OMG, Fun:

I’m a little nervous for tomorrow. Found these on the web. Let’s hope I survive, it’s been a while (try like five years!)

Katie (since Katie has the longest and hardest to spell last name she will officially be called Katie, and all the other will be surname only!), Karen, Kathy, Tex and I went down the Santiam today. Nothing major, the biggest were class III.

Thanks to OSU and Karen sister (who is still a current student, we’re all graduated), we got a smokin deal on our raft rental. $45 bucks for our 12 footer.

Karen gets to work pumping it up (I put all my body weight on the pump and couldn’t get it to go down, can you say no upper body strength).

I like how the boaters is put in quotation marks, why is that?  So ya, we put in right here (um, can’t remember exactly where), and took out at Fisherman’s Bend. I thought that was a run I had done a million times (okay about a dozen) at my dad’s company picnic, but I was confused. At the picnic we put in at Fisherman’s Bend and did a much mellower, shorter run. This run was a little higher energy.

But don’t worry Katie, you’ll make it! 🙂 Actually we all did fine, thanks to:

Kathy, our fearless leader! She took the guide position in the back of the boat, and will probably be super sore tomorrow, having done most of the work! Don’t be fooled though, I did paddle some. Of course I was in the boat with some powerhouses so my work didn’t count for too much and Kathy had to keep switching me to try and balance out power. Sorry girls, I swear I’m going to start working out again soon. Well okay, I better not swear, but how about I’ll try? So the best part: We had gone done quite a ways (the whole thing took three hours I think) and were feeling pretty good. No real big problems or anything. So there was this class III coming up and Kathy was all ready and everything and the part above it was really slow. So she had us line up just right and told us, “No matter what, keep paddling.” Sure Kathy, we’ll do it, no problem, after all there are some boarders on the rocks, and we want to look like we know what we are doing. Well we probably paddled about two stokes before things went to hell. There was a rock, just under the water and totally unseeable, and ya, we hit it big time. So a flying we went. I decide to lunge for the middle and once in the middle of the boat I look over to see Katie right next to me. Katie said later that once she saw Tex had stopped paddling she figured there was no point of anyone paddling. Katie and I kind of laughed at both being waist deep in water in the middle of the boat, and then Katie and I look over. Karen has almost completely been tossed but somehow her feet are still wedged in the boat. She has an arm outstretched towards her and a look on her face that says, “grab me” but is completely silent. Katie filled in the silence with, “KAREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I just look over and think, well there’s no way in hell I can pull her up, so I just kind of sit there. Katie lunges for her and grabs her hand, pulling her back in the boat.

It was all over in reality in like four seconds I bet. As we came through it and saw that everyone was still in the boat I was actually pretty amazed. The guys on the rock were having a good laugh, but not as good as us.

This is right after that part. We could not stop laughing and doing re-enactments of Katie’s heroic rescue and Karen’s mute plea. We totally had to stop and bail, since Katie and I were in the middle up to our boobs in water by this time. I had such an awesome time and love these crew girlies so much! I’m sad to see Tex heading back to Texas {and I just have to interject that we call her that as a shortening of her last name, the living in Texas is a recent development and handy coincidence only}. Tex is going to email me some more pictures of the day, so check back. I’m surprised we still have our cameras after all that. Tomorrow I go sailing (I can’t get enough). Actually I’m taking out my boat! Yes I have a boat, a Hobie Cat catamaran. It was my dad’s and I love it. It has a rainbow sail people. I never take it out because I’m too small to by myself (you need ballast weight in case of flipage, which happens often). But I won’t give it all away now. Apparently the water is low at Detroit so my dad said it might be, “gnarly” let’s hope I survive.

Okay so I finally have time to give my backtakcer secret pal the thank you she deserves. I was in this swap where you send fabric to someone, then someone sends you fabric. Then with the fabric you get you make a bag. I posted the one I made here. It doesn’t even hold a stick to the one I got though. Sara over at knitwerk made it for me and I love, love, love it. She has more photos on the blog so check it out, my cameras batteries kinda got fizzled out.

This is the coolest bag, it’s made of an old sweater, so cool, and did I say it was cool? And do I love the alp? yes I do!!!

This is the inside of the bag. I love the blanket stitching around the edges. The yarn I got is super cool too.

Then I got this cute cute reversible bag with awesome stripes. In case you didn’t know, I love stripes, yes I do. And I love green even more.

I got this cool pouch with all kinds of goodies including some homemade knitting markers. This is very handy since I make hats and you need those things. I’m not really sure what all the tools are for, but I am going to take a cable knitting class this winter and hopefully figure it out.

Then I got this cool roll, it opens up and has little slots for all my knitting needles. The lining is really pretty too. God I love these stripes.

And also she got me this book. Okay I love love love Nick Bantock. Now, I don’t know if this was on my wishlist on amazon or if Sara is a crazy mind reader. But this book rocks. Now I got totally inspired and even managed to scrapbook last night. Check it out, I posted this on 2peas last night.
Phew, creativeness rocks.