Saturday, November 25, 2023

112523b



I don't think I have mentioned the canoe trip I took with a group down the Rivanna River, a small river in Virginia. I must have been about 10 or 12, and I shared a canoe with another boy a year or two younger, whose name I have forgotten. What I do remember is that our canoe had a slow leak. When this was discovered our gear was distributed among the other canoes, because the adults didn't want it to get wet. This was a golden opportunity for us. We could canoe near otherwise people and splash water on them. Nothing in our canoe would be injured by getting wet. Looking back on it, I don't know why we weren't forbidden to do this, but there you go: the '60s. After a while, our canoe was full to the gunwales, and it would no longer go very quickly even downstream. No problem. We got out of the canoe, stood on the bottom, lifted the canoe up, turned it over, and then got back in. Best canoe trip I ever participated in. Until the end. We got to the point where the canoes were going to be loaded on the trailer owned by the people who had rented them to us, and while we were waiting for them, several of us spent time diving and jumping off large streamside rocks. While I was in the air, I remembered that I had put my glasses on when we arrived. Too late, and diving didn't yield a favorable result. Mom made me pay for a replacement, and that hurt!

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