Topic 30(E): Vacation
Jun. 18th, 2012 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
java_fiendAnd #5 of 6...
Unless it’s some dangerous, spectacular and awe-inspiring stunt you were pulling, dying while on vacation is probably one of the most ridiculous ways to go out ever. Dying while on your way to your vacation? That’s probably even a bit more ridiculous. But that’s exactly what I thought was going to happen on my way up to King’s River to do a little white-water rafting. Certainly, if I were one who took strange and ominous omens to heart, I would have demanded that the car be turned around so I could go crawl under my bed and hide out all safe and sound for the long weekend.
My friend Kelly told me that they had a last minute cancellation and asked me if I’d like to go up with a group of her friends to do some white-water rafting. Being that I’d never been rafting before and quite frankly, at the time, I would have visited a toxic-waste dump just to be near her, it took me about a millisecond to scream that I’d go. So I set about getting all of the gear together that I’d need… tent, lanterns, clothes and all of the extra supplies I’d probably never need but wanted to have just in case. C’mon, you just never know when a small TV, VCR and extension cord would come in handy in the wild, right?
I also used the couple of weeks I had before the trip to brush up on white-water rafting and all it entailed. Of course, I wanted to impress Kelly with my knowledge of the sport as well as try to prevent myself from sound like a total douchebag. So wait, the oar goes in the water, right? Oh the things we do for love, no?
Well, the day came and Kelly and her friend Denise stopped by to pick me up. Thankfully, I’d managed to pare my load down or else we probably would have needed a trailer. So I loaded everything into the back of the truck and off we went on our grand adventure. The trip out of LA was filled with lively conversation and lots of laughs. A merry time was being had indeed and I was so stoked to be there. It was nice putting home and work behind me and just enjoying the warm sunshine with good friends. I was really looking forward to getting there, dipping my feet in the cool waters and sharing some laughs and stories around the campfire. Yeah, I was a noob, what did I know?
The first indication that things were going to go sideways on this trip was when we were got off the 5 freeway and were making our run up the 99 northbound toward Clovis and our eventual destination. It was warm inside of the car so we had the windows down and were chattering away when it seemed like all at once, we stopped talking as we all started smelling something odd.
We came around a bend in the road and found the source of the odd smell. In front of us was a literal wall of thick smoke. Cars were still flying by us and pulling over wasn’t an option being that a fire was raging on both sides of the road. This sucker was huge and out of control. Denise did the only thing she could do which was floor it and try to power through, all of us praying that there wasn’t a stall in the middle of the freeway that we were set to plow into. I kid you not when I tell you that the flames were so high that it they seemed to be forming a fire-tunnel over the freeway. It was intense, hot and took us some uncomfortable (see pee-your-pants terrifying) moments to get through this nasty fire-tunnel. Eventually, we emerged unscathed but choking and coughing from the smoke. It took nearly half an hour for our eyes to stop watering and for the inside of the car to stop smelling like a forest fire. Eventually though, we were able to laugh it off and our good humor was restored.
A while later, as we continued buzzing northward, Denise’s face grew concerned as she looked in the rear-view mirror and asked, “what in the hell is that?”
Being in the rear-seat, I turned around and told her to pull over quickly. She did and to me, it seemed like it was just in time. What came flying by us was a car doing no less than a hundred miles per hour followed closely by what looked like a thousand cop cars doing about the same speed. There were cars weaving all over the place as people tried to get out of the way of the oncoming pursuit. If we hadn’t gotten out of the way when we did, we very well might have gotten creamed.
Many miles and some nervous laughter later, our good humor and excitement about our adventure was restored but was understandably a little more subdued than before. There seemed to be a “what the hell is next” vibe hovering over us all. Well, it wasn’t long before we found out what in the hell was, in fact, next. Traffic slowed to a crawl and we eventually found out why. On the side of the road, a motorcyclist had gone down. Thankfully, a couple of good Samaritans had stopped and were shielding traffic from the worst of it with their cars but there was no question that the guy who’d gone down was in fact, totally dead.
Talk about casting a pall over the festivities. Nothing like a little death to suck all of the enjoyment out of the air.
We rode most of the rest of the way in silence. There just didn’t seem to be a lot to say, I suppose. We entered a stretch of super-curvy, twisty-turny road that wound us around the mountains and to the campgrounds. We’d just rounded a corner when Denise locked up the brakes which sent us and all of our things flying forward. I looked up and in the middle of the road was a freakishly large freaking cow. We sat there, idling in the center of the road just staring at this enormous walking steak and it stared back at us just chewing on whatever it had in its mouth.
It was apparently, the tension reliever we all needed. We laughed a little more than it probably deserved but after having survived a raging fire, an out of control high-speed pursuit and the sight of death along the highway, to almost be done in by a cow just seemed absurd. But hey, it restored our good spirits and allowed us to make it to the campgrounds in relative good humor.
Once there, we got our tents up and ourselves settled in and the good times started. It was worth running the gauntlet of crap we did to get there. Though the weekend was not without its moments of weirdness… on our first day, I’d accidentally clobbered our raft-guild with my oar and managed to open up a pretty good gash above his eye. Whoops. I felt bad about it and had to endure the hundred people or so around the campground referring to me as “Killer” for the rest of the weekend. Word spreads quickly apparently. Then I had to deal with consoling Kelly, whom I found out had been somewhat involved romantically with our raft-guide the previous season and had broken her heart… which was awkward for me on so many levels. But hey, I stopped feeling so bad about clobbering him with the oar!
All in all, it was a good way to spend a weekend and has me really hankering to take another weekend vacation up there doing some rafting. I’d just like the trip up to be a little less of an adventure next time.
This has been my entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 30(E): "Vacation". As always, thank you so much for your support over these very long weeks of competition. We're starting to wind things down so the heat is really ratcheting up and your support means more than ever. Thank you guys so much for reading (and continuing to read) all of this stuff I'm pouring out. It is very much appreciated, folks. Seriously. Who knows if there is going to be a poll but if there is, don't forget to swing on by, read some of the other fantastic pieces and spread a little voting-love around!
Unless it’s some dangerous, spectacular and awe-inspiring stunt you were pulling, dying while on vacation is probably one of the most ridiculous ways to go out ever. Dying while on your way to your vacation? That’s probably even a bit more ridiculous. But that’s exactly what I thought was going to happen on my way up to King’s River to do a little white-water rafting. Certainly, if I were one who took strange and ominous omens to heart, I would have demanded that the car be turned around so I could go crawl under my bed and hide out all safe and sound for the long weekend.
My friend Kelly told me that they had a last minute cancellation and asked me if I’d like to go up with a group of her friends to do some white-water rafting. Being that I’d never been rafting before and quite frankly, at the time, I would have visited a toxic-waste dump just to be near her, it took me about a millisecond to scream that I’d go. So I set about getting all of the gear together that I’d need… tent, lanterns, clothes and all of the extra supplies I’d probably never need but wanted to have just in case. C’mon, you just never know when a small TV, VCR and extension cord would come in handy in the wild, right?
I also used the couple of weeks I had before the trip to brush up on white-water rafting and all it entailed. Of course, I wanted to impress Kelly with my knowledge of the sport as well as try to prevent myself from sound like a total douchebag. So wait, the oar goes in the water, right? Oh the things we do for love, no?
Well, the day came and Kelly and her friend Denise stopped by to pick me up. Thankfully, I’d managed to pare my load down or else we probably would have needed a trailer. So I loaded everything into the back of the truck and off we went on our grand adventure. The trip out of LA was filled with lively conversation and lots of laughs. A merry time was being had indeed and I was so stoked to be there. It was nice putting home and work behind me and just enjoying the warm sunshine with good friends. I was really looking forward to getting there, dipping my feet in the cool waters and sharing some laughs and stories around the campfire. Yeah, I was a noob, what did I know?
The first indication that things were going to go sideways on this trip was when we were got off the 5 freeway and were making our run up the 99 northbound toward Clovis and our eventual destination. It was warm inside of the car so we had the windows down and were chattering away when it seemed like all at once, we stopped talking as we all started smelling something odd.
We came around a bend in the road and found the source of the odd smell. In front of us was a literal wall of thick smoke. Cars were still flying by us and pulling over wasn’t an option being that a fire was raging on both sides of the road. This sucker was huge and out of control. Denise did the only thing she could do which was floor it and try to power through, all of us praying that there wasn’t a stall in the middle of the freeway that we were set to plow into. I kid you not when I tell you that the flames were so high that it they seemed to be forming a fire-tunnel over the freeway. It was intense, hot and took us some uncomfortable (see pee-your-pants terrifying) moments to get through this nasty fire-tunnel. Eventually, we emerged unscathed but choking and coughing from the smoke. It took nearly half an hour for our eyes to stop watering and for the inside of the car to stop smelling like a forest fire. Eventually though, we were able to laugh it off and our good humor was restored.
A while later, as we continued buzzing northward, Denise’s face grew concerned as she looked in the rear-view mirror and asked, “what in the hell is that?”
Being in the rear-seat, I turned around and told her to pull over quickly. She did and to me, it seemed like it was just in time. What came flying by us was a car doing no less than a hundred miles per hour followed closely by what looked like a thousand cop cars doing about the same speed. There were cars weaving all over the place as people tried to get out of the way of the oncoming pursuit. If we hadn’t gotten out of the way when we did, we very well might have gotten creamed.
Many miles and some nervous laughter later, our good humor and excitement about our adventure was restored but was understandably a little more subdued than before. There seemed to be a “what the hell is next” vibe hovering over us all. Well, it wasn’t long before we found out what in the hell was, in fact, next. Traffic slowed to a crawl and we eventually found out why. On the side of the road, a motorcyclist had gone down. Thankfully, a couple of good Samaritans had stopped and were shielding traffic from the worst of it with their cars but there was no question that the guy who’d gone down was in fact, totally dead.
Talk about casting a pall over the festivities. Nothing like a little death to suck all of the enjoyment out of the air.
We rode most of the rest of the way in silence. There just didn’t seem to be a lot to say, I suppose. We entered a stretch of super-curvy, twisty-turny road that wound us around the mountains and to the campgrounds. We’d just rounded a corner when Denise locked up the brakes which sent us and all of our things flying forward. I looked up and in the middle of the road was a freakishly large freaking cow. We sat there, idling in the center of the road just staring at this enormous walking steak and it stared back at us just chewing on whatever it had in its mouth.
It was apparently, the tension reliever we all needed. We laughed a little more than it probably deserved but after having survived a raging fire, an out of control high-speed pursuit and the sight of death along the highway, to almost be done in by a cow just seemed absurd. But hey, it restored our good spirits and allowed us to make it to the campgrounds in relative good humor.
Once there, we got our tents up and ourselves settled in and the good times started. It was worth running the gauntlet of crap we did to get there. Though the weekend was not without its moments of weirdness… on our first day, I’d accidentally clobbered our raft-guild with my oar and managed to open up a pretty good gash above his eye. Whoops. I felt bad about it and had to endure the hundred people or so around the campground referring to me as “Killer” for the rest of the weekend. Word spreads quickly apparently. Then I had to deal with consoling Kelly, whom I found out had been somewhat involved romantically with our raft-guide the previous season and had broken her heart… which was awkward for me on so many levels. But hey, I stopped feeling so bad about clobbering him with the oar!
All in all, it was a good way to spend a weekend and has me really hankering to take another weekend vacation up there doing some rafting. I’d just like the trip up to be a little less of an adventure next time.
This has been my entry for
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 30(E): "Vacation". As always, thank you so much for your support over these very long weeks of competition. We're starting to wind things down so the heat is really ratcheting up and your support means more than ever. Thank you guys so much for reading (and continuing to read) all of this stuff I'm pouring out. It is very much appreciated, folks. Seriously. Who knows if there is going to be a poll but if there is, don't forget to swing on by, read some of the other fantastic pieces and spread a little voting-love around!
