To Live and Die on the Deschutes

After those last couple of depressing posts, I thought I'd throw in another little trinket of a story. After George's dad had convinced Mike, George and I to move up to Humboldt, we decided to pay an end-of-summer trip to George's uncle Boyd in Vancouver, WA. Boyd was to take us whitewater rafting on the Deschutes River in Oregon, a river which he professed to have intimate knowledge of. This sounded like a fun way to avoid our ever-growing responsibilities such as finding jobs and enrolling at the university, so we piled into three cars (as we had additional friends joining us) and made haste for Oregon. The Deschutes, for those of you not in the know, is located in Northeast Oregon, just over Mt. Hood. Whitewater rafting is one of those adrenaline-soaked activities that you either love or spend years in therapy over, and I've yet to figure out which side of the fence my experience falls on. After setting up camp, Boyd decided to take us for a run down the river -- FRAME IN. This was an important detail as you'll come to find later as I did. Boyd instructed us to straddle the raft, one leg inside, one leg outside. There was a rope that ran across the top circumference of the raft which allowed you to hang on should things get a little dicey. Having the frame in the raft allowed us to enjoy a more "sturdy" ride. Since this was my first whitewater trip, I was just concerned about staying in the boat but after making the first run down the river I felt like a seasoned expert and was ready to explore the river sans-frame, the way I was told it was meant to be experienced. I think we were all a little cocky after that first run.

During the evening the three of us boasted about how the river "would be conquered" the next day. To celebrate this would-be feat, George noticed that two attractive women had set up camp next to us and decided that we needed to impress them. So, doing what any naive college dude would do to impress a girl, we agreed that we needed to impress them with our eclectic college music. This almost never worked for us because college music back then was either dark and spooky or extremely angry. There is that rare case in which you pop the first CD you find into your car radio player, curious as to what it is (because it's too dark to read the label) and hoping the honeys in the tent next door will be so smitten that wild, carnal lust will ensue. This isn't the case when said CD is "Flood" by They Might be Giants and the first track is "Birdhouse in Your Soul". There's really no way to save face after that. Needless to say, the objects of our affection were thoroughly unimpressed, though nice enough not to laugh too hard at us. I seem to recall George hiding behind my car in embarrassment, leaving me to face the music alone. Jackass.

Fresh off our rejection the night before we took the frame out of the raft for our morning trip down the river. Again, I can't stress how confident we were in our newly acquired rafting skills, so having the frame out of the raft seemed like the right thing to do. In hindsight, it probably wasn't. The various rapid areas of the river had names such as "Boxcar", "Oak Springs", "Sheep Dip" and "Elevator I and II". I'm not sure why they were named as such but they should have had names like "The Colostomizer", "Compound Fracture" and "Massive Head Trauma I and II".

As we embarked through some of the smaller rapids I began to think that taking the frame out maybe wasn't such a good idea. Holding onto the oar was ditched in favor of holding the rope as our raft began to "taco" in some of the insane parts of the river. Then it happened, smack-dab in the middle of "Oak Springs": Mike elbowed me in the face and into the water I went. When I was finally able to open my eyes, I still couldn't make out which way was up. It was literally how I imagined it would feel to be in a washing machine. I was trapped in a little cul-de-sac underwater and pretty much ran the gamut of emotions that leads to acceptance, all in about 20 seconds. I had pretty much accepted the fact that this was it, this was how I was going to die, but I somehow popped up to the surface, noticing that my friends were about 200 yards down river looking for me. Or my body, I suppose. I lived, so no permanent harm done -- just a blow to the ego.

Instant Death?

So I want to say thank you to George for introducing me to Boyd and the Satan-spawned whitewater trip from hell. I won't forget it. Ever.