Exercising My "Physical Prowess"

Since my life is roughly as thrilling as that of James Bond, Indiana Jones, or a long list of other fictional adventure seekers, I feel it necessary to relay the details of my ever exciting weekend on this lovely blog (still really detest this word). Thursday was promising. I woke up at about 10:30AM, read for four hours, napped, ate, felt unproductive, ect. I decided to do something with my lazy day and headed out to buy gifts for people I love, which certainly improved my lack of productivity. Oh, I also got shot at while grocery shopping. I luckily finished my day with a fantastic 7 miler and went to bed aiming for a bit more excitement to fill Friday up. I got up really early (10:30AM), did some exercise (rolled over twice in bed trying to hit off my alarm), and ate a hearty and healthy breakfast (I grabbed a cheese stick as I raced out the door). I had made a reservation to go kayaking with Caitlin at noon and we were supposed to be up the canyon a half hour before “the launch”. We luckily made it with plenty of time to spare, but ended up having to outdrive a giant rolling stone that was barreling down the canyon. Good thing The Beast has a lot of acceleration power. Caitlin and I were thrown into a bus with a bunch of tubers and the instructor so kindly informed all of the tubers how to safely go down the river. Since Caitlin and I are Olympic kayakers, we weren’t really concerned that he provided zero instruction for us amid his warnings of how dangerous the river was and how people died sometimes when they assumed they knew what they were doing. Not concerned at all. We loaded ourselves into the kayak alongside a plethora of tubers who were extremely prepared for the river journey. Caitlin and I, decked out in $2 dollar flip flops and casual swimsuits, thought our fellow river buddies were a little over prepared in their airtight water shoes, sunglasses, wet suits, and camel backs. Oh how wrong we were. We barely made it ten minutes before our epic crash landing. I feel 100% responsible. Not necessarily because I was miserable at steering, thought trees magically moved out of the way if you were barreling toward them, and had organized the whole trip with little knowledge of kayaking, but because of my black cloud. I should have emphasized to Caitlin before our journey how I am not only a magnet for freak accidents, but because those freak accidents generally involve the people I am with to be injured to a greater degree than myself. Examples: Last time I braved a river Me: Bruised elbow, excess of spider webs on my shirt, and calloused hands Kara, my canoe partner: bloody lip, knees, a spider bite the size of a grapefruit, a new fear of water. Skydiving adventures. Me: Broken tail bone. Instructor: broken back…Yeeaaah. Anyway, our kayak collided with the tree and poor Caitlin and I were thrown into the icy waters of the Provo river. The current was so strong we couldn’t take a single step in that direction and our feet kept getting cut on the rocks as per our cheap shoes floated down past the “overprepared” tubers when we fell. Luckily, a good Samaritan tuber so kindly grabbed our kayak and directed it to us. Caitlin grabbed onto it and then started whooshing down the river clinging desperately to its side. As I watched her pale face fill with fear and hopelessness as she bobbed swiftly away, I realized my ever impressive intellect and skill in judgment was proving itself as useful as ever. Good ole Steve the tuber caught up to my lovely friend and dragged her to the side of the river until I managed to bang myself against ever rock in my attempts to reach them. We hobbled onto our kayak with Steve’s help and Caitlin submerged into shocked silence for the next twenty minutes. My attempts to lighten the situation with comments on how we were like my Disney hero, Pocahontas, didn’t really seem to help, though my eventual mastery of steering did make things go a lot smoother..until we hit the bridge. Apparently the bridge is a death trap and we had received the instructions to get out right before it and walk the kayak to the other side of the river. We managed to pull the kayak out and drag it up shore with our impressive manly strength. Without shoes, it felt awesome to walk on jagged rocks, prickly weeds, and searing hot dirt. Eventually Caitlin let go of the kayak and let me drag it on my own. As I waddled along, I heard a very peculiar noise-a loud, blasting horn and rattling of some sort. Taking little thought to it, I looked at the weird wood and metal thing I was walking over. Weird..why is there this random metal, wood, criss-cross contraption in the middle of my path to the river. The horn started to get louder and the genius that I am, finally recognized the noise and what I was currently walking across with my ever so light kayak. Loud horn noise: train. Wood, metal, criss-cross thing: Train tracks. Awesome. I furiously started pulling the kayaking that was going nowhere fast. Caitlin, still in shock, came over and started kicking it to make it go down the hill. We made it over in time-barely in time. The rest of our river adventure was thankfully uneventful, minus Caitlin almost getting her head knocked off by a fish that was dangling from a poor fly-fisher we almost hit. I don’t think anyone on the river was impressed that day with my steering skills-especially the multiple fly fishers. When we finally got back to the launch site, Caitlin practically kissed the ground with happiness exclaiming, “We made it! We’re alive!” Haha, that girl is one heck of a good sport. In response to my profuse apologies, Caitlin simply said, “It really was..fun. Just not something I will ever plan on doing again” Good thing she is a very forgiving person.

When I got back to the Riv, it was time to set off with Matty on a ten hour road trip to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Ole Matt knew of my black cloud and refused to let me drive and also took extreme precaution in having me close to him. My good natured cousin and I drove FOREVER, but had fun doing it. When we got to Idaho Falls, we were struck with an intense desire to eat Little Cesars Pizza. After wasting thirty minutes driving around the city and not finding one, we decided to find one at the next exit. Guess how many people live at the next exit. City population: 34. Highlights of the town: A gas station. Oh boy. The next town that had more than two buildings in turned out to be the worst town in the continental U.S., Butte, Montana. That deceptive little piece of work was a living nightmare. We were STARVING by the time we got there considering we missed out on that opportune moment to eat something in Idaho Falls. The only thing that was open was a Pizza Hut. It was with great joy we raced to the door, only to find it locked with a big sign that said delivery only after 10:00PM. Blast it. Matt called the delivery number and talked to the jerk of all jerks who refused to “deliver” it to our car. Frustrated, hungry and bordering on the thin line separating us from a new version of Bonnie and Clyde, we found a savior at Papa John’s who agreed to “deliver” us two large pizzas. Yum! After demolishing a whole large pizza by our selves, the food coma started to hit and we still had four hours to go. Matt then whipped out a 5-hour energy shot. I have seen them plenty and smartly avoided ingesting them, but this called for an emergency. As Matt held it to his lips, I asked how he felt. His response set me into a fit of laughter, “It’s not too baa---WHOA! Wow! Holy cow! That is some, wow, strong stuff” This solidified my desire to abstain, but it became soon apparent I wasn’t going to make it as co-pilot much longer. With a deep gulp, I shot back one of the strongest bits of caffeine I have ever had. I apparently started talking 100mph and reminded Matty too late about my heart condition. (Don’t worry, still alive and no passing out occurred) We fffiiinally made it to Coeur D’Alene at about 4AM. While trying to locate the hotel, I commented on how the street we were on slightly resembled an Alfred Hitchock movie. Not ten seconds later, we drove past a Bates Motel. No joke. (This is getting lengthy,..) Anyway, the next day we went mountain biking through the breath taking woods of Coeur D’Alene. We saved ourselves $9 a person by not taking the shuttle (hahaha, this is now a new family joke I hope never will die), saw Mikey be the best roller-skating, puppeteer there ever was, and drove another blasted 12 hours back to SLC. The ride back was fun for me because I spent all but two hours reading the entire seventh Harry Potter book again, much to Mug’s and Mikey’s angst. I am apparently the sole creator of interesting conversation. ;) Overall, I feel my weekend adventures far surpassed anything some fictional CIA agent or treasure-hunting archaeologist could have ever conjured.