River Tubing: Brrrrrr!

I hit the river this past weekend. My girlfriend Tracy called to see if me, my husband and son would be interested in going to North Ga with her, her husband Tom and their two boys to tube the Chestatee River. In a moment of delirium, I said Yes.

See, it's not the tubing of the river that I don't like. It's the temperature of the water that I have a strong aversion to. My river experiences consist of three trips that all have one common denominator: ridiculously cold water. First was when I was a junior in high school and our church group took a trip to Tennessee to raft the Nantahala River, a feat you should definitely be impressed by. I know I am. We wore helmets and everything. We even had a made-for-movies moment where my friend Jenny nearly fell out of the raft. After all the warnings we received about what to do if you go overboard and how you have to lay on your back and make sure you're heading downriver feet first otherwise you risk hitting your head on a rock and dying...or at the very least receiving a nice gash for which no 80s hair style would cover, we were petrified of said-falling overboard. But sure enough, we hit a rough rapid and next thing we know, I'm watching Jenny beside me, her eyes as wide as saucers, getting thrown so far out of the side of the raft, her body weight was more out than in. I reached out and grabbed her flailing hand that was straining toward me like I was the last pair of lacy white bobby socks in the store during the Madonna socks-with-heels fad. I yanked her back in and we huffed and puffed until our heart rate returned to normal.

It wasn't 20 minutes later that the one man in our boat of 6 (lucky him stuck with 5 screaming teenage girls) actually did fall out of the boat. Luckily, he kept one hand on our raft and was able to climb back in on his own. Good thing since I'm not sure all of us combined weighed as much as he did.

When white water rafting, a lot of water gets into the boat so you're supposed to pull over in the more docile areas and empty your raft. We attempted this once. We pulled to the side and everyone began to climb out. I stepped knee deep into the water and my leg immediately began to burn from the frigid water, it was that cold. Redefined "cold," actually. With a few words you probably shouldn't use on a church trip spoken at a level thankfully drowned out by the rushing water, I scrambled back in the raft faster than Tony Stewart throws a punch. We decided that a little water in the boat never hurt anything and proceeded on down the river. I'm sure the trip itself was a fun one but the cold water just spoils it for me. I'm too thin-skinned. Literally.

That's my only white water rafting experience. There is a Class 5 on the Nantahala. Take one guess whether I went down it or not. I have, however, also tubed down the Itchetucknee River in north Florida. This is a very cool thing to do and if you have good balance, I learned you can perch atop the tube, not touching the freezing water at all for the entire 4 hour trip.

Another river experience: Cave tubing in Belize. We strolled through a rain forest until we reached a point in the river that we could hop in and float down partially uncovered and then partially through caves that hung pretty low in places. Which meant no perching on the tube; I was in the actual water. Lovely. We wore hard hats that held spotlights on the front like coal miners. There were bats hanging in the caves--nearly as scary as watching Jenny's brush with river death. And of course, the water was unpleasantly cold...the part I remember most.

So now you understand why my acceptance of a trip tubing down the Chestatee River in North Ga was out of character for me. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson. But it always sounds like a neat idea and though I have 20 more years on me now, I did think I could probably still pull off my Itchetucknee balancing act, if push came to shove.

So we headed off. And I'm happy to say that the water didn't compare to Belize or the Nantahala. It wasn't balmy by any stretch but my legs weren't minutes from hypothermia while in the water either. It was a fun day--we coasted the river about three times (you could hop out at a certain point and walk a nature path back up and repeat the excursion as often as you wanted). There were a few points you had to navigate the rocks but it make for a fun challenge. Somehow most of my trips down the river, I got caught up in just the right current that I spun around and around in circles like a teacup on the Mad Hatter ride at Disney. But really, what adds more fun to a day than the possibility of vomiting? At least the water wasn't too cold this time!