was, trees that were sticking up out of water reaching halfway up their trunks. Next up was rafting down the river. There were 9 people rafting in total, and a couple people had brought two “four-person” inflatable rafts, which fit three comfortably, and four… kind of. However, C had borrowed a couple one-man rafts from one of her friends, so we figured all was well. We drove up to the launch site, and proceeded to blow up the two loaner rafts - the first was an inflatable Kayak, and a few people remarked on its quality and design with admiration, and a one person raft. To get the right idea of the size of the one-man raft, think of one of those big, 8-person white-water rafts, but shrink it down so that one adult can barely kneel in the bottom of the raft. Not what you would call a mighty raft, but we figured it would suffice, but the kayak was clearly the way to go. I ended up in the kayak, and Elliot volunteered to take C’s place in the Raft, for which I was grateful, (especially later, but I’ll get to that). The water was flowing pretty quickly, but it was deep, so none of the rocks were really near the surface, but it is probably not a good sign when a fisherman asks if we’re really going rafting in that, and at least we have some life preservers right? We did not have any life preservers, but we are good swimmers, i guess?

I was feeling pretty confident in my snazzy kayak, and told Elliot that if he fell in, I’d come help him out. (This is what the fancy writers call foreshadowing). The 2 big rafts went downstream, and we followed just behind them, though they got ahead pretty quickly. I took a minute to get the hang of the double-sided paddle, which I had never used before, but it was cool, I was in a damn kayak. We made it through the first rapids without much incident, but then came to a rock wall with a bunch of white water and some sort of eddy / undertow, and that’s when I learned the crucial lesson that kayaks are really good going straight into white-water, and pretty friggin’ unstable hitting them sideways. I hit the white-water sideways.

What happened next was 1) probably less than 15 seconds 2) felt more like 2 long minutes to me, and 3) remembered vividly. It went something like this:

“Oh shit, oh shit” - boat flips - “Shit.” Underwater, I feel my glasses come off “FUCK!” I lose my right sandal “What the-? SHIT!” I can see the surface about 2 feet above me, and I think “Where are my fucking glasses, I should have brought a strap for them [I had in fact thought about getting a strap but I mean, we were just doing some little rafting around, nothing serious] fuck them I’ll worry about it later cause I’m not really approaching the surface of the water and i would like to be up there, swim motherfucker go go go.” I finally broke the surface (like i said, probably only 10-15 seconds, and I didn’t exactly feel like I was in mortal danger, but I sure as hell wasn’t happy about being pulled underwater by an undertow and losing my stuff. The paddle was seriously hard to get out of the water, and I almost let it go, but I’m glad I didn’t or I would have had even more underwater adventures to deal with. I actually surfaced right next to the kayak which was lucky, and I pulled myself over to it, half threw myself on it and attempted to sit on it correctly without falling back in.

At that point I was rather angry at the river for taking my god damn glasses, one of my shoes, and as I reached up to slick back my hair, realized it also took my hat, but again, there wasn’t anything to do about it at that point, so I concentrated on making it down the river safely. I was also cold, shaking with adrenaline, and not exactly looking forward to more of this awesome kayak. I also tried to look for Elliot, since I figured if I had gone over, he probably had too, in his boogieboard raft, and I had told him I’d come rescue him (ha!), but I couldn’t see very well (refer to: losing of glasses) and I was not too keen on falling back into the at-most-45 degree water as a result of looking behind me. It was also at that point that I was very thankful to Elliot for taking the tiny raft or I would have been freaking out even more had I not only lost a shoe and my glasses, but also possible my girl - I figured Elliot could take care of himself better, and i wasn’t going to be much help. I did fall in one more time, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time (it’s not like i had anything else to lose), although I had to float downstream left-foot first (that was the foot with the remaining shoe) for a bit before getting to a calm section. The rafts had stopped just before a bridge at the halfway point, where the water was calmer, and they were prepared to give me shit about falling in, but apparently I had a look of anger (at the river, they didn’t know that) which put a stop to that before it began. One person said “didn’t Kevin have a hat before?” and someone else added “uh, where are his glasses?” and then I pulled up and got the hell out of the kayak.

Elliot made it pretty well, all things considered - he fell in at the same point I did, but didn’t lose anything, like, say, his vision, though at the bridge he fell out again and the mini-raft floated past us, not that anyone really wanted to ride in it after that. I traded a seat in a raft for the kayak, and the rest of the rafting trip was pretty uneventful - I remained angry at the river, but glad that I was basically unhurt, and my girl was safe, and I was floating peacefully in a mostly stable raft. I ended up with a small bruise on my knee and a sore heel, both from hitting some thankfully smooth rocks while trying to get back onto the kayak.

The rest of the weekend was really fun - I even got a loaner pair of (girl’s) glasses which I was incredibly thankful. They were surprisingly close to my prescription and allowed me to see decently enough (although they were too small, and slightly headache and eye-strain inducing). I didn’t stress out much since, after all, the glasses would just cost money to replace (though in truth they were a slightly more money than my last pairs had been). Plus, I had my previous pair at home, which are even closer in prescription than my loaner pair (though still a little eye-strain inducing - I think it’s the change in astigmatism), and I needed a new pair anyway. it would have been nice to reuse the frames, since they were a little pricey, and I liked them, but change is good, right? It will just be a bit of a pain in the ass to deal with. And the sandals were at least 10 years old, and in need of replacing as well, and the hat, well, it’s just a stupid baseball cap, even if it’s the only one I ever wore. I guess I’ll finally get that Detroit Tiger’s hat I’ve been thinking about getting…

Lessons learned: Inflatable kayaks are good for lakes, not for rivers. Wear a strap to hold your glasses if you are going rafting, even if you don’t think it’ll be rough going. Take your OLD pair of glasses when you go rafting.

Tags: camping, fun

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 am and is filed under general.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.