Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' on the River

     There are few things in nature I love as much as a great river. I love driving by one, I love watching the way the water rushes and rolls, I love sitting by one. Most of all, however, I love tubing down a river. While I was growing up, my grandparents used to park their camper up at South Fork camp ground up Ogden Canyon for an entire week in July and family members could come and go as they please. Usually my best friends Duane Park and Darin Bair and I would go up for the entire week. We would tube, hike, tube, eat, and did I mention tube? We would tube in good weather and bad. We would tube runs that lasted a few minutes to runs that lasted a few hours. Sometimes we would tube until our legs were almost purple. We would finish each run and then start walking back up the road to get in again. While walking, we would usually beat out rythms on our tubes and listen to our shoes squish as the water was forced out. As we re-entered the river each time we would "pay homage to the river gods" by wetting one side of our tubes and then flipping them over and wetting the other. We would do this before EVERY run. We were kinda superstitious about it. It seemed like any time we failed to do so we would lose a tube to a stray branch or lost fishing hook. Of course that was not the cause, but we really kinda half believed it and we always paid "homage." In fact even up into adulthood as we would go up there we would still wet and flip before each run. We would spraypaint our names on our tubes and would mourn greatly when we would "loose" a great tube. (not all tubes are created equal) We would keep old shoes for no other reason than to become "river" shoes. (This was long before the days of water socks.) We learned very early that a long sleeve, or at least a 3/4 sleeve shirt was to be prefered to a short sleeve to prevent a nasty case of "tube rub." When we would take newbees up with us we would try to warn them to wear a longer sleeved shirt, but we were rarely listened to. That is until the SECOND time people would go with us. We would always laugh and say, "You only get a case of tube rub ONCE!" For the uninformed, "tube rub" is the rash you get on the inside of your biceps from paddling your tube. nasty stuff.
     Anyway, to this very day whenever I see a river, I think of how much fun it would be to be tubing it. I judge the depth (nothing hurts quite like slamming your butt into a stray rock if the river isn't deep enough), the swiftness, and the surrounding rocks and flora. It's been years now since my last run, (not by choice) but not a river passes my window without my mind racing back to the river of my youth and the great times we had floating down it, the rythms played on tubes, and the homages payed to the River Gods. Good times...good times.