I don’t know how many of you click on the buttons down the left side of the site here.
When I started Hubriscomics, I had a list of things to include on the site to see what stuck. Most of those things were archived under those left-hand buttons.
Here’s the start of an adventure story Dr. Sonny the Paddlin’ Dentist reminded me of yesterday. The whole story is there in the ‘Lies Around The Campfire’ button. Enjoy.
So I climbed out. The old guy working on the train, or at least working on the overworked mechanism that dragged trains up and down the crack track, said I was the only one who’d done what I did. It’s very possible he didn’t know, though. I mean, if someone else lost a boat under the bridge, chances are he or she could have just ridden the train back up. My failure was in waiting around until the train was broken before losing my paddle and my boat. The story would not be so entertaining or as long, if only my timing had been better.
So the word goes out that some idiot has appeared in the little theme park out of, well, not NOWHERE, but I didn’t come in through the front door. Where, importantly, I guess, the ticket booth is. In the time it took me to stagger off of the track and get my bearings (meaning to see where the nearest water fountain is- I was dying for water) the management sent a flunky. I thought “Oh, what’s this kid here for? To make sure I’m alright? To see if I need assistance? To offer food or rest in an air conditioned medical office before sending me on my way?”
No. He watched me like a hawk without saying more than “Hey.” He watched as I got my long drink of water. He watched as I scanned the area for the exit. He followed me as I slogged out of the little theme park. He was there to make sure I didn’t have any fun or ride any rides or purchase any souvenir candles after having sneaked in the back door. As I walked out into the parking lot, he turned and went back to whatever his usual job is- sweeping, dishing out ice cream, and sprinkling kitty litter on toddler vomit… or something. I DO hope that playing Sergeant At Arms for seven minutes was the highlight of his theme-park career. Punk.
So. The parking lot. It’s a nice one. There’s landscaping and the typical (for the time) faux-carved-wood signage. I looked around, hoping to see not only a truckload of my friends, but lots of boats strapped to the top of the truck. LOTS of boats, including one mottled white Perception Corsica Matrix. No luck.
Honestly, I had no way to gauge how long the rest of the trip was for anyone in a boat. This was my first trip into the area, and I’m one of those tagalongs who doesn’t look at the maps so much. So I could only hope that they didn’t finish the run an hour ago, come by here looking for me, decide I’d already gotten a ride somehow, and taken off to the campground. Surely, if they got here and didn’t find me, they’d have asked someone if a kayaker had ridden the train out of the gorge and come through the park. They’d have then been told the train wasn’t working, and they’d have gotten concerned… you get the idea. Things might have gone differently.
So I sat on a large and generally well-placed rock to await my friends, and to get news of my stray gear.
This might have been boring, except there were fraternity boys in the parking lot, too. They had a big white Econoline van. Never a dull moment with a bunch of fraternity brothers and their van to watch. I need to mention the deer, too. As with a lot of rustic tourist destinations, deer wander around the parking lot of the Royal Gorge Bridge and Theme Park. Black tail deer, I think, but you’d have to ask someone who can tell one deer from another to know for sure. I would have asked Dennis, but he was driving the truck that was… not here. You get the idea.
Deer in public vacation spots learn to think of people as sources of tasty tidbits, and probably as sources of eye-stinging flashes as everyone takes photos of deer taking tasty tidbits from vacationers. Fraternity boys are NOT like other vacationers. Other vacationers do not try to offer tasty tidbits to deer while luring them into vans. There are people who use treats to lure animals and other people into white econoline vans, but the six-o’clock news usually calls them something other than Fraternity Brothers. And the photos of such people are usually taken in front of courthouses while officers shove the photographers out of the way.
But as usual, I digress. I sat serenely, quietly, and happily as I speculated what would happen when the guys got that deer into their van. There were three or four guys in the van holding out chips and things. There were two other guys (presumably the driver and the shotgun) who were luring the deer closer to the wide van door.
I figured that if the first part of the Frat Guys’ plan worked out (“Dude, WE just hold out food until it gets in the van, then YOU close the door, dude”) then the second part of their plan (“And we just drive away with our own deer, dude”) would not come off so well. I assumed that if the deer went in, and the driver got the sliding door shut, that the van would then rock, roll, and generally be kicked into pieces from the inside, and then I could watch as the driver and shotgun piled in to do something about the blood, hair, teeth and limbs that were flying around inside the van. …Then I could tell the police what happened. That was MY plan.
Neither my plan nor their plan worked out. Their plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and docile. My plan depended on the deer being hungry, gullible and homicidally panicked. The deer, being none of those things in particular, took one look at the van full of grinning guys holding out Doritos, then turned and left.
Nuts.
I was very grateful then, when the truckload of my friends came for me. Good timing. I don’t know the odds of another vanload of guys showing up to entertain me with their untimely demises were, but probably not so hot.
My boat wasn’t on the truck. Damn. Now, I’d have to get another one- either borrowing from someone else on the trip or buying a new one outright, which is an expense I hadn’t budgeted on. Oddly, I worried that I could drown on such a trip. But knowing the expense would be paid by life insurance, the money didn’t worry me. Being alive and needing a new boat worried me, though.
I lamented the loss of the boat out loud a couple of times on the way to the restaurant, until Dennis broke down and admitted that they were playing a joke on me. He then told me of the sharp-eyed find of my boat, wedged on a rock- the white bottom of the boat nearly lost in the white froth covering it. They’d loaded it on the OTHER truck and were going to spring it on me later. I laughed, relieved… and happy to be part of a gag. After the day I’d had, I was happy to be part of anything fun- meaning anything that didn’t involve finding my way out of a gorge.
My paddle, it turns out, had been spotted too, though not retrieved. Dr. Alan ‘Sonny’ Salomon, who hadn’t felt up to paddling on flood-stage water that day (the man’s a genius), was the one to spot it. He was at the take-out awaiting us. He said it went by, out in the middle of the river, turning end over end . Waving buh-bye, as it were.
It has been uncharitably speculated that it’s probably holding up a clothesline in Mexico now.
So there I was, on my back and feet out in front of me (like you’re supposed to be when lost in the whitewater) My buddy Greg Raymond is shouting something at me from behind me. Greg is one of those amazing paddlers who can do everything. I’m concentrating on keeping relaxed, moving to the left bank of the river, and hanging on to my boat. I could have sworn Greg yelled to forget the boat and as it was slowing me down, I let it go. That’ll be important later.
Before we talk about later, we should talk about earlier.
That morning, as we were preparing to get on the Arkansas river, we watched as the commercial raft companies piled all their stuff onto their trucks at the put-in. You read that right. Put all their stuff ONTO their trucks at the put-in. Instead of, as usual, taking it OFF the trucks to PUT IN to the river. You see, the Arkansas had JUST hit flood stage or whatever they call it when commercial rafts can no longer legally put a boat in the river. We were private boaters, and we weren’t covered by such rules. There was a park ranger there, and she explained that she couldn’t tell us not to get on the river, but she just had to ask what our level of experience was. Greg Raymond assured her that we’d all been paddling for ten years, more or less.
Before we go on, we should talk about earlier. Two or three years earlier. When I first got in a kayak. You get the idea.
Anyhow, Greg knew the park ranger’s father somehow- the connection between this girl in Colorado wearing a uniform and Greg Raymond’s Memphis TN life is something I don’t remember exactly, but I think it had to do with the Bluff City Canoe Club. This reassured the ranger. It didn’t reassure me one damn bit.
The river was big and pushy and we got out a lot to scout and set up throw ropes and it was great. I saw big honking waves that were daunting. I saw big holes that you paddled up the following wave to exit, and then slid backward- returning to the hole you were trying to leave. I saw waves form and explode. It worked on my timing, you bet. I paddled the biggest stuff I’ve ever paddled, possibly even counting a 16 day trip down the Grand Canyon- a trip where I was sure I’d find my boat slipping backward down waves, but never quite got stuck the way I did on the Arkansas at flood.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, I’m on my back in the water, keeping relaxed, and watching Greg come up on my right, ready to drag me to river left. It needed to be done quick-like. I remember there were more waves to be dealt with just downstream of us, and I didn’t want to deal with them out of a boat. I grabbed the stern of Greg’s boat and kicked, he got us into what was left of an eddy. I gasped and gargled and did all the usual things I do when I’ve been dumb enough to exit my boat and had to vigorously swim in stuff that isn’t designed for swimmin’ in. Greg kept yelling at me to get all the way out of the water (there are cases of people who get to shallow water and stop working to save themselves, only to be swept back out. I could easily have been that stupid, considering) but I was planted pretty good in a couple of inches of water and just sat gasping and shooting dirty looks at the downstream waves. You couldn’t see anything beyond the nearest waves. That had been my biggest worry on the river that day- you couldn’t see past the next wave- they were honkin’ huge! Now my biggest worry was where I would go from here. My paddle, then my boat had gone on to enjoy the river without me. Even if Greg or anyone else had retrieved my gear close by, the chances of getting it back to me were slim and would only put someone else in a tight spot.
But I was just a bit downstream of a concrete wall, remember? That was was the base of an incline train that travels… up to a theme park! Ah. Greg and Dennis Rhodes, if I remember rightly, did some head-to-head figuring (It had to be head-to-head, you couldn’t have heard thunder in that river. Speaking of which, Greg had NOT been telling me to forget the boat. He’d been telling me not to give up, to keep my head in the air… lots of good advice. The bit about the boat might have been in there, too, I dunno. Like I said, you couldn’t hear thunder.)
and Greg came back up to me, parked finally out of the chilly water on the bank. “You can go up the train and wait in the parking lot or follow those train tracks into that tunnel and downriver to the take-out.” There was, of all things, a set of train tracks a couple of feet higher than the water. They went along the river. Downriver, they went into a tunnel. “Which… ah… which way do you suppose the train goes on these tracks, and when do you suppose it might be running?” I asked, looking down the tracks. I could picture a train on them coming at me pretty easily. I could not, however, picture where the heck I could go to avoid such a train. Greg looked down the tracks, too. Then he looked back at the jauntily painted lower end of the incline train. “It’s your choice.”
So. It was either walk an undetermined distance down some dangerous railroad tracks, hoping that my gear was retrieved somewhere downstream and I could rejoin the run. Or ride a carnival colored tram a thousand feet or so up a crack in the side of the gorge and wait patiently in a parking lot while my friends finished the run and came to retrieve me.
I didn’t know it yet, but my boat would be found a mile or so farther down the river, and my paddle was shortly to be seen by one Dr. Alan ‘Sonny’ Salomon as it end-over-ended down the river past the take-out and on toward the far South.
I also didn’t know the damned incline train wasn’t working.
I’ll get to that next time.
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