While none of you care too much, I will rant about these borders below...it is because of blogspot accepts only normal file pictures (jpg and jpeg). Those are the norm. But no, not for apple, they have their own file designation and when people send them to me, I have to take a snapshot of the image so I can have it in the normal file type. Argh...if anyone would like to help me with this, please go into your apple settings and turn the images back to .jpeg files. Thank you!
The girls had enjoyed this same whitewater adventure the previous month, and now was our turn with the boy scouts. Sam and Davis had both heard me say I don't want to be an an adventurous boat, my swimming skills are subpar. So when selecting a boat crew, they found other guys and crew for their boats, and I was left in the Old Goat boat with two other dads and one of our newest scouts. The trip down was fun as always with three of the guys I have led since 2nd Grade (Cole, Brandon, and Sam).
And I have pictures for all three boats we divided up in, but the stories are mainly from mine...at the river, we were introduced to our guide, Otter. She was very interesting, and it started out in conversation with our questions to her about how often she goes down the river. I was thinking of this as a per day or per week question, yet her response was "Oh, I am just an office worker". That is where Shawn Rumsey and I shared our first shared glance of "perhaps we are being punk'd". But she much later shared that she used to be on the river much more, but only recently moved to the office. Perhaps she had some time on this day during her lunch break.
We had some interesting moments with our newest scout and his dad, and some learning scout moments that pulled them both from the front of the boat, and put me and Shawn up front for the rest of the trip. And while up there paddling ALOT, as it was only me and Shawn paddling primarily...we heard Otter yell 3 strokes, then 3, then 3 more, then we never stopped paddling pretty much the whole river journey. Anyway, later we learned about geese that were all along the river (Chattahoochie...We were in Columbus, GA...did I forget to say that?), and Otter told us how viscous these geese were, even one of them biting her before. Then she told us how she once had a pet goose. Now this was intriguing, or perhaps I just wanted a small break from the screams of 3 more...3 more, so I asked "So, how in the world do you get a pet goose". Here is where I expected a story both to satisfy my intrigue, to remove the burden on my arms. Her response was as quick as the office worker reply... "You catch it"...that's it! Then "3 more". So on we paddled.
Only later in a fun area along the river they call the lazy river section, where we got to get out of the boat and float along...did Shawn come up beside me and help me realize the humor in her response...He started laughing and then as we both started thinking about her response..."You catch it"...and perhaps in our delirium from having to paddle 3 times more than anyone else on the river today...we both lost it...I don't think either of us could think of anything else without cracking up for the remainder of this day.
After a long process of walking back to our vehicles for clothes, then walking back to the outfitter to change, then back to our vehicles to get to our campsite in Auburn. We all looked at the radar in Auburn and made a gametime decision that we had our fun, and did not want to camp that night in pouring thunderstorms. So we headed back to Chelsea...we cooked all our campfood at the meeting on Monday, and we avoided a nasty night of camping. And overall, if we learned nothing else, we learned how you can have a pet goose. You simply catch it.
