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.
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.
1 comment:
any one have a good site for camping at ohiopyle..?
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