Goodbye lawn blanket, Hello cruel world

My mid-week sunny day morning started out like any other... I awoke to the gentle chirping of birds hurrying in to eat the sunflower seeds I put in the feeder the night before. The singing winged angels and smile bringers alike, know that they need to hurry in and fill their tummies before the little bushy tailed gray goober devils (squirels) swoop in from the nearby by trees and devour all the seedy goodness or the evil giggling masked critters (racoons) get their gnarly mitts all up in there and rip the roof off the son-o-bitch and all the seedy goodness hits the ground... only to bring the black and white smelly beasts (skunks) into the mix.... Yeah the universe seemed to be humming peacefully along and I was sure it was going to be a good day..

I stepped my sleepy eyed, red curled head out into the daylight.. happy to greet the morning with a big dumb grin on my face because today was going to be a special day, today I was going to put a bid on my dream house. Oh no.... that was not what the universe was going to deliver...no, the universe wanted to spill a tank of rotten karma on my dreams and snatch up all of my warm happiness and replace it with darkness.

As I approached my jeep I felt that weird feeling you get when you know something is slightly off center but your waking mind just isn't ready or capable of dealing with the vision your eyes were preceiving. Then the shock of it was like being sucked up by a gaint wave and carried under, only to resurface and grasp for air, than roll again... pure emotion. My sleeping bag was laying in the middle of the street.. it was intacted but covered in mud. My soft top was removed with a blade of some sort, I found pieces in the field, and by the creek bed later in the afternoon. The dash was nothing more than pieces of smashed plastic, looked like the work of an axe or sledge hammer. My Sirius radio...missing.. my yakstraps eight of them...missing..my collection of weird and unique cds..missing...my walkies talkies...missing...my lifejacket, helmet, paddling jacket, wetsuit, bathing suit, sprayskirt, paddling shorts..missing...my clothes..missing.. and most important... my dancing bear lawn blanket...missing. (most likey was used to port away all my belongings) All the items in my stolen inventory can be replaced, except my blanket... that was were Jake slept after a long hike on the AT and it has been to well over 100 concerts with me.

To whomever now possesses the last piece of my best friend (rest in peace sweet Jake), I hope it brings joy to your dark heart.

Part Dah .. Ohiopyle, Yough River Duckie Paddle

Jill and I finally got her moonshiney sleeping snore machine boyfriend, Dale, to arise and greet the morning with a hillbilly head banging headache. How was this accomplished? We began unstrapping the kayaks from the roof of the car, with all of grace and co-ordination of a 3 legged blind dog ... a group of onlookers soon began to watch our show and wagers were placed on the outcome. I kept looking at Jill and asking her why everybody was so drawn to watching us unload our boats. I took a swill of shine and worked on the yakstrap, trying to look hot and sexy for the group of whitewater rednecks when it happened...


I knew the sound was not a good sound... oh no.. not at all.. instead the sound was hollow and loud, like a gaint log cracking an egg... but of course it took awhile for my brain to put all the pieces together. I remembered back to my freshman Physics class, my whiskey drunk professor who would intergrate an equation for "shits and giggles" ah but that's a story in and of itself.. the tales of Dr. K... Physics Rule Number 1) Every action has an equal and opossite reaction.

Well, the action of removing my kayak caused the other two boats to also come loose and in fact roll off the top of the car... like gaint yellow and orange plastic torpedoes and crash loudly and ... most likely painfully.... on the once pleasantly sleeping Dale... awake with a hillbilly crushing headache.

Humbly, humbly sorry..Sir. ..humbly sorry. :)

.... Gap in story.... we all decided we would like to go to Ohiopyle and paddle the Yough. Since I had never paddled the Lower Yough before Jill offered to rent a duckie and the two of us would paddle the loop and decide if we wanted to get our boats and paddle the entire trail.

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/Parks/maps/ohiopyle_rapids.pdf

Entrance Rapid was not to bad, Dale scouted ahead in his kayak and instructed us to go river right and take the straight line ... avoiding Bryson's hole... yep we missed it and paddled straight through the hole.. what a rush! It's always fun to put in and paddle up to the first rapid which was a class vi rapid. We ferried across the river and stared at cumcumber. Dale went first, hit the line prefectly and caught a big wave at the end. Jill and I lined up the duckie as Dale waited at the bottom of Cumcumber Rapid. Paddle hard! We started to loose the line and Jill started getting nervous, her paddle hit me in back of my head several times.. I dug down deep and we barely missed the gaint rock to our left. We hit the bottom of the fall and a massive wave engulfed our boat... yeeeee...... holding breathe.... haw! ahahahaHA, neither of us went for a swim. A few of our friends were catching some rays on the shore and could not believe it when they saw Jill and I come over the rapid in the duckie.

The rest of the loop rapids were class iii, so Jill and I had no problem until we got to Railroad. As reccomended we set up our line to paddle River left... I don't remember exactly how it happened but we hit a rock and both of us were propelled from the boat at the top of the rapid, Jill first... like a shotgun over my head and then the duckie just dumped the rhedhead into the drink. I found that in a situation were you are liberated from your boat... the best thing to do is go with the flow. I let the current pull me through the rest of the rapid like an old rag and at the bottom I swam hard to catch the boat. Luckily some resting paddlers were around the bend at the take out and they saved the boat. Phew....

We carried the duckie back to the outfitter... on our heads through the half mile, up hill, rocky trail, barefooted of course.. across the brigde through traffic and back to the rental company. Then we got our boats and paddled the whole river trail! I only had to swim once.

So Chris, by now you know what item malfunctioned in my borrowed inventory, but for purposes of fulfillment to that one reader, thanks mom, I will explain.....

After a day of fun paddling we went to "Paddler" a fun little Pub in Ohiopyle and tossed back a few Old Leg Humpers and had some really tasty treats...I had a Portabella mushroom salad and it was awesome. Anyway, we found an awesome place to camp on a local paddlers property and headed out to set up our campsite.

The place was creepy... a cross between Texas Chainsaw Masacre and the Blair Witch... and it was getting cold. I started setting up my tent, when some local redneck jumped out of one of the abandoned buses that littered the hillside. "Any of ya'll got a cigarette." I jumped out of my skin, and as I did I let out an ear pinching scream which woke up the birds and they began screaming... and in the process I snapped the pole to Chris's tent. yikes... sorry.

Country Road, take me home....

..to the place I belong.. West Virginia. I almost
aborted the road trip to the Cheat Festival this year when I saw the price of gas. jeezzzzz, yikes. I started unloading my boat from my jeep when Dale and Jill showed up. Disclaimer: We do not promote drinking and driving...ever..Dale has a tea in his hand.

Well, I should back up a little bit, this trip was going to be my Birthday trip and I was really looking forward to paddling with my room mate on the Cheat River, however Chris had to attend a beer tasting event in Philly and then attend the "Goat Races" at Sly Fox. So the night before the tasting Chris yells up to my room in the attic, "hey Donkey... I left you a flask of moonshine, my headlamp, and use my tent ...because yours is a piece crap oh and enjoy the show, remember Paddle hard!" So I was pretty depressed to be traveling to West Virginia without my friend and my dog.


Dale and Jill have been paddling for at least 15 years and I was so happy they allowed me to tag along, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. :) As we drove further and further south the scenery became greener and greener and I was really chewing on the beauty. We held our breath as we drove straight through the Blue Mountain Tunnel , Kittatinny Mountain Tunnel, Tuscarora Mountain Tunnel and the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel . I am not sure I am impressed with drilling a tunnel straight through such amazing
creations, but driving straight through probably shaved 10 hours from the trip. We stopped at Little Sandy's Resturaunt to use the restrooms and get some snacks, I bought an awesome Hillbilly Calender and I can't wait to use it. Of course we had to peak out and check the water levels and Big Sandy was calling to us to go for a paddle but we wanted to get to the festival and start partying with old friends.

Teeter's campground was hopping mad crazy, with some crazy boaters and fellow fun lovers. Dale spotted Dave and his crew and we set up camp. The rain started to come down. I took out the flask of moonshine I was hiding in my pocket and passed it around. Funny how people light up in wonderment when they see a redheaded lady pulling a slivery flask from her back pocket with the word "Booger" proudly engraved across the front of it. Before long we were all in a good place and throwing back my homemade hummus and nine pepper salsa...Chris if your reading this...this really helped promote... not only the moonshine but the Sunshine Pils as well as the remains of the Nugget Nectar and the Steam beer. :) You are welcome brotha... I say that because I have some sad news to report at the end of my story about a certain peice of equipment you lent me. :(

Information: Cheat River from Albright to Jenkinsburg Bridge
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/2347/

West Virginia is known for her coalmines and beautitful country roads that could have come straight out of a dream. Muddy Creek, which enters the Cheat River at the site of the festival in Albright West Virginia has an unearthy orange flow from all the old coalmines that were flooded and abandoned many years ago. I will not pretend to understand the chemical reaction, but the sulfur from the coal is turned into the mix or agent which acts to seal the creek floor bed preventing any wild life to live in the creek.
The Cheat Festival rasies money to help clean the river. Come out and support it next year! While your at it, go paddle the Cheat this summer and make a donation to the Friends of the Cheat or find out how you can volunteer.

The rain slowed and we headed into the festival and browsed around and spotted some old friends and drank moonshine and listened to some great bluegrass music. The Floor Walkers were pretty good, but I was told to hold my enegry for the last band..Stewed Mulligan and I am so glad I did. WOW! I have a new favorite band. Actually, Jill and I were playing around with Chris's headlamp and trying to figure out how to work it and dance with it on our head without blinding anyone when the band announced that the soundman had a malfunction and if anyone had one of those slick headlamps for the soundman to borrow that would be awesome. Jill and I just looked at each other and she took the headlamp from my hand even before I could make the descision and ran it to the stage. (I got the headlamp back so this is not the sad part of the story yet) Well, Stewed Mulligan blew me away. I am still speakless after seeing the Stews do Fiddlesticks. All I can say is wow Wow WOW! I have never seen anything so intense in all my life, it was the first time for me to see a fiddle player..playing his fiddle and the drummer... drumming on the fiddle at the same time! Oh mah Gawd! Awesome! Check them out, buy a CD or two... http://www.stewedmulligan.com/ The night was pure joy and pure magic. People were carrying their kayaks above their heads and moving through the audience. The sight of it is burned forever into my brain. It looked like the kayaks were moving through rapids and every now and then it would tip... Ah..it was beautiful.


I was starting to feel a little lightheaded after that. I retrived Chris's Headlamp and Dale said he wanted to take the flask of moonshine to the band because it was someone's birthday in the band and all she wanted was a sip of moonshine...

Jill and I navigated back to the fire and our band of crazy people were already making seriously good campfire music. .."I'm lost and I can't find my way back home." I was so happy and my body still didn't make contact with the River yet. I finally felt the urge to make my way back to the tent, I did and tried to sleep with all the craziness around me but it was imposible. From about 3am to 5am some really terrible drummer started drumming loudly and poorly. Several tired kayakers and fun lovers alike tried to make him stop but he was so lost that he only continued drumming louder and louder with each passing minute.


We all suffered because of it. I didn't sleep and really wanted to get my boat down to the river, but everyone was tired for lack of good sleep. Jill and I decided to hike down to the first rapid and see what the river was saying first thing in the morning. The yellow trail on the edge of Teeter's were Muddy Creek makes its entracnce into the Cheat is were we set out. The trail was alive with brilliant spring colors..greens and purples...just beauitful.

It was sad to see plastic and metal drums still litering the trails, but it will take time to put nature back the way it was intended or nature may just act out on her own and take care of it for us.

The shore line of the Cheat across from the yellow trail looked like millions of pumpkins stacked up by a pumpkin farmer. I tried to get a photo but it was impossible to navigate the brush in cowboy boots. :( I really need a new pair of Chacos..... anyway, we needed to do some rock climbing to get to the first rapid so I left my shoes on the trail and pointed the toes in the direction Jill and I were headed.

We sat at the first rapid and wished we brought our boats. We began to realize that we should head back to camp if we wanted to do some boating. We ran back to camp, Dale was still passed out. He finally woke up and we all decided we wanted to paddle the Yough instead...
I will have to continue the story in my next blog...