Labor Day weekend and no kid from Saturday to Monday. It’s nearly 90 degrees and a beautiful day, in which I pissed away most of cleaning my house among other mundane, domestic shit. By about 8 pm, I’m a mess but decide to go my spot and have a drink.
I still have the kayak I bought off Marketplace hanging out of my Jeep (doors/top off)– and it’s making me antsy.
As I’m sipping my vodka, brainstorming where I could run off to, I find myself checking when Big-5 closes. I have 15 minutes!
I tell the bartender, Matt (we’re friends), that I’ll be right back and run out of the bar. I had no idea what I was getting, but I knew when I saw all that shit in there, I’d have a plan in no time, and I was right.
I got a life jacket, single person tent, sleeping pad, and some emergency light sticks, then flew back to the bar, finished my vodka, and told them I was going kayaking as I ran out- Not before Matt tells me to share my location, which was not a bad idea.
I ran home, took a shower, threw a bunch of shit in my Jeep and started driving towards Maupin, Or. at about 10pm. A three-hour drive, give or take.
About 10 minutes in I realized I forgot my vodka!… probably for the best…
As soon as I get on the highway, shit starts flying everywhere. My life jacket hits me in the face then disappears (found it later hanging out the door by the seatbelt somehow). I pull over as fast as I can and take somewhat of an inventory as I’m trying to strap shit in and/or shove things in crevices.
I repeated this process 2 more times. I believe the only thing I lost was the sleeping pad. Not bad.
I made it just passed Mt. Hood before I couldn’t take the cold anymore. Even after I put pants and a sweatshirt on, my fingers were going numb so I decided to pull into a campground and pass out for the night. I pulled into a spot (that wasn’t a camp spot), threw my Temu Jeep cover over the top and passed out in the driver’s seat at about 12:30 am.
Lower Deschuttes River – Maupin, Oregon
I got to Maupin at about 9:30 am. I had a huge breakfast with coffee and vodka then went shopping for a drybag, without avail. For a fucking white water rafting town, the associated retail is severly lacking.
I don’t know why it took me driving all the way to the drop location to begin questioning my kayak, but as soon as I got there I started having visions of kayakers on rapids- They’re always in short ones, with skirts and shit, and are agile AF. I look at my 9 foot beast and was all – fuck.
The first rafting place I called said they’d rent me a single person blowup kayak for $50.
Sweet!
The kid let me leave my kayak there and even provided me a drybag. He asked about a life jacket and I told him I had one.
Again, I don’t know why any of these concerns didn’t cross my mind during any of the last 16 hours, but as soon as I pull-in I slowly start freaking out more and more – realizing I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I’ve rafted this thing a million times but a raft with 6-8 people on it is way different than a little blow-up kayak- I’ve never even been on a blow-up kayak and I’m going down Class III fucking rapids- little did I know it was actually a Class IV.
I start sipping on my vodka as I’m dragging my ass getting everything together. I’m right at the river next to some dudes who are loading up their trailer with rafts. I ask them if I’m stupid for taking a kayak down it. I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this here during any previous visits nor do I see any now. They were not much help, but they did recommend wearing the correct life jacket. Apparently, there are different classes of life jackets and mine was for pond swimming or some shit. Luckily they had loner ones. They were huge – but at this point I’m about ready to put on 2! I leave mine behind.
Ok Summer, quit procrastinating, buck the fuck up, and lets do this!
I, once again, get to the water. But now I realize I don’t even know which end of the kayak is the front. If I start going down the river backwards on my kayak, someone’s probably going to call 911.
At this point there are a bunch of people there, most of which are already questioning my intelligence, so I nonchalantly Google it. I couldn’t find any diagram, probably because no one is stupid enough to need one, but I concluded that the long end goes in the front and went with it.
I make a quick video as I’m floating off – I think it was soothing to talk to “someone”. Helped keep the panic attacks to a minimum.
Like I said earlier, I have rafted this river many of times- and I swore there were no rapids for a while… I was wrong.
I’m just starting to get the hang of paddling this thing in calm water, when I hear it.
The first rapid.
I see two possible routes. I manically start paddling towards the calmer of the two, but the river told me to fuck-off and threw me right into the madness.
All I remember is trying to paddle as fast as I can straight down the middle/right over the peak of the waves. I didn’t happen to Google “kayaking in rapids tips” but for some reason I felt that’s what I had to do – straight! Faster! Don’t get turned sideways!
Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit!
Fuck! Shit!
Shit! Shit! Fuck! Shit!
Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Oh Shit!!
I literally repeated those two words through the entire rapid. Every time. When I got out of it, I paddled straight towards this rock island and somehow managed to pull myself up on the rock. At this point I have so much adrenaline pumping through me, I’m shaking uncontrollably.
Fuck this shit! I do not want to do this anymore!
I can’t go back. Fuck.
I bust out my vodka start taking chugs, fighting my shaking hands.
After about 15 minutes I see a raft of people and two dogs headed towards me. I can hear their leader telling them when and how to paddle – fuck that sounds so nice right now. They join me on the rock and my usual talkative, friendly self, can only muster out a few words here and there. I assumed they probably just thought I was retarded. I later found out I was actually giving off a “bitch” vibe lol.
Anyways long story short, they strongly encouraged me to value my life and join them in their raft, but after refusing, their leader eventually talked me into at least following them. I was politely informed it was incredibly stupid to do this by yourself – not only for obvious safety reasons, but also so I didn’t lose all my shit if (when) I flipped. I was also informed my class III was actually a Class-fucking- IV. Fuck.
During the scramble getting everyone on the rock, I managed to spill my vodka. Luckily they had a huge cooler full of liquid courage to share. They taught me how to immediatly tuck my beer in my tits/vest when given the signal, after which I’d get into position and follow their asses through the madness.
That was soooo much better. I didn’t have to think about which path would lead me to my doom… or when the next one was coming. Don’t get me wrong, it was still terrifying, but if I had done it myself, I’m pretty sure that amount of adrenaline would have done some permanent damage for real.
Anyways, all these guys (and one chick) were from Bend and pretty fucking cool. I found one of the individuals, Garrett, especially entertaining and was definitely easy on the eye😊
Towards the end, we stopped off to find these natural rock slides. A few of us had been down them before but we couldn’t find the fuckers.
They ended up inviting me to camp with them that night and I scored! They had quite the set-up and Mr. Leader Dude was an amazing cook! We had a full on 3 course meal for dinner and a Mexican buffet for breakfast.
When we got back to camp, I ended up driving Garrett’s truck down to the store and bought some beer for them. The youngest of the group, whom was celebrating his birthday, busts out some mushrooms at some point during the evening. It was great.
Garrett and I are vibing so we put down the seats in the Jeep and throw all our bedding back there, and trip out on this UFO for about 2 hours. At one point he says “you’re not my usual type”.
“Ok, what’s your usual type?”
He thinks for a minute, then says, “hippies and whores”. LOL I’m dying.
Then shortly after, he proceeds to ask me to suck his dick. Hmm.
Me: No.
Garrett: Why not?
Me: Did you know that like 1/3rd of people have genital herpes and over ½ have the mouth version? I’ve made it to nearly 40 without and intend to keep it that way.
That threw him off to say the least. Any mood that had previously existed, was completely gone lol.
Seriously though – if I sucked every guy’s dick that asked me to, I’d be one of those fucktards wearing a goddamn mask in the car by myself, OD’ing on Anbesol and anti-virals. I’ll pass.
After breakfast the next morning, I realize the kayak rental place probably thinks I died and I wasn’t wrong. He was definitely happy to see me.
I was supposed to meet back up with them after I dropped it off to go on one short float, but It was like 11am and I had a 3-hour drive ahead of me. When I left, I was planning on returning the next day – Actually, I’m not going to lie, I had no plan – but the point is that I have cats and chickens and shit that need to be checked on, not to mention my kids coming home sometime this evening….
So, I bounce.
I’m not going to bore you with the mundane details of getting home or leading up to what I’m about to tell you, but – faawk! I was in the Mt. Hood area and Bambi ran out in the road and everybody was swerving and slamming on their breaks and all of us managed to miss the baby dear – then the fucker turns around and dives head-first into a van!!! Its neck was broke and it’s little Bambi tongue was hanging out, I wanted to puke.
The End.
A Single White Female 
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