We departed from Buena Vista, ragged from the prior evening’s disco excursions…No one wanted to go, but that just made the events of the day most ridiculous. We were setting out on a rafting endeavor of a rare and different kind…A destination float. Boat drinks were essential as the day trip turned slowly into a sundown session (A boat drink is a meaty mixture of rums with a small splash of orange/pineaple juice)
I recruited for the trip my Ecuadorian friend, Olish, a half of a pint (she’s short with a low, but growing tolerance for alcohol), mango (Not a fruit, but a very tangy individual), Stinco, a lowlander from the city of Chicagoland who was excited about the prospect of this off-kilter group of individuals, Bruce, a homosexual friend with flavorful attitude who poses no threat to homophobic males surrounding him and D-Ron, an irish bastard with little or no sense. Mango was our fearless guide…we call her the one-eyed schwilly for the lack of her right eye while intoxicated…
I, being the Captain of this excursion, arrived at Big Bend, our launching zone, with Bruce and Olish and began mixing the wretched boat drinks that would fuel our uneasy minds for the trip. But, first, the costumes…because if you don’t dress the part, then where has all the fun gone?
I adorned myself in a black plastic dress cut just below the derriere and just above the chest…bathing suit bottoms underneath of course to conceal what should be hidden while dancing or rafting….a pair of mirrored aviators for protection from the elements and the outside world, a pair of Chaco’s in case climbing was inevitable, my PFD (for floating) and a set of gold mardi gras beads which I later gave to a small child in exchange for her hula hoop.
Bruce was sporting a bright blue Hardy brand wetsuit, cut just above the knees and revealing a bit of his hairy manhood at the chest. Upon his face lay a pair of bright green wing tipped sunglasses (again for protection against the elements and the outside world). About his neck were some green beads with a parrot and a corona label hanging from the bottom. His PFD, being the shouting point of his attire, was bright orange with a Buffalo Joe’s Whitewater logo across the back (Some BJ’s guides tried to beat him up for stealing until they realized he was with us).
D-Ron forgot several things, explicitly his head….First, his cellular telephone remained in his pocket throughout the duration of our whitewater excursion (you should typically store it somewhere that it will stay dry…but no one bothered to offer to him this information)…Second he left his lifevest obnoxiously open during our trip…That bastard would have had the law on us in no time had they seen his non-precautionary measures at work. However, D-Ron did remember his wetsuit…a faded blue tank top expanse of rubber with legs too long that bagged around his ankles…and his new jersey devlis hat cocked sideways that screamed Chicken Parm and Jersey Boys.
After the rest of the crew arrived, we rigged up our boat trip and after several moments of running around gathering items, locking and unlocking cars, forgetting and remembering this and that, Olish, Stinco and half of a pint (HOAP because it’s too long to continually type out.) discussed their get ups….HOAP decided upon her bathing suit top, concealing each bosom with an “Ice Cream Man” sticker. While Olish sported my disco/gypsy skirt from the night before over a pair of splash pants. Stinco went the “normal route” with an oversized boaters hat and joey jacket. And, as we wrapped up our costumes and sloppily removed the boat from the roof of our fearless leader’s Jeep Cherokee….we grabbed our “What the Frog” stickers and set off upon the Rio…It was really the Arkansas, but if you’re a boater, you know the slang.
The first of the trip was uneventful, but as the boat drinking became the more popular of the two sports, things began to get blurry. We cheered and chanted and sang at the top of our lungs, telling jokes and picking on one another the way people do while bonding in nature over beverages. Mango began trying to dip the front of the boat into the water, where I, in my mini-dress was sitting rather unladylike (but remember the bathing suit bottoms). We hit some rocks and missed some eddys as folks do when rafting in a mild section of the river….we thought we had put in below the dam…
As we were taking one down and passing it around, yelling “boat drink,” quite obnoxiously and to the discontent of the geese, to demand the bottle be passed, Mango yells “Oh shit!” inbetween our rotations.
I turn around quickly to see a sign that reads “Danger Dam.” There may as well have been a skull and cross bones on the sign for the foreboding look of it. “We have to go left!” someone yells, but it may be too late for that as I swing into the correct paddling position to assist in our escape from the hazardous hydraulics.
As we come into the rapids cock-eyed and schwilly, my foot goes through the bottom of the boat into the icy, rocky water. “God damn poor boat maintenence” I think as I pull it back in quickly to avoid decapitation. D-Ron falls into the boat, drenching himself from the waist down (Still with his life vest unbuckled and his phone in the pocket of his shorts).
Well, we came out okay, with smiles and grimaces…HOAP yells “boat drinks” as soon as we’re in the clear, and we see the first signs of Salida around the bend….a fish hatchery. We mistook it for a prison initially and opted out on our “safety break” for the moment. And after several attempts to eddy out resulting in the bush whacking of our crew by willow trees and scraggily bushes, we rounded a bend and saw our eddy. We lit up cigarettes and pipes, peed in the river, almost lost our boat once and dipped the ends of olish’s skirt into the cool Arkansas river water. What time is it?
Holey Ca-Rap! The rock show is begininng! We take of down river in an instant, stopping only to wait for Stinco…we forgot about him as he cruised the beaches of the Ark. Aha! Salida’s river park and the FibArk festival! I man the seat in the front of the boat, riding the bronco while we slide not-so-gracefully through the kayking obstacle course and come into view of the spectators. Nota one of em clapped at our entourage…nor did they smile. The idiots gaped, open mouthed at the drunken, disguised twenty-somethings breaking the rules and cruising precariously towards them. Women grabbed their children and ran while men stepped in front of their wives to sheild them from our sights (had they known the sexual orientation of our friend in the blue wetsuit, they may have hidden themselves instead).
We were so taken aback at the undaunted reaction from our crowd (the boat drinks probably had a lot to do as well), we missed the take out completely. As we floated ridiculously past the empty boat ramp, we scrambled to get to the shore under a bridge. after successfully doing so, we walked the boat downstream, only to find, not another boat ramp but a wall of shrubbery. At this point, HOAP and I took off through the gawking crowd to find some Johnny Cakes scented porta johns, drinking the remaining boat drinks from a bemused quart of dole pineapple and orange juice.
After our initial exploration of the festivities, the two of us, having relieved our bladders of the immense pressure from the consumption of too many tropical tasties, returned to the guzzling of the “juice” and to our riverside commrades. Olish had backed up to the beach amongst radio announcers and young children to provide us with land transport for our river vehicle. His van looked something like this:
A bedazzled white monster on four wheels. Rusted and wrecked, the large van of a 1980’s boxy manner, boasted California license plates and a large sticker in the back window that read “GLUTES.” Additionally, in our boredom one evening, we had posted pictures of women of a questionable agenda. Clothed? Yes. But very lightly. This van looked the part of the arch enemy of Herbie, the little car from the Disney movie. The alter ego of the little engine that could, the van reaked of chester the child molestor and one could imagine a dirty old man, scouring the streets of San Francisco for small children with a bag of candy on the passenger seat. But, back to the river…
Olish was standing near the water with his back to us, still adorning the disco/gypsy skirt of many colors, with his hand to his forehead in a confused manner. As we drew nearer, we noticed his stomach was heaving with the gasps of a heavy laughter. We turned our gazes away from our giggling Ecuadorian downstream towards the faux pas boat ramp only to see Mango, Bruce, D-Ron and Stinco in a tangled, grinning mess, STILL attempting to pull the boat back to the ramp in a drunken stupor.
“Oh, no,” I thought. “We’re duped now for sure. Someone has called the law in on this group of raving lunatics.”
All this as the band, Mama’s Cookin, has already crescendoed their set upon the riverside stage. So, with my dancin shoes on, we hopped to it, rushing to help our counter parts. In no time, the crowd watching in amazement at our dedication, we pulled the boat from the gallows and, grunting and giggling, managed to bring it ashore. The trip was de-rigged in no time as we all guzzledthe remaining boat drinks between strappings and danced and hopped to and fro, listening to the music from the nearby stage.
“Okay, let’s rally!” I say as we scramble to park the van and then walk/dance/hop towards the bandshell.
As we wind down the path, we see three things, exciting all of us at once for different and similar reasons. Hula Hoops, a beer garden and an empty dance floor! All three of these things would allow us to shine in our freakiness of the day, while keeping us within legality’s standards. The party was commencing! Oh, and here’s the Buff Joe’s crew! Oh, but they don’t look happy about a man of questionable sexuality sporting their company’s logo. But, no, in the pure hilarity of it, they only laugh.
“He’s with Mango…and those other crazies.”
Speaking of Mango, she has managed to bribe a five-year-old out of their hula hoop with Mardi Gras beads. Mom doesn’t look happy, but the little girl is looking on in awe as Mango proceeds to use a hula hoop in ALL the wrong ways. Falling over…oh, nope, back up…around the neck…Wait, she’s down again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Bruce and D-Ron return from the beer garden with four beers and downtrodden faces. We’ve been cut off. The man with the keg doesn’t believe we need to consume any more of anything, except maybe some water and some downers.
To make a long story short, we dance and fall and hula and fall and stumble and fall throughout the evening, making several trips back to the molester on wheels for safety breaks and whiskey chats. After some funk, smoe bluegrass and a little bit of rosy cheeked embarassments and wide eyed booze chasing, the bespeckled septet ventured back to the van for a rockin trip back to the promised land of Buena Vista. No arrests, no fights and very little obnoxiousness make jack a dull boy.
Now that the rapids are calming down and freezing over, it’s time to catch up on books that are staring you in the face from your bookshelf. Perhaps your looking for another good read or you want to encourage someone’s interest of Rafting and Kayaks?
For me the Rafting season is over. I don’t usually hit the whitewater during rain season because I don’t have the experience and most of the rafting trips I have been taking are floats. I have to say that I’m a little green with envy. The guys and gals at California Rafting had one last blast on Silver Creek near Placerville. 
