And luckily, no one died

Ladies and Gentlemen, I did something this weekend for the first time. (waiting for the applause to die down) All right, now that we have that out of our systems, I’ll continue. For some time now, Husband has been wanting me to go rafting. He was a rafting guide for a long time, he loves the river, the outdoors, etc. I think he first asked me to do this the second weekend after we’d started dating. I, however, am crazy scared of water. Yes, I’ll admit this right now, I hate water. I can’t swim, I don’t like water, we just don’t get along. But finally, almost a year later, I have given in. I finally said yes to rafting.

We went to Idaho for this, to the Payette river. I get to the river, I get on my lifejacket and make sure it’s extra secure on tight. One of our friends that was going with us secured it on for me, and then gave me all sorts of helpful trips for my first time down the river. I’ll share those now. If ever you fall out of the raft, and you can’t get back in right away, point your feet downstream as the current takes you, until they can get a rope to you. If you can make it back the boat after you fall out, when you get there, you need to have your back to the boat, and they’ll pull you up by the shoulder straps of your lifejacket. He then demonstrated that for me on dry land. The guy giving me these tips was 6’6”, and with me clocking in at an even 5’5”, he had plenty of room to do so. These tips were terrifying to me, because I guarantee that if I fall out of the raft, I will do none of these, I will sit there and scream and then promptly drown.

After a while, we finally get going. I was right behind Husband, who was in the lead on my side of the raft. We had 7 adults in the raft, 3 to each side and our “guide” on the back. (he had done the river before, and was there to guide us through it, but he was a friend of ours) We also had 2 children, a 7-year old and a 4-year old. I was relieved to have them in our boat, because they wouldn’t do anything crazy to risk the lives of tiny children. We successfully made it down the river, and it took us about an hour to do so. We got drenched, then would dry out before another rapid came along, and this cycle continued to the end. I had a lot of fun, despite my fear, but man did it wear me out.

We went only once on Saturday, and then did another run down the river on Sunday, before we had to drive back. This time, we had 2 less adults in the raft, but the kids were still with us. On this run, as we went over a particular rapid, our boat rose up in the front, like normal, but as we went up a little, the wind caught the boat, and we were at almost a 90-degree angle. Being thrown to the back of a raft, while watching the front continue to rise up? Terrifying. But having the raft go back down, with no one being thrown out? Awesome. I’d do this again.