One Saturday a group of kids from our ward went floating down the Salt River on inner tubes. Arizonans loved floating down the river, it was a nice way to cool off on a hot summer afternoon, but it had been years since I'd been. The last time we had gone as a family, and although it had been mostly fun, I'd got caught in a whirl pool off to the side of the river, and scared the living daylights out of me. I'd been ten or eleven, and dad had to rescue me. The experience had left me with no desire to float down the river again, so under normal circumstances I would have made an excuse and skipped that activity. The thing was, the previous Sunday Gene had agreed to bring some of the equipment, so I knew he would be there. What choice did I have? I had to go.
About ten of us met at the river and piled our inner tubes and coolers into the back of one of the guys trucks, then jumped in and drove up to the starting point on the river. I was glad one of the guys suggested tying the inner-tubes together to form one great big raft. That way they could rest the coolers in the middle, and none of us would get separated (or caught in whirlpools) by ourselves.
We were giggling and laughing as we waded out into the icy water and sat down on our tubes. There really is nothing quite to compare with the sun beating down on your head and shoulders, scalding your face and neck and arms, while your back side freezes and your feet dangle in the clear, rushing water of the Salt River. It's quite an experience. We all got situated, amid lots of splashing and teasing, then pushed off and started our trip down the river.
The current was pretty slow and peaceful, so the only excitement came from splashing each other, or the occasional rough spots we encountered as the water washed over or around submerged rocks. The boys paddled us around the worst places, and we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves until we came up to a group beer drinking partyers. They were drunk and obnoxious, but we glided by them without too much trouble until we reached the last person in their group. He was really drunk, really loud, and really naked. We were mortified! The boys in our group tried to paddle us quicker down the river, the girls averted our eyes, and we all were silent. What could we say? After awhile, as we slipped father and farther down the river, the conversation picked back up again, and a few of the boys tried to apologize and some of the girls tried to laugh it off, but we mostly just tried to ignore the whole thing and let it go.
But it had messed up our easy going adventure. Maybe to break the tension or something, some of the boys suggested untying some of the ropes and splitting our raft up into three smaller groups. That was fine, and a little easier to manage, but I ended up in a different group than Gene, darn it.
We eventually made it down to where our cars were parked, and we steered our inner-tubes over to the side of the river. The water got really shallow there, only a few inches deeper than the rocks lining the river bottom. It was awkward, trying to get your feet under you in such shallow water. I twisted my knee as I tried to stand up, and sure enough, it popped out. Bummer! When my knee popped out of it's socket I could barely put any weight on it, so all I could do was hobble over the rocks and up onto the beach where I quickly found a mesquite branch to sit on. Everyone was concerned, and I was mortified!
"Should we carry you up to the cars?" one of the boys asked, I'm sure trying to be a gentleman, but embarrassing me further.
"No!" I quickly exclaimed. "Really, I'm fine." There was no way I wanted them to find out how heavy I was while they tried to carry me over the rocks and through the brush.
It was a long way up the trail to our cars, but I gritted my teeth and held onto one of my girl friends arms, and got there as quickly as possible. The party split up as soon as we got to the our cars. I suppose we were all still embarrassed about our brush with nature, and I was glad to go home. My knee was killing me. I took some aspirin and sat with it up on a pillow, surrounded by ice packs, the rest of the afternoon until it finally slipped back into place, frustrated about how everything had turned out. I sure hadn't made the best impression on Gene, and I wondered if he would even consider asking me out on a date after that.
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