So worth the White Water!

To explain the title of this lovely post, I'm missing a good chunk of skin right below/on my right knee. No worries, I am hobbling around but that's mostly because of a fall in a Japanese Skit, that tweaked my left ankle last night and I'm going to see the athletic trainer today.

But oh was the banged up, bursed knee worth the white water....and the bruised hip...and sore shoulder.....and well you get the point!

Okay, it started out with Emily and I going on the white water canoe trip, we both where in the same little canoe, and we make a good team. She's Spyro I'm Sparks. (<---we totally didn't plan that as we got those names a lot earlier that last weekend.) It had been raining pretty hard and John Guy wouldn't teach a bunch of beginners in a fast moving river deeper than 5 feet, so insted of the James River we went to Mill Mountain Lake.

Hilight of that day: Flipping the canoe!

You see John Guy was sitting in his and kept asking, "Is anyone just really hot and needs to cool down? Isn't it warm today?" And the rest of us were all like "Uhm....no it feels pretty good out today."

Finally I volunteered and jumped out to be 'rescued'. That water was cold! I come up, they ask if I'm okay and when I try to say "Yeah" my voice cracks like a 13 year old boy!

Emily meanwhile is siting in the canoe, all nice and dry...for now.

She had counter balanced so I could get up and over, but forgot to shift her weight once mine vaulted over the canoe and back into the water we go.

Emily was put out....I was laughing hysterically for at least a solid three minuets before we even started to try and turn our canoe over in the middle of a body of water.

Next day we out on the Roanoke River.

Hello White Water!

Hilight of that day: Not flipping the canoe.

you see there was a rapid that had rather large rocks on ether side and you don't want to hit those....no, no you don't. Emily and I call going through first. By every means we should have flipped. The Rapids knocked me off of my balance point so I was kneeling with no support, being slammed by white water in the front still paddling, Emily's in the back prying I don't flip out....Oh so many times I thought I was going to flip forwards and get ran over. And these rocks are getting closer and closer and closer.

Emily yells something up at me, and nether of us remember what, perhaps something like "Sparks, swing us right NOW!" or "KATIE!" we don't know. What ever it was I dropped my oar in to a Stat. drop and locked it there. The canoe swung up till we were about perpendicular with the water(John Guy said I kept us from flipping by leaning into the fall and pulling it up....I was just trying to not fall out) and then swung a hard right.

Out we shoot with out flipping!!

However,

our 20 year old canoe on it's last trip get's cracked in the first twenty minuets. Yeah that hard right swung Emily towards the rock so behind where she was sitting we got a nice nine inch crack strait through.

We paddled the rest of the trip on that.

I can't wait to go do it again next year!