let's work backwards here. first: in watching our dear friends the beckhams, i'm realizing that victoria's phrase "major" will never really dig in here, because americans sound way ridiculous saying it. not half as hip as posh's "may-jah" pronunciation. how grating would it be to hear laguna beach a-holes saying "it was so may-jerrrr"? stupid americans.
OK... enough tv talk. lord knows i could go on forever especially with such summer discoveries as "Big Medicine" and "World's Fattest Man" and "Boy Who Gets a New Head" and all other fantastic TLC goodness that also brought us phenomenal "Little People, Big World" marathons?
seriously... i had no intention of beckham and TLC musings... when i'm not watching shocking reality television i really do participate in real activities. and that's honestly what i intended to document. a couple weekends ago i went river rafting! and although i did find a way to incorporate TLC-inspired discussions, it was a fantastic breath of FRESH air!
the rapids weren't as wild as we had hoped, which was disappointing, but our guide kenna did her best to get the most out of each set of rapids. she built up our egos nicely by telling us how strong and tough we were (even though i know we did crap our pants a little bit thinking about the threat of falling out of the boat and getting pummeled against the rocks). our common bond was beach flag football in the hermosa prank monkey league, so the adventurous spirits of these six non-socal kids reached new levels once we had escaped the clutches of the 405 and its environs...
cut out of work a little early to hit the road with jate and tandi... jate drove like a champ and even put up me and tandi watching a dvd (darcy's automotive-dvd debut!) on the trip. he even stayed in good spirits after carl's jr. effed up his "biggest burger on the menu" request and received a tiny eensy quarter-sized cheeseburger. we rolled into the campsite around 11pm, catching up with danyelle, jason and karie who were already entranced by the gorgeous night sky. STARS my friends! so many! so clear! jate, tandi and i powered up the tent, absorbed the stars for a while, then we all crashed for the night. next morning, woke up early, ate banana pancakes (jate sang jack johnson the rest of the day) and waited to hit the river. to kill time, jate and i played horseshoes and met a kid named pranav, whose name was tricky so jate dubbed him "rambo." he sucked at horseshoes, but his dad told us the kid was a ping-pong prodigy, so we soon set up a challenge for Rambo v. Jate to be decided that night. rapids run and only a couple small children ended up in the drink off another raft. got back, played in the river some more, then got our own drink on with wine tasting and local microbrews provided by the raft co. they even had a slide show of overpriced pictures (largely of the huge family reunion of obnoxious folk including a guy named Tuba and a bunch of girls/women who put makeup on BEFORE rafting) as well as live music care of a guitar/mandolin player who was cool. we drank and played games. the four girls had a dusty and semi-successful round or 3 of horseshoes, then hit the ping-pong table to cheer on rambo. jate barely beat him in extra innings, so i owe jate a dollar, but rambo worked most everyone else.
the group (minus our fearless photog karie)
the next day was an earlier start, and started out fun by surfing the first rapid (chili bar) and managing to keep everyone in the toilet-bowl that our boat turned into. we liked that. when then proceeded to "punch the hole hard" -- another enjoyable maneuver -- and jason and danyelle both rode the bull nicely on ensuing rapids, taking in a good face enema apiece. other than that it was a m-e-l-l-o-w ride. too much puttering and not enough ass-ramming rapids. so we turned it into a little workout and tried to drown out kenna's stories of the california gold rush by paddling our asses off in the slow parts. it worked. we got back to camp, swam around in the cold swimming hole, showered, ate, then hit the road home.
danyelle and fearless photog karie
