My new favourite thing

What an awesome weekend! We drove to Squamish on Saturday morning, to be at the rafting place for 09:30. Coffee and fresh muffins when we got there, then on to the old school bus for a 20 mile trip up the river. Most of the journey is on old logging roads so it’s bumpy as hell, but the scenery is just magnificent and really gets your juices going for the trip. There were 8 of us altogether so we filled the boat. Safety talk when we got there, and then we’re in. They have a guy in a river kayak who follows us as the safety boat – and when you see the water that we’re in you can understand why. If you fall out there’s no way that the guide can leave her job guiding the boat to sort you out. We hit some great rapids fairly quickly, and then came to a section with an optional cliff jump. I was going to leave it as optional too, until Linda got up and started climbing the damn cliff. Dammit! So I climbed up with Linda, Raffs, and a couple of others. And it happened again – I got to the edge and just bloody froze. I fully intended to jump but my legs weren’t for moving. There were a couple of other boats from another party and they were all yelling “JUMP JUMP JUMP…..”. That really helps a lot. I yelled back “I’M FOOKIN TRYIN” (sorry kids). Eventually my legs gave in and I launched off. Stupid brain. The next bit was exceptionally cool. We hit some Class 2’s and were given the chance to swim down. Me and Linda were overboard before you could blink. It was awesome, bouncing around in the waves, lying on your back, feet first….just flippin wicked. Then we were back in and ready for the big stuff. Apparently we were in Class 4 which felt pretty big to me. It was wild fun – big walls of water, huge drops, coming at you from all sides. And all the time the guide is yelling instructions while you’re laughing and whoo-hooing. Every time we came out of a big section we pulled our paddles out of the water and high-fived each other over the middle of the boat. Cheesy? Maybe, but at the time it’s the right thing. We stopped halfway down the river for a pull-in where they’d laid on snacks and drinks. Then another big section of water and it was all over. And all too soon. We’d done about 14 miles on the water and it was the most fun I’ve ever had…….so far.

The kite boarding didn’t go quite as smoothly. I turned up, but the guy who was supposed to be taking me out has injured his foot. He said he’d arranged with another guy to take me out, but of course the other guy had no idea. I turn up at Squamish Spit and nobody has any idea what’s going on. Bunch of tossers. So I’ve rearranged for next weekend. In one way it’s not a bad thing as the wind wasn’t as strong as it should be. Even with this cockup it was still a wicked weekend. And I’d do the river rafting again in a heartbeat. But not the stupid cliff jump.