I guess I'm not THAT adventourous.

C. has never been in a boat, in his life, EVER.

I had planned to take him out in a little 10 foot on a nice calm day on a little bitty lake to break him in.

And then this weekend came with this wonderful weather and we decided to try our hand at canoeing. I've done it in the past and figured we'd be ok.

So we chose THE fastest moving river in Michigan on the FIRST day that the canoe rental place opened. The canoe rental guy said that he hadn't had any people out on the river yet, and that this early in the season it's most likely not been cleared out. He warned us that we "might" have to portage (get out of the river and carry the canoe around a log jam.) The guy tried to talk us out of going for like 10 minutes but eventually just gave in and told us that if we lost the canoe we wouldn't get our security deposit back.


C. man and I talked about it for a bit trying to decide if we should go or not. The guy asked him if he could swim and he said yeah. -To funny, later he told me he wanted to say to the guy "Of course I can swim, how do you think I crossed "the" river? I would have LOVED it. Anyways, I told him that it would be an adventure and had this wacked out little idea in my head that we REALLY were being adventrous and brave and fun and crazy, you know stuff like that.

Right. Wow. Try STUPID.

Within 2 minutes of the guy pushing our asses out on the river and WAY before I could explain to him the fine art of canoeing we were barraling tword our fist log jam. OH SHIT OH SHIT !!! We ended up sideways against it (the worst possible position to be in) the boat tipped a bit sideways and water started rolling over the side. I scrabbled to the other side of the canoe and luckily my ass was large enough to get us tipped back enough so that water would stop pouring in. The entire time poor C. was half in the canoe and holding on to a log for dear life.

I seriously thought we were goners right then and there. Like for real. Somehow we managed to inch our way along the jam and get to a spot where we could get through.

Oh man. There was no way we could go back and I was SERIOUSLY freaked out. I didn't think we would make it and I was being a gigantic baby. It wasn't 10 minutes and we came to an even bigger jam and this time actually did have to make our way to shore and drag it untill we were past the jam and to a spot in the river where we could put back in. Simple right?
Not a chance, the banks were totally steep in this part of the river and we had to drag it forever just to find a place to get back in the water.


While we were on land I made him stop for a few minutes and let me try to get under control. I was really freaking out. Me, the I-grew-up-so-hillbilly-not-afraid-of-nuthin little miss I've-canoed-lots-of-times-no-big-deal, sitting on a riverbank having a panic attack while C., (never been in a boat before c.) is just sitting next to me being all super brave and trying to calm me down. The more I think about it the harder it is to beleive. And I for real don't think he was afraid!


We had 3 more log jams to go around on land after that, and like 20 other obstacles to go around in the water. He never quite got the hang of how paddling affects the boat, and was getting sick of me telling him so I just learned to adjust to paddle against him and make it work out prettty well. By the end of the trip we were starting to get pretty good. (ok.... so good enough to just not die)


I was so happy when it was over I could have just shit. Crazy Mo-FO askes me if we can go again the next day. WTF? NO. Well, I guess I would have if we'd had more time to do it. Just to prove I'm not chicken. (and because every turn of that river is now burned into my brain and I would know where to start paniking and get to shore)


He made me take some pictures at one of our "stops." I don't LOOK scared, and he's all super happy like it's a friggin picnic or something. If he wouldn't have been brave we WOULD have been in trouble. He told me that it's ok for me to be girlie sometimes cuz it's his job to be "the man." I'm not sure how I feel about statements like that. In this case I'll let it slide cuz I really did need him to be "the man."


Sick.

Does he look the SLIGHTEST bit nervous? What The Hell?

I need a tan.