Kayaking

We went on a rafting trip near Glacier. The boys went on a raft and I took an inflatable kayak. Complete with a white helmet that looks like the kind of thing you'd put on a hospital patient that couldn't help knocking his head into things. Yeah, I looked chic. Anyway, there were three other people on inflatable kayaks: two teenage boys in a tandem and their dad on his own. If you've never been in an inflatable kayak, it isn't hard. I mean, on rapids maybe it is easy to flip, but on calm water it is nearly impossible. You just paddle sort of awkwardly in the direction you want to go (there is no keel, so nothing to keep you going nice and straight). And you can run into rocks. You just bounce off, so no harm done. Anyway, I ran into a rock. I didn't mind. And I hit a few shallow spots that took me about 10 seconds to get out of. I did all this by the end of the first rapid. While I was still figuring it out. The teenage boys thought that this was ample evidence of the old lady's (that'd be me) incompetence in the fine art of inflatable kayaking. They insisted that if they kept letting me go first, I'd get stuck or tip over and then they'd come along and hit me and flip over into the very cold water and it'd be all my fault (note, they weren't particularly worried about the damage the collision might do to me). So I let them go first. And then their dad who was insanely slow. And then me. That is, I let everyone else go first until the boys got marooned up on a rock during a rapid and had to be rescued. And their dad flipped his kayak and had to be rescued. After that, I started going first. As it happened, Scott and Chris were in the safety raft. So they rescued the cocky little boys and their dad. When it came to the dad, as their raft came floating by, Scott flipped the kayak, Chris picked the guy up by his life jacket and tossed him in, and a guy behind them in the raft tossed in the paddle after him. He was a little dazed to find himself back in his kayak so suddenly. I am sure by the time I am 50, this story will have become embellished with heroic efforts on Scott's and Chris's parts to save an unconscious man from drowning in Class V rapids. For the present, these rapids were still Class II, at best. And the guy was sputtering and annoyed, but nowhere close to drowning. Anyway, at this point I started taking rapids first so as to more easily avoid hitting idiotic male creatures in my way. I kept that up for awhile until I realized that the idiotic male creatures now considered me somebody-worth-talking-to. Or perhaps it was just that I was the only other one that could talk to. Either way, the boys told me how cold the water was (note: we were all in wet suits and they even had booties) and the dad complained about how tiring it was to paddle. Admittedly, there were a few times the wind was against us and it was kind of hard work. But more important than that, I had taken a pain killer that morning that had worn off halfway into the float trip and I spent the last hour or so of the trip with rather painful cramps. And this guy is complaining about his arms? Like I am going to sympathize. Finally I started hanging further and further back just to be alone. Eventually I was hanging out by the safety raft. Where Scott was discussing my life insurance policy with an entire raft of strangers. Hmmm...maybe next time I shouldn't let him adjust my very chic helmet.