Mother's Day at Rockville

There's no mystery; I know what's gotten into me, preventing me from (a) finding time to write in this memoir, and (b) having experiences worth sharing. Somehow I've found myself with a life full of grown-up responsibilities. There's a beautiful little red-headed girl named Indie tugging at my ankles. The tenure review process is heating up. All of a sudden, the important people in my life can be found in their houses and not their tents or pickup beds. And so, when I decide how to spend time away from my office, the creaks in the floorboards of our new home get more of my attention than the creeks of West Virginia .

I have not given it up, though.

Molly insisted that we spend her first Mother's Day playing. Just like we used to. With decent water abound and generally mild weather, I was happy to secure a loaner raft to show her the Upper Big Sandy from Bruceton Mills to Rockville. Indie was less than 4 months old and still preferred to sleep in her carseat, so it was an easy first time in a tent. We spent the weekend camping at Rockville, arriving Friday night and sharing the over-used riverbank campsites with a couple of friendly guys who were nice enough to invite us to their campfire. For Saturday, we'd arranged the company of a few friends to hang out with Indie while we rafted.

After a beautiful day on the water that included two runs of the Upper Sandy by some and a kayak run of the Lower by others, we enjoyed dinner at the fabulous Riverside Hotel in Friendsville. The cozy, quiet sophistocation of the mountains would end there. After saying goodbye to friends as they went their way, we headed back to Rockville. Things then went downhill fast.

We pulled into the campsite after dark and Indie was clearly ready to be nestled in for the night. Interruptions wouldn't typically be expected in situations such as these; we were driving into an uninhabited former mining depot reached only by rough backroads. It was too early in the season for the crowds who like to come and swim in the creek, and so we only expected to see a few of the campers we'd seen the night before. And, the night before was quiet. Based on what I saw as I pulled into our site, I was worried even before I turned the headlights off .

A small Chevy S-10 pickup sat marooned on a 2-foot high stump and two men stood next to it, drinking and pondering mechanical advantage. The rear tires were on the ground, but the front tires hovered 3 inches in the air. They were excited to see us. We were not excited to see them. Attempting diplomacy, I got out of the car, pulled the baby seat out in full view of our neighbors, and nodded with a serious brow, as if to say, "See this? It's a baby. I'm too busy with family matters to help you dumb asses get out of the situation you were stupid enough to get into." But, they didn't bite. They waddled over to me, looked at me, looked at my car, and said, "Dude, is this a Subaru? We need your help!" I wasn't biting either. For one thing, a Subaru is no tow truck. For another, I was busy and had to help Molly get Indie to bed.

To the non-parent, it may sound simple, as it did for me only a few months prior. Put the kid to bed. Plop. Done. No, no . . . the task starts with the warm-up activity of removing clothes from the baby's body. That's the easy part. Change diaper. Put new clothes on the baby. Feed baby. Wrap baby in swaddling blanket. All of these are difficult, and it gets cold at night in Rockville. Getting Indie ready for bed was a two-person, four-handed activity. So, when they asked me this question, I politely said, "okay; I'll be happy to help you guys figure out a solution, but first I have to help get my family ready for bed." "Oh, I toooootally understand, man; my little girl is turning 14 this year!"

For a second, I thought, well if this guy has kids, then he must have some sense about him. But I quickly remembered that procreation requires no sense and promised that I'd be back shortly.

Once Indie was asleep, I told Molly that it would be best for all of us if I helped these guys as much as possible. If they decided they didn't like us, I explained, then they definitely wouldn't be very respectful neighbors. I tried to make it sound as if the worst case was them not being courteous with their flashlights. When I arrived back at the scene of the treed S-10, I quickly made friends with the two men by looking around and taking a strong interest in their project. "We been tryin' ta git 'er unstuck, but that tree's right in the middle of it," I was told. I could see that the chassis of the pickup was resting on the tree stump. We tried a few different strategies, all of which consisted of trying to lift one corner of the truck while one of the increasingly drunk hillbillies sat in the cab and gave it gas. None of them worked. We got a better idea of the physics of the situation when I tried pushing the truck to the side from the rear fender. The truck spun like a lazy Susan.

I somehow successfully convinced the two men that it was time to call it a night. Their campsite was set up, it was nighttime, and the beer was still cold. "Maybe we'll have better luck in the morning," I suggested, trying to emphasize the we as if I had some intention of sticking around in the morning while these guys slept off hangovers.

I thought it ended there.

I went back to our campfire where Molly sat in a camp chair and drank with our more friendly campsite neighbors and laughed with them about the situation. A short time later, the unmistakable sound of an unmuffled engine roared in the distance and grew louder. I knew what was coming and didn't expect it to pass quickly.

In many rural areas, it is a fairly common hobby to take an old truck or jeep, remove its muffler and all other power-depleting mechanisms, and modify the suspension to accommodate for giant wheels. As if we were all of a sudden at the county truck & tractor pull, several of these beasts came creeping down the rough roads, intentionally taking every bit of boulder, earth, or small tree as a direct hit. Then came the sound of one of these beasts struggling as the others made their way out of the canyon. Revving and revving, we could tell that the truck was bouncing and jerking by the motion of the spot lights mounted to its roof. For a minute or two, we heard nothing but the earth-trembling roar of what turned out to be a 1980's vintage Ford F150 smashing back and forth against something. We had no idea what it was, but the truck could not overcome this obstacle. Then, silence. A creaky door. A slam. Unintelligible language. More silence.

I waited just a bit before I decided to try to get all of my new friends together. It was serendipity. Two drunk hillbilles with a truck stuck on a tree meet a third hillbilly with more horsepower than he can control in the middle of nowhere. I dashed over, exclaiming, "Guys! You need that guy's truck! He can get you off the tree!" Without proper explanation, this would make no sense at all, but on that night it was poetry. By the time I got back to the treed S-10, the new truckster had already joined the marooned party. So, I came upon the three of them, once again drinking and pondering mechanical advantage. You ain't so clever, they seemed to indicate as they looked at me, and said "Yeah; we found the guy, but his truck is dead now, too."

By now I could end this story because it doesn't go much further. The truckster had been "tryin' out my new truck; I traded it for my 4-wheeler today; and I was tryin' to plow some dirt around," when it just died on him. Good thing the two hillbillies he stumbled upon had extra gear and cold beer, because his other truckster friends never came back. But, before I walked away, our conversation went on to families.

One of the guys with the treed S-10 is a father and remarked at how fast the years pass. The other treed S-10'er agreed, "I remember when she was this big." All three gentlemen live nearby. When the father asked his buddy for confirmation on how big his little girl has gotten to be, the two got uncomfortably close to the creepy, incestuous line, crossed it, and kept going. Disgusted, I walked away, joined Molly and the others at our campfire, and told them about the conversation between the treed S-10'ers and the truckster. "Fuckin' rednecks," one of our neighbors said, "I'm glad I bought this," and pulled his jacket away from his chest revealing a pistol harnessed under his armpit. Molly didn't notice, and I ushered her to the tent.

I waited a few weeks to tell her about that.

The next morning, eager to avoid all of the sleeping creepers, we packed up and drove off to the trailhead to Wonderfalls. I asked Molly to marry me here and consider it to be an extremely special place. We were bringing Indie to see it for her first time.

Git r Dun.

First Time Cheatin'

My first ever shot at leading a club trip came this past Sunday, when 16 boaters agreed to put their faith in my guiding them from Albright, WV down the long and hearty Cheat River. To spoil the end of my report, this story ends well; the same 16 boaters cheerfully hoisted their crafts to their shoulders at the take out about 5 hours later while Steve Wang sheepishly admitted that he once was young and foolish enough to have jumped off the Jenkinsburg Bridge. I gasped and reminded him that it was “plumb crazy” for him to intentionally put himself into danger’s way (hint, foreshadowing).

Promptly at 9 am, we congregated at Little Sandy’s truck stop to perform the essential cognitive activity of the day: the shuttle. A mild headache later, five vehicles pulled out of the lot on their way to the take out while the remaining vehicles, their passengers, and 17 boats scattered about among the eternal revolving door of tractor trailers and pick up trucks.

A long shuttle drive later, we slipped into the orange waters of Muddy Creek and scraped down about 100 yards to the slightly less orange Cheat River. The group corralled at the confluence, and I told Jen “Stern Squirt” Raber that that a level of 3.7 feet was juicy, To be clear, I told her, the Cheat was not high. but it was most definitely not low. Overhearing me, Dave Greenwald rolled his eyes and chuckled while first time cheat boater, Martin Wittmann, took a big gulp and peeled out in his itty bitty Jackson playboat.

I forgot most of the lines. Actually, to be precise, I never really knew them. But, really, who other than a veteran Cheat raft guide knows the lines through the dozens of unnamed Cheat rapids? Feeling a bit silly, I announced to the group that if I don’t announce a line or if the line doesn’t become entirely obvious as they approached rapids, then it was on the left. John Brady chuckled, though I believe he knew I was right.

And on went our crew. They bopped through countless nameless class 2 and 3 rapids, putting their confidence in me. For some strange reason, this confidence remained strong even after my little spat with Big Nasty.

Which, for the record, was Grease Fire’s fault.

After scouting and successfully navigating Big Nasty, our group congregated in the eddies on both sides of the run out of the notorious hole. Rob “Grease Fire” Mitchell and I have a history of getting each other into trouble, and this was exactly what I was up to when I first attempted a surf of the big hydraulic. “Worst case is you swim out of it” was part of my advice to the newbies above Big Nasty, and what I reiterated to myself upon pulling my boat into the surge. Quickly it spit me out with a strong denial, and – just as I expected – Rob was eager to make his attempt. His surf was similarly a non-surf. After getting similarly denied, he looked back at me and nodded, as if to say, “go for it.” And so I upped the ante and really dove into the hole.

Jason Hilton tells me my bow went deep into the hole and then swung hard into the foam pile for a few bow-to-stern cartwheels.

On my end, it was utter chaos. I had about 0.5 seconds of sense and began to set up a roll, but from there it was nothing but mayhem. Giving up relatively quickly, letting go of the paddle, and pulling the skirt typically ends with a big breath of air, but in this case the next thing that happened was an aquatic gaze up through several feet of pearly green water followed by more tumbling. It would be an uncomfortably long time before that gulp of air came. And, when I did come to the surface swimming aggressively, I opened my eyes only to find myself swimming upstream in the recirculating boil. I was at the top of the foampile staring down about 12 feet into the meat.

After I hacked up more Cheat River water than I wish to admit, I received a round of applause. It was then that I looked down to discover that the two Snickers bars I’d stashed in my PFD were gone. That damn hole literally ate my lunch.

I like to think of the Cheat as a very long chain of flatwater pools connected by about 30 rapids. Those pools make the collection of gear much more convenient when playboaters get stuck in holes and swim. It happens to lots of playboater all the time, and it happened to us on Sunday.

But, the real event came to life just above Pete Morgan’s rapid.

After scouting Coliseum, we set up safety with a rope on either side of the outflow and boaters in eddies. We did not want a swim out of Coliseum to turn into a swim through Pete Morgan. Moments later (okay, more like a half hour), after a successful run through the big rapid by all, we began to hop eddies to get a good look at Pete Morgan. Halfway there, I glanced back to see, for a split second, a rare triple side surf in three distinct adjacent holes. All three accidental sidesurfers looked calm, but they were all working hard to become unstuck. By the time I had jumped to shore with a rope, Jen had flipped in her hole only to right herself with a blown skirt. As water rushed into her boat it favored the stern cavity and by the time she was in the meat of Pete Morgan, Jen was paddling a swamped boat in an eternal stern squirt. Remarkably, her line was clean. She jumped out and began to swim while the rest of the group rounded up her gear.

With confidence high, the group chatted and laughed, telling tall tales through the final miles of runout below Pete Morgan. We returned to the put in soggy and tired and redistributed bodies and boats while Ralph Teter prepared his campground for CheatFest. Judging by the size of the fire he set to burn the rubble that accumulated over the winter, it appears that he’ll be ready.

The 2009 TRPC First Time Cheatin’ Trip included John Brady, Paul Eisner, Rick Gates, Dave Greenwald, Jason Hilton, Alan & Andre Kumonkowski, Jeff Lorimer, Ed McGuiness, Rob Mitchell, Jen Raber, Phil Raber, John Rudland, Steve Wang, Martin Wittman, and Matt Zeleznik.