Our annual whitewater rafting trip was this weekend. (I've been twice, so yes, now it's our annual trip.) It's a good time- we head up to West Virgina, spend two nights camping, and raft down the New River.

Around Noon on Friday I met Apple, Flanders, and PB at PB's house. Sasha and The Russian met us there; we loaded up the cars and got on our way. PB had downloaded a bunch of pod quizzes here. I highly recommend them as an excellent way to pass the time on a road trip. If you and your traveling companions are huge geeks, of course.

Sasha and The Russian beat us there by fifteen minutes and scoped out the campground. Most of the good spots? Gone. We found one that was suitable and began putting up our tents. PB and I both had to put up tents on our own; the others had teams of two. I'll have you know we finished first. Dinner, drinking around the campfire, cake for MechanicBoy's birthday, (He and Reen arrived later.), bed.

We got up that morning and prepared for the trip. We headed out on the buses to the put-in. When we got there, the trip leader announced that he needed our group of 11 to split into one group of 9 and one group of 2. No one volunteered to be the 2, so PB and I were told, “You two, go.”

That? Ended up being a good thing. Our raft had better paddlers and thus we were able to go for the more difficult/better ride runs. Also, they lost most of the people out of their boat at random times. We were also the sweep boat and had to go pick up Flanders after he swam a rapid but didn't head back to his raft. (The next rapid? Not swimmable.) We didn't know who it was at first, but as we neared him, PB asked me, “Is that Flanders?” Yep, Flanders. The rest of our boat (strangers, remember) nicknamed him “Fucking Flanders!”

The river was 4-5 feet higher than it was last year, so it was a completely different experience. Towards the end, we paddled into a surfing hole, surfed it successfully, and then headed out. The raft was pointed backwards so that we could see the rest of the rafts in our group try it.

But? Our guide wasn't paying attention to the river behind him. We got slammed by a wave and the entire right side of the boat went swimming. I ended up under the boat. When I got out from under it and went to take a breath I caught a wave to the face. At that point, one of the other guys who had ended up swimming (OK, it was the deliciously cute Tony) grabbed my vest and pulled me toward the boat. We all got in and all was fine. I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't scary though, because it was, a bit.

We all met in the lodge after the trip to watch the video. PB and I sat with our raft, who greeted Flanders with a rousing, “Fucking Flanders!” We did have to paddle hard to get to him, and then we had to paddle upstream to return him to his boat. Because we weren't keeping him.