White Water Rafting Made the Wet Hair on My Back Stand Straight Up

I am not a thrill seeker or adrenaline junkie

I am usually a cautious person. I don’t do extreme sports and have a hard time saying yes to something new that might include me breaking a bone.

Some might call this boring and you are probably right but I’ll take boring over the shattering of my bones.

I don’t snowboard, surf, or wakeboard. I have tried them all but I don’t feel the passion to take these things to the next level. I’d rather sit back and watch.

I’ve had friends shatter bones doing these things and I’d rather not. I have yet to break a bone and I am 45 years old so I would like to keep it that way if I have a choice in the matter.

So, thinking of something for this month’s challenge at Globetrotters wasn’t easy for me. I did stand on Devil’s Bridge in Sedona but it was far from crazy to me when I got up there. The pictures look a lot scarier than it was and the width of the bridge was substantial for me.

People have died doing handstands on the bridge and that is something I would never attempt. But, it seemed like a boring story to tell and I have mentioned it before.

So, I scored my photos in search of anything crazy that I’ve done on my travels and I only found one thing. Well, besides my crazy peeing in the streets and almost getting caught doing drugs in a Mexican bathroom incident.

See? I don’t do much crazy living. I marvel at people like Anne Bonfert who has so many stories to tell. I love reading, looking at the pictures, and would die to watch her in action but I wouldn’t try any of it myself. She even does something that she never wanted to do.

Kern River

We’ve gone camping at the Kern River in California several times with our friends. The first year we went, the water wasn’t high enough to lend needing a guide to tube down the river.

We bought our personal tubes and slowly glided down the river. It was easy, just how I like it. There weren’t intense rapids and it was a mellow day of listening to music, having drinks, and floating in the sun.

The following winter we were bombarded with a lot of rain, which made the river full and high.

After we arrived, we took a walk from our campsite to the river and noticed that many of the rocks we saw the year before were covered with water. We witnessed the white rapids and it was like a whole new vacation.

It looked like we wouldn’t be using our tubes to float down the river. It was too dangerous as we could barely attach the tubes to a solid surface without them breaking free.

Who knows what would happen to us if we went alone? I didn’t want to find out and no one in our group did either.

Kern River Rafting

After seeing the roaring rapids of the river, we decided that it would be fun to pay for a guided rafting trip down the river. Although the rapids seemed intense to me, they were nothing like other places that I’ve seen videos of.

So, I thought it would be fine and a nice trip down the river with my family and friends.

We sat through an informative lesson on what to do and what not to do while on the raft. We were given worst-case scenarios and I began to get a little freaked out.

We could die getting caught up and tangled in the branches. What did I get myself into? They told us to be a noodle and not a starfish because making our bodies like a noodle would save us from getting stuck.

Ok, noted. Be a noodle. I think drowning would be an awful way to go.

After I piled way too much information in my brain, it was hard to remember all of the things the guide told us. But, he was going with us so I felt a little more comfortable but still full of trepidation.

Our party split up into two rafts, one with the girls and one with the boys. Little did I know that the boys were going to drench and splash us the entire beginning of the float. As I continued to wipe my face of river water, making it hard to see, I started to get annoyed.

Was this part of river rafting? I thought it was going to be an enjoyable float, not one where I was getting bombarded with water in my eyes from the boys.

Then, we got to the rapids and the boys were off in front of us. We went through a few medium-sized rapids that freaked me out a little but I had no idea what was in store towards the end.

The “Big Daddy” rapid. That’s what they called it.

As our inflatable boat got closer, I completely forgot what I was supposed to do with my oar. Paddle forward or backward? Heck, I just didn’t want to die so I remembered that I should be a noodle if I flung out of the raft.

As we hit the rapid, our boat lifted and caught some air before slamming down onto the river, catapulting my younger daughter into the rapid. She was 9 years old at the time and very nervous about trying anything new.

Maybe she got that from me? I had to talk her into doing this with us and of course, she is the one that is ejected from the raft straight into the rapids.

I am terrible under pressure and not calm at all, so I started to panic. Panicking doesn’t do a body good and I must have freaked out the guide because he fell in, too. What a guide, huh?

I jumped out of the raft to find my daughter. Even though she had a lifevest on, she was submerged in the rapid and I couldn’t see where she went.

Finally, we passed the crazy part of the rapid and I located her. She was hysterical but I calmed down because she was alive and well.

Call me boring. Call me dull. But, I won’t be doing any more extreme “sports” in my lifetime. I even put getting close to wild animals to bed. I might consider hiking close to an edge, but knowing me, I would slip.

I’ll stay the cautious person that I am, finding many other ways to excite myself that couldn’t end in broken bones or death.

Carol Labuzzetta is brave and I loved reading about her adventures in mountain biking and rock climbing.

Krutarth Trivedi and some stories I’ve read lately about grizzly bear deaths have really straightened me up. I would love to pet a grizzly if I could! Although I need the reminder that they will kill me, as cute as they are.

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