SPIDERMAN, SPIDERMAN (Girls' Weekend - Part 2 )

Like I mentioned in yesterday's post, our Girls' Weekend trips have mostly consisted of shopping, eating and visits to the spa. This year we decided to be a bit more adventurous and try out the man-made whitewater rafting center. It's similar to a regular river with various classes of rapids and rocks. It is just man-made. I think it is the only one of its kind in the US.

I've never been whitewater rafting. Ever. I'm not a very strong swimmer so water sports make me a little nervous. I tore my retina the last time I went waterskiing. But all the girls wanted to do this so I was not going to be a wimp. We arrive at the center and the guide gives everyone about a 10-15 minute safety lecture. He talks about how to hold your paddle, what to do if you fall out, how to make eye contact with your guide if you fall out, and then he casually says something along the lines of, "This hardly ever happens, but if you fall out and come up and it's blue then you are under the boat. You need to do the Spiderman crawl in one direction to get out from under the boat. Most people panic and start crawling in all different directions and can't get out." Have you ever been on an airplane when no one is paying attention to the flight attendant's safety demo? It was like that here. Except for me. I was hanging on his every word.

Those words would save my life.*

There are two sections to the "river". The first section are class II and III. These are considered the baby rapids. They take everyone on these first to make sure everyone in the boats can paddle correctly and follow the guide's directions. I was sitting in the back right of the boat in front of the guide. So that meant four of the girls were in front of me and one was beside me. The guide showed us how to wedge one foot under the seat in front of us for stability and put the other foot at an angle to brace ourselves. Did I mention that I have narrow feet? Not just narrow heels, but the top to bottom part is narrow too. She had various commands that she would yell out like "Lean right" or "Paddle left three".

We went through the first section once. We had a little trouble getting going because we couldn't paddle together. and then we were going to do it again before we moved on to the Class IV rapids. I think you can guess what happened. We came to the top of a wave (?) and the raft seemed to go airborne causing the seat in front of me to lift up slightly. My foot came out and I flipped over backwards out of the boat. I wasn't expecting that AT ALL. In my head I was thinking, "We were on the baby rapids!!! No one ever falls out on the baby rapids." I was expecting to pop up out of the water since I was wearing a life vest. Instead I slammed into something blue. Yep - I was under the boat. I started panicking and screaming in my head, "SPIDERMAN, SPIDERMAN" and frantically crawling in one direction. Those boats don't look all that big, but at the time it seemed HUGE. It seemed like forever before I came up out of the water. My heart was racing. Then I got into the position floating on my back with my feet up so I wouldn't scrape the bottom of the river.

I wear hard contacts. But for water stuff like this, I wear soft contacts. They had shifted in my eyes when I went under. So when I came up, I couldn't see ANYTHING. I am pretty much legally blind without my contacts. Remember, the safety lesson guy said to make eye contact with your guide so he/she can tell you what to do. Yeah, right. I could hear her yelling, "Swim that way." But I couldn't see where she was pointing. I could, however, see another boat coming my way. I was near some rocks so I climbed up on them. The guide for the other boat yelled for me to climb higher because his boat was about to hit those rocks. Frankly, this part was not exactly as fun as I thought it would be when I made the reservations. Finally, my raft came back and got me. The girls were a little freaked out because the four in the front hadn't realized that I had fallen out until Ali (the girl next to me) started yelling. They said it was really scary because they couldn't find me. Then they knew I must be under the boat. They all knew it was my first time to do this and I was not a good swimmer. It was probably only a matter of seconds, but they said it seemed like forever before I came up out of the water. When I was back in the raft, I remember thinking, "I am definitely blogging about this!"

We kept going even though I didn't have a paddle. We did the Class IVs three times and no one ever fell out. My foot is sore because I made sure it was wedged under that seat in front of me. One of our girls in the other raft fell out, but she grabbed the rope on the side of the boat and held on.

Was it scary? Yes. Would I do it again? At this place, yes. Out on a river, I'm not sure. Did we have fun? Yes. At the end of the trip, our guide finally asked us how old we were. She had been trying to figure it out the whole time by asking us questions. When we told her that we were all either 40 or about to turn 40, she was so shocked and impressed that we were there and that we had done so well.

If you want to see pictures of us in the boat (sorry, no pics of my fall), go to this link and look at page 2 photo #18
page 3 photo #19, 20
page 4 photo # 34,35
I'm third row to the right of the guide who is back center. You know, the one without the paddle.

One of the girls had a waterproof camera and she took some pictures, but she is out of town for three weeks so it may be awhile before we get copies of those pics.

*Hey, it's my blog -- I can be as dramatic as I want to be!