Big Day! Big Day! Big day!

It’s one thing to sit in a bar and casually talk about how rad a rafting trip would be in Grand Canyon. You could go on and on and hypothetically run the toughest rapids in your head while you sip on cold beer in a nice warm jacket and plug money into the jukebox. But you know what’s different? Waking up on a cold windy morning on a shaded beach and knowing your first order of business is trying not to get into some sketchy shit a long way away from 911. I’ll be honest, none of the other rapids made us very nervous, but everyone was acting a little off their game that morning, and when I’m anxious or nervous I take a lot of deep breathes.  That morning I took a lot slow deliberate breathes.

A ways back Heath and Ben toyed around with the idea of rowing their boat straight into the hole, but after seeing it the day before I think that idea was tossed out the window immediately. In our boat John was nice enough to let me take the reins, but in all honesty it doesn’t really matter if your driving. If your going to be in a car accident, driver or not, you’re still in the accident.

One note before we start. If you haven’t seen the movie Heat, then you’ll need to pay attention to this short video at 0:19- (click here) .  Oh, and I suppose it you’ve never seen this, then you don’t know where the blog name comes from either: (click here)

Sometimes I wish I could thoroughly convey what I know about these guys in these videos so you could see it through my eyes.  Knowing the difference between a regular laugh and a nervous laugh makes a huge difference.  Knowing that Ben and Heath both relate rowing towards a big rapid to rolling up to a handrail makes the skate reference about getting a trick for a line so much funnier.  Enjoy, I’ve watched this a hundred times.

In the end we’re fully aware that these rapids aren’t the biggest and the baddest in the world. It was phrased to us by a friend that they were grade 3 rapids with grade 5 consequences. I think most people that raft or kayak all of the time would think the rapids we ran were pretty tame, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’d never done anything like this before. When you sit on the rocks and watch your friends get plowed by waves and almost flip, you could care less what a pro thinks, you’re fucking scared and there’s no way to back out.