It was, for the most part, a nice relaxing weekend at my brothers place in Chico.
I worked Wed, Thurs, and Friday.
Friday evening, I went into Chico and had a nice Mexican dinner with great company. After dinner, we stopped off at a bar called Crush and had a couple of glasses of wine and then on the way back to the car, we heard some live music from a bar that sounded interesting.
We decided to go in and check out the band. The band was called
Diego's Umbrella.
They are from San Francisco and they describe themselves as Gypsy Pirate Polka.
Their sound was not what I usually listen to but I really liked them and ended up buying all 3 of their CD’s.
On Saturday, we went to the local farmers market and walked around. Then we went over to the Sierra Nevada Brewery and did the tour. Following the tour, we went to the restaurant attached to the brewery and had lunch and also ordered a couple of their beer flights and sampled all of the Sierra Nevada beers. I am now a big fan of the Sierra Nevada beers.
 |
| Me and my brother in front of the brewery |
 |
| My nieces chickens |
 |
| Chico's farmers marcket |
 |
| My brother and his daughters |
 |
| Hops |
Saturday night, was movie night on the back yard patio, on the big screen. We had some wine and watched a good western, Appaloosa.
Extreme Tubing
Sunday was tubing day. A group of friends and family headed up into the hills to tube the river. I do not remember the name of the river but let’s just call it, The River from Hell. Some of us were going to ride inner tubes and there was also an inflatable kayak. The day was perfect for tubing, sunny and hot. We met at the location where we would exit the river at the end of the float and dropped off one vehicle so that we could drive up and get the other vehicles and bring them back down to load up at the end of the day. As we drove up to the point of where we would enter the river, I looked out at the river and thought that it didn’t look too bad.
As we unloaded the tubes, coolers of beer, and kayak, the mood was light and everyone was looking forward to a fun time of leisurely floating down the river and drinking beer. I asked my brother about life vests and his response was that life vests weren’t needed. We all climbed onto our tubes, popped a beer and started the journey. The water was a bit nippy but we quickly grew used to it. I should have known that things weren’t going to go quite as we had planned when in the first minute of the trip, the water carried my tube under some thorn bushes overhanging the river and scrapped the hell out of my arm and I came away with a handful of thorns but I just shrugged it off and took a swig of beer.
It wasn’t long before we came to the first set of rapids. We flew threw them very quickly and got tossed around pretty good. At this point I was thinking, wow, that was kind of intense and my once half full beer was now half beer/half river water. I didn’t have long to complain about my ruined beer when we hit the next set of rapids. I quickly tossed the beer and frantically started paddling with my hands, to no real effect, trying to avoid the huge boulders and waves of what had looked like rather small rapids from the road but now looked like class V rapids. We were all bouncing off of boulders, tossed by large troughs and waves, and swept under overhanging tree branches. It was then that any thought of drinking beer went out the window. The next 3 hours were moments of terror followed by relief and laughter only to quickly turn into pee in your swimsuit terror again :)
There was one member of our group, we will call her Dr. Drei, who was getting it worse than the rest of us. I am convinced that she was on a tube that was possessed and was actively trying to drown her. I swear her inner tube was drawn, like a magnet, to the largest boulders, the deepest troughs, or head for the river bank where low hanging tree branches were. Poor Dr. Drei was getting tossed into the water, or knocked off her tube by tree branches at every set of rapids we came to. At one point, she managed to keep from getting tossed off her tube, only to end up in a swirling whirlpool that refused to let her go. No matter how hard she tried to paddle out of the whirlpool, it kept sucking her back in. Eventually, two other members of our group, who had managed to stop close by, had to initiate a retrieval operation to pull her from the whirlpool. Once Dr. Drei was rescued from the whirlpool, all seemed to be good again but it wasn’t long until we hit what was probably the biggest set of rapids yet and once again, Dr. Dreis tube hit the largest submerged boulder with a big deep trough and huge wave after it. She managed to hang on and stay upright flying over the boulder but then she hit the deep trough and then the big wave launched her and her tube. I saw this all happening and managed to jump off my tube and toss it onto the river bank just as her tube was flying by. I threw myself out into the river and grabbed her tube. At this point , I realized that the water was deeper and the current much stronger than I was able to handle. I was frantically trying to stop myself and get over to the river bank all the while banging my shins and legs against rocks under the water. I was finally able to get myself over to the edge of the river, out of the fast moving water, and stand up. Dr. Drei was also able to get herself over to the edge of the river and then work her way over to me. We got her back onto her tube and I retrieved mine and we floated over to a sandy part of the river bank, where the rest of the group had stopped and were waiting.
It seems that the group had been able to view what had been going on up river and not being a very optimistic bunch, thought that one or both of us were going to die, so they had already started digging a shallow grave in the sand and were making crude headstones out of driftwood. When we showed up alive at the river bank, they seemed a bit put out that their hard work digging the shallow grave and making the headstones of driftwood were all for nothing. We took this time to rest and gather ourselves and have a beer. At this point, Dr. Drei decided that she had had enough of being a human pinball and decided to join the crew of the inflatable kayak, which seemed to be fairing much better than us morons on the inner tubes. My brother was standing next to me and suddenly says to me “holy crap dude, you are bleeding like a stuck pig” I looked down at my legs and my left shin had blood running down my leg. It seems that I had managed to get a small gash as I was making my rescue of Dr. Dreis tube.
After resting up, we hit the river again. Some genius made the proclamation that they thought that worst of the rapids were over and it should be smoother floating the rest of the way. Well, it wasn’t too long before we came to another set of monster rapids. It was here that my luck ran out. This time it was me who headed straight for the largest rock in the river. I flew over this gigantic underwater boulder and landed in a deep trough on the other side and then hit the large swirling wave which launched me into the air. As I hit the water and went under, my brothers words about not needing life vests replayed in my head and I was thinking how I really was not very smart listening to him and that if I somehow managed to not drown, I was going to poke a hole in his inner tube when I caught up to him. As I surfaced, I saw that my tube was not that far from me and as the inner tube and I were being swept down the river at an incredible speed, I made a desperate effort to dog paddle over to my tube. If dog paddling were an Olympic event, I am sure that there is no one in the world who could have dog paddled faster than me at this moment. I reached out and grabbed onto my tube and with my last remaining strength, gave a hard kick and launched myself up and onto my tube. As I lay on the tube trying to catch my breath, I heard the rest of the group laughing and yelling at me how awesome my near death experience had looked. I am glad I was able to provide everyone with some comic relief. :)
At this point, I was now floating next to my brother and things seemed to be better and we were joking back and forth when once again, another set of rapids were upon us. We both started paddling like mad trying to get to the center of the river and what looked like the least dangerous part of the river, but of course, the river would have none of that. We were both swept to the left side of the river, right towards a rather large log sticking out into the river. We both looked at each other and uttered the words, OH SHIT. I was pretty sure we were going to hit this log, get knocked off our tubes and sucked under the log and branches and come out the other side as ground meat but miraculously we both bounced off the log and sent out into the center of the river. We both started giggling like crazy people at how we had once again thwarted death.
Finally, we came to the exit point. I was like, finally, it’s over. But of course, the river was not going to let me get off without one last lick at me. I climbed off my tube, stood up and picked up my tube and prepared to climb out of the river when I stepped on some very slippery rocks and my feet flew up into the air and I landed on my right butt cheek on a rather large, hard submerged rock. There I lay, flat on my back in the water thinking, ouch, damn that hurt.
As I stood at the top of the hill, looking down at the river, waiting for the other vehicles to get back to load up the gear, I watched deflated flotation devices and tubes float by without riders and wondered what happened to their riders. I saw others who had made it all the way down the river and as they climbed out of the river, I saw the same exhausted, shell shocked expression on their faces that we had. But this only lasted a brief moment. Even though we had lost sunglasses and hats, and we were all bruised, scratched, and exhausted, we were all smiling and laughing because we had just had an amazing day and it had been a blast.
I have come to the conclusion that every now and then, one needs to do something a bit on the dangerous side, something that could possibly lead to injury or death to help energize yourself and make you feel alive. As we had dinner and margaritas later that evening, I knew that even though my body hurt and I was scratched and bruised, that I would do it all again sometime because it was the most fun I have had in a long time.
Later that night, I took a handful of ibuprofen and just before I fell asleep, I thought to myself, I am really going to be sore tomorrow :)
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. ~Mark Twain
