My crazy college whitewater rafting trip
It ended with a bang!
The other day I was reading the blog of my steemit friend
and she had made a post about her family's recent whitewater rafting trip. Being a first class bullshitter, of course I had my own funny tale about a whitewater trip I took back in my college days. The following events are all true, the statute of limitations passed years ago.
Back in the fall of 1992, I was a freshman at Lehigh University. Damn that was a long time ago, I didn't even have my "chops" yet. I was living in a dreadful college dorm with a pretty good bunch of guys and few bozos. Our daily mayhem was supervised by our Resident Assistant Ed, for the record he was one of the bozos. And if by some miracle Ed is reading this it wasn't Don who watered your bed, it was me and Jeff. Good Times.
Around a month into the fall semester, Ed held a dorm meeting to inform us the school had allotted our dorm $300 to use for a group activity. He was looking for suggestions as to what to do with the money. Spend it on booze was the near unanimous choice, but Ed nixed that idea. I told you he was a bozo. Anyway after kicking ideas around for a while somebody suggested we go whitewater rafting. That's what we decided to do, even though we all had to cough up some extra cash to cover the cost.
On a chilly October morning, we piled into two vans the university let us use and headed to Jim Thorpe, PA to go whitewater rafting down the Lehigh river. It was a Saturday morning, most of us were hungover and bitching about what a stupid idea it was to do something so early in the day. We arrived at the rafting company's home location and were told it was mandatory to wear wet suits on the river this time of the year.
Now the Lehigh river also runs through my hometown, so I had been on several whitewater rafting trips already. But always in the summertime. I never had to wear a wet suit before. Especially not a bright orange one piece monstrosity that reeked of ammonia.
We were bused to the launch point and given rafts that held six people. One guy in our group, John, was a member of the school's Crew (rowing) team so I made sure to get a spot in his raft. I figured he would be able to keep us out of any sticky situations. The gang in our raft was me, John, Tom, Don, Jeff and Shemp. For the life of me I can't remember Shemp's real name as I type this post. He acquired that nickname just a few days after arriving at school and I never did find out why. Everyone just called him Shemp. He was one shitty paddler, definitely the weak link of our team.
We made it through the first set of rapids unscathed since they were fairly tame. As we floated down a calm section of the river, a raft full of boy scouts paddled up to us and began dousing us with their bail bucket. Good natured river rafting fun. Retaliation was mandatory, so Jeff grabbed our bail bucket to dish out some payback. The dumb bastard filled the bucket and chucked the water so hard at the retreating scouts he let the bucket slip from his hands and fly down the river.
Being resourceful young boys, the scouts paddled over to pick up our bucket and came back to begin drowning us with a two bucket assault. We told Jeff he got us into this mess, he had to get us out of it. So he jumped out of our raft and into the scouts raft. He scared the shit out of those kids, it was lucky he didn't flip their raft over. While he was reclaiming our bucket, we paddled away. Jeff had to swim down the river after us while carrying the bucket. Man, was he pissed. Man, did I laugh.
At this early point of the semester, I didn't know Jeff real well. We later became good friends and rented an apartment together with some other guys down the road. Jeff was always fun to torment because he would get so pissed off.
When we entered our second set of rapids, Don fell out of the raft. You have to sit on the side of these rafts and there isn't a lot of room for your dupa so it is pretty easy to fall out. During the pre-trip instructions the guides told us if we fell out of the raft in fast moving water to pick up your feet and float feet first so you don't crack your head against any rocks. As our raft sped away from Don, we started yelling at him to pick up his feet. So he did, the wrong way. Now he was floating down the rapids head first.
Most of us were hungover that morning, but I was pretty sure Don was still drunk. He was most of the time. I liked that about him, it made for many funny situations like this. Except that time he took a swing at some cops. Oh who am I kidding that was funny too, especially since I wasn't the one who got arrested. Have no fear readers, no jail time for Don. Only probation.
For the second time that day Jeff had to jump into the river, this time to save Don. We were able to pin the raft against a rock while Jeff led Don back to us unscathed. One of the guides quickly came over to see if Don was ok and to remind him to pick his feet and float feet first if he fell out again. Don told the guide that was exactly what he did. Well, he was half right.
The Lehigh river isn't exactly ferocious, so there wasn't a lot of danger involved in our trip. Unless you were like Don and couldn't follow instructions, but I digress. There was one point on the trip that was a little tricky, so the guides herded all the rafts together in some calm water to explain what to do. We were coming up to some fast rapids that went through a bend in the river. They told us to paddle like hell to stick to the right through the bend because there were a lot of big rocks to the left once when went around the bend. The natural flow of the water wanted to send you straight into the rocks so you really had to paddle hard to avoid disaster. Most of us did.
Not everyone in the dorm made the trip, so we had to recruit five girls to come along with us to qualify for a group rate. When it was time to fill the rafts, the girls all wanted to make the trip together. Since the rafts held six people, one lucky(?) guy had to hop in with the girls. That lucky guy was Billy the Kid. He actually went by Will, but he called everybody kid so he was tagged with the nickname Billy the Kid.
Our raft was one of the last ones in the group to go around the bend and as we did we found Billy the Kid and the five girls climbing up a big rock in the river with no raft in sight. Apparently they struggled to stay right and went crashing straight into the rocks and capsized. Since the raft continued on its journey without them, they were forced to swim over to a large rock and climb up to await rescue from the guides. The guides couldn't drag their raft upstream through the rapids in their kayaks, so Billy and the girls had to hop on a kayak one by one and be taken down to calmer waters where somebody had corralled their raft for them. Being fine young gentlemen with respectable manners, not one of us made fun of their predicament.
That last sentence might not be entirely true. 😂
Our entire group made it through the rest of the rafting trip without incident. Whitewater rafting is fun, but it is also hard work. We were all pretty wiped out as we piled back into the vans to return to school. Little did we know the most hilarious part of the day still awaited us.
This is the type of van the school uses now. We had crappier hunks of junk with one long window along each side. Remember that, one long window.
Ed drove one van since he was technically responsible for them while John drove the other van, probably because no one else wanted to do it. I was riding in Ed's van as we sped down the PA turnpike to return to school with John's van following us. The van was fairly quiet since we were all tired, but Ed suddenly blurted out "What the f@ck is he doing!"
We all looked out the window to see John's van whipping around traffic to pass us. As it sped by we found out the reason for passing us, Don was mooning us as they went flying down the turnpike. Despite the horror of seeing Don's ugly ass, we erupted in laughter.
Everyone knows one good moon deserves another, so we told Ed to catch up and pass them so we could return the favor. Ed, remember he was a bozo, didn't want to do it because he was afraid we would get in trouble. How could we get in trouble? After sufficient badgering, Ed finally pressed the pedal to the floor to catch the other van.
John was no dummy, he knew retribution was coming so he kept on the gas to try to avoid us. These vans weren't exactly race cars, they probably topped out at around 85 MPH. It took us a few miles, but we finally caught up to the other van and prepared for payback. Five of us lined up by the window in order to outgun Don's single moon. It was an impressive display of ass power.
As Ed finally caught up along side John's van, we dropped trou to return the favor. Unknown to us pointing our dupas out the window, Don fired back another moon of his own.
Let's take a moment to paint this picture. Two vans traveling down the turnpike at top speed side by side, with six total asses being displayed to each other. Too bad we don't have a photo, I'm sure the university would hang it in a place of prominence to display the wonderful brotherhood felt between its students.
Then it happened.
As I stood there pointing my dupa out the window, it sounded like a bomb went off behind me. Not even bothering to pick our pants back up, we all turned around to see the window from John's van had exploded! Don was looking back at us shrugging his shoulders in a "WTF!" pose with his mouth hanging open. Luckily, despite being showered in safety glass, nobody in the van was injured.
I lost it. I laughed so hard I nearly puked. I couldn't stop either. Nor could I breathe. I'm laughing right now just remembering about it.
Both vans pulled over along the turnpike and we all piled out. Most of us were dying with hysterics. After settling down a bit, we tried to piece together what happened. Don's story was when he saw our rebuttal (pun totally intended), he mooned us again and he pressed his ass up against the window for greater effect. When he pushed, the window simply blew apart.
Since we were university students, we put our heads together to come up with an explanation. The best we could surmise was that with both vans racing together side by side at roughly the same speed, a vacuum formed between the two vehicles. The extra pressure Don put on the window with his behind was just enough to destroy the structural integrity of the window and kaboom! it blew out. Yeah, that sounded like good science to us.
Two people who weren't laughing off the whole matter were Ed and John. Ed was scared shitless he was going to lose his job, John figured he might get in trouble since he was driving. I may have mentioned a time or two that bullshit is my forte. I told Ed no problem here's your story. John was simply driving down the turnpike, being extra careful to obey any and all traffic laws while driving at a reasonable speed, when a Penndot truck passed him and a rock flew off the back and struck the van window. The window cracked and as we returned to school the entire window caved in.
Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Hell I've seen rocks come flying off those trucks before. It certainly sounded more believable than what actually happened. Oh, but that Ed. He insisted we had to tell the truth because nobody would believe a rock flew off a truck and hit the window. John insisted we go with the rock story to keep him out of trouble and told Ed if he ratted us out, he would kill him.
When we got back to school, Ed and John dropped us all off at the dorm and then went to return the vans. I couldn't wait to find out what happened. Want to guess? Of course, stupid Ed told the truth. Honesty is the best policy my ass. John failed to deliver though, he didn't kill Ed.
Ed's boss, the head of the Resident Assistants who was another dumb college kid like the rest of us, called a meeting the next day to discuss the matter. He couldn't make us go, I skipped "mandatory meetings" all the time, but we all went because we knew it would be funny. Listening to Ed explain how the window exploded during the mooning made the whole room erupt in laughter. Ed's boss got pissed and tried to tell us what a serious matter this was. We laughed even harder and he kicked us all out of the meeting. What an asshole.
So what happened in the end? Nothing. Ed was put on "probation" but kept his stupid job. Too bad, we could have used a better RA. Nothing happened to John so I guess he eventually forgave Ed. Don was the only one outed as a mooner and nobody even talked to him. And I'm sure somebody from the university told the insurance company a rock smashed the window so insurance would pay for it. Believe me, those crooked bastards didn't have any use for honesty.
If you have made it this far I thank you for taking the time to read about my college whitewater rafting trip. If you found it funny let me know. If you found it stupid and a waste of your valuable time you can let me know that too. Odds are I won't care, but hey, whatever floats your boat.