Back To It

Though I started this weekend fairly despondent over the fact that, again, I wasn't gonna get out of town. No Sun Valley, no epic mountain bike rides through aspen groves on super-skinny trail, no solo campout, no escaping the 100+ degree heat. Just another lame-ass weekend here in Boise.

Not so. Friend Judi threw a birthday party for Cathy on Friday night that was mellow and very fun. And on Saturday I ended up tagging along on a trip down the Main Payette. This time, though, friend Hillary and I would be two-manning an 11' raft. It was fantastic. We ran it side-by-side, one foot in and one out for most of the trip, retracting appendages as we hit whitewater. And hit it we did--like a cork, bobbing and bouncing through and over, aiming for the biggest bits and squirting through again and again. Great fun. And now I want a raft. Hillary, who spent some years guiding rivers in Texas, New Mexico, and here in Idaho, is shopping for a raft and looking for an appropriate person to share the expense with. Seems like a perfect situation. I get into a raft for half what it costs, and I get to go with someone who can teach me a whole lot about running rivers. It's expensive--prolly a cool $1500 for my share--but in the end I think it'll be worth it.

It was good to get back on the water, considering I hadn't been in since the 7/4 weekend, where I dumped in the top hole of the Raspberry and swam the next quarter mile or so, bouncing rock to rock, sustaining one serious leg wound and a mess of small bumps and bruises. Not fun. I was wondering how it'd affect my psyche, as far as getting back in the water, but far as I could tell from this trip down the relatively tame Main, I'm none the worse for it. A little nervous, sure, but I always am before a trip like this, so no big deal.

Sunday it was up to Stack Rock, this time with a group of 6 pretty strong riders. We'd planned to head down the Bogus Drop, but plans changed due to group constraints, and we ended up putting in a killer 3 hours between East Side and all the new stuff off the firepit trail. The sequence of trails I put together and guided everyone through was, I must say, superb, and the ride was a long series of medium climbs and screaming descents, spreading the work out through the day. Of course, in the end you always have to climb out, so that puts the bulk of the misery in the last 45 minutes or so, but it was well worth the lung loss. Great ride.

And at the end of it all, I was actually glad that I'd stayed here in town.