Flutterby™! : Toast popping 2008-07-07 11:59:49.814348+00

Toast popping

2008-07-07 11:59:49.814348+00 by meuon 7 comments

That's "Toast" popping up on the Ocoee River Sunday. Toast is Nancy's son, the hairy pudgy guy on the left is me, Phil Sieg is "riding bull" on the front and a trainee on the right. We spent the weekend hanging at OAR Ocoee River Rafting, feeding river rats with Nancy's red beans 'n rice and chicken chili (30+), lubricating them with cheap beer and watching fireworks antics. "Toast" took us for a full river run... and did about every fun trick you can do on the river, which is a lot. We got chomped and tossed out at Godzilla, We surfed and surfed again... and stayed in the boat when Toast was sure he'd flip us out (on purpose). Meanwhile, back at camp, Nancy tuned up her vacation skills, napping, reading and napping some more.

Dan's probably done that move hundreds of times, I looked for a bright tie-dye OAR shirt, but styles have changes and everything they had was earthy drab.

Yay for catching air at Double Trouble! I need to dig through and see if I've got hardcopy of any of those pictures to re-scan 'em, they were all scanned and processed back in the days of dial-up.

My very specific memory of one instance of that move was... There were only a few of us who liked to run the yellow Domar rafts, they handled very differently from the Avons, and the floors were really really slippery. One Sunday morning I was hung over (go figure, although trip leaders liked me on Sunday morning trips 'cause I was always there and ready to work, even when I was), and ended up with 4 big heavy crewmembers.

Always angling for the big tip, after Double Suck I told 'em to move to the front so we could get a good picture. We hit Double Trouble, that Domar was really stiff, it came over the wave and kicked and I remember being way the heck up in the air, looking down at the little teeny back of the raft far below me and thinking "oh, crap, I hope I don't hit that."

I did, and on that slippery floor couldn't control the landing, and damn it hurt. I think the picture, despite that I'd signaled the photographer that I was going up, cut me off at the waist.

I'm told that there are one or two guides who got good at backflips there, but I've yet to see it or pictures.

Intentional or not, I'm not sure, we saw what looked like an attempt at a backflip, he went under his boat and popped out in front of it. "Toast" specifically likes the smaller boats and likes em pumped up taught.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-07-07 18:04:51.548281+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

Oh, and some of the pictures I have of the Ocoee that are actually worth a damn: did you manage to stay in during the Cat's Pyjamas treatment? I love that little eddy...

And "Flipper".. "Hollywood", both for quite a while and more than once. and a couple of others I have already forgotten their names. Toast likes to surf and show off. It was fun.

"Godzilla" is a name that's evolved post my time there. Perhaps the lower hole in Slice-n-Dice? With particularly hardcore crews I'd drop that sideways. Flipper is a fun surf in a raft, and I was having a little trouble remembering Hollywood, so I went back to my pages, and the 'aka "Big Friendly"' brought that back...

Surfing is fun. Especially with rookies. Me and another veteran guide took two trainees one day and surfed Grumpy's for kicks. It's amazing how a hole that seems completely inescapable when you're a novice can be fun when you know what you're doing, but the trainees gave us a little more berth after that day...

Godzilla is the really big waves at the Olympic upper section. Where people are lines up with ropes to fish out the victims. People -do- make it through, but not lightweight rafts without enough forward momentum to get over the crest. It's got a lot of 'swiss cheese' areas and bad foot entrapment problems that have make the advice: If thrown, heads and toes up and float down, don't try to stand. I caught a rope and made it ashore, as did Phil. Ben/Toast swan after the raft.

Ahhh. I've only run the upper pre-Olympics, which would be why I don't know it...