Great shuttle from Bryson City to Walter's Hydro-Station with Bob, Amy and Joe. I would title the conversation " The History of Caveman Nookie and the Zen of Firing Bottle-Rockets"
Pigeon River
Walter's Hydro-Plant to Harford, TN
June 27, 2009
Great shuttle from Bryson City to Walter's Hydro-Station with Bob, Amy and Joe.
I would title the conversation " The History of Caveman Nookie and the Zen of
Firing Bottle-Rockets"
The Pigeon was awesome. It was my first time. Loved the
waves, lots of rafts though, so as soon as you started to surf, you had to clear
back out. Fun run though and bigger than I anticipated. My biggest action was
at Lost Guide. I heard someone say "Stay right, then go left, miss the hole."
Simple enough. If you knew where the hole was. I decided it would be a good
time to just jump in and probe something, so I paddled off toward it. No hole
that I could see though, so I eddied out on river right to look a little
closer. I watched as Bev, Joanne, Cindy and a few others came by, then filed in
behind them. I thought I could see where that hole would be and it looked like
everyone was too far to the right to me, so I paddled hard to get further left.
Sometimes you see a hole coming and know that it's too late to do anything about
it, so you just have to commit. Sometimes you know where it is and you just
don't make the moves needed to miss it. Then every once in awhile, you don't
see that bad boy until you're dropping straight down into it. That was me in
Lost Guide. Turns out, a lot further right would have been a good thing. I had
my boat angled right to left when I dropped in and after seeing the curl, I knew
that any angle was a bad thing. I thought I might be there for awhile. I
flipped as soon as I hit it and rather than roll right back up, I tried to take
a moment to get ready for what I anticipated would be a pretty big ride. But
when I did roll up, I was way downstream. Glad she wasn't a keeper. I
immediately went into the bottom hole, but faired better. Charlie's boat came
by about that time, so Shane and I took off to bulldoze it to shore.
At Double Reactionary, I took out to take photos and was just super impressed
with every single person in our club that paddled through. Great lines all the
way around. David went first, then Bob, Charlie was last. Everyone was super
smooth and I quickly switched from video to photos since there wouldnt' be any
carnage. Mike stalled out at the bottom just long enough for Joanne to catch up
to him and she pulled out a really nice deep brace to stay upright and skirt the
bottom hole. It's a pain sometimes to get out of the boat, but I'm usually glad
that I got a chance to sit back and play spectator at least once.