Was a success. I was originally supposed to just run shuttle but Seth put me on the river instead for my first guiding expedition, eek! Although I was nervous, I remained calm, cool and collected as I steered the heaviest boat of all time down the river. I only missed one hit, Whitewasher, but other than that it was an excellent first run. I also played the "This is my first time card." quite a bit and yes, got some tips. One of the best parts of the trip was when I gave our Herbal Essence joke a try... It goes like this...
Guide "Hey everybody, look at that waterfall over there!"
People In Raft - Turn heads, "ohh, ahh"
Guide "Ya know, they once filmed an Herbal Essence commercial right there by that waterfall"
One of my customers "Oh really?!?! I think I remember that commercial!"
Guide "Well, I definitely just made that up."
Guide and People In Raft 'awkward laughter that turns into normal laughter'
So, after the trip ended and we started loading the boats back on the trailer I got stopped by a kid who works for Magic Falls, someone I recognized from the river, who asked me if Windfall was doing a play run that night. We had actually thought about doing a play run earlier that morning so I said "Yeah" and we exchanged digits and called each other bro and dude for the next 10 minutes.
Then the night go interesting. Heather, Kyle and I pack up the Sube (with a 350lb boat on the roof) and head to The Forks to meet up with Joe who was bringing some friends with him for our play run.
We arrive and meet Joe, Don, Simon, Tyler, Hannah, Rod, two Brazilian guys, Ashley, Marissa (who met us in The Forks) and some other people who's names I've forgotten and start planning our run. Once I realized that the majority of the party was drunk or high I realized that planning was probably not going to work. So instead we all hopped in the cars and headed up the dam! Halfway there we dropped a car for shuttle and crammed 8 people into my car and 8 other people crammed into Joe's car. At the top of the dam we checked the whiteboard and saw that there would be 6400cfs water running till 8pm, perfect. We unpacked the boats, pumped them up and got ready to rock until we realized that all our cars were no where near the bottom of the river. Ooops, I guess planning REALLY doesn't work while we're bombing down dirt roads and throwing back possibly alcoholic beverages (Once again, not me), but hey! We're in Maine! (insert quip about open container laws and how they should always be followed HERE) PBR is just gross water anyway, so what if a little bit spilled on the leather seats, nbd. Anyway, we want to get on the water asap so Joe and I hand our keys to these Brazilian transfer students from UNH that we had never met, and instruct them to drive carefully back to the Ball Field which was take-out. I literally don't even know if these kids had licenses, but I handed over my most precious Subaru and instructed this new friend that he should drive slowly, and that he should be sober. To which he replied, "Ok" and "I'm sober enough"... I crossed my fingers.
We get the boats in the water and make it about 500yards down river when we notice something very bad. The water was dropping like crazy. The dam had decided that they didn't want to give us water, that Boston had enough power for the day, and so were left rafting the gorge at like 2000cfs. Our plans of cliff jumping, hitting Maytag and running the pourovers in Rock Garden fell apart and instead we paddled our brains out to make it to Carry Brook before all the water went away and we got stuck running the river at 340cfs, which is, the worst.
At this point, Kyle, was celebrating. Against Ashley's advice he had decided to kayak the upper. So when he saw the water dropping he was very glad indeed, low water was much easier for a kayak. So while we frantically paddle ourselves down the river, Kyle whistled a merry tune and got off the hook for a hard gorge run. This isn't to say it wasn't hard, just less hard.
Magic Falls was pretty tricky but other than that we make it Carry Brook unscathed. Now, remember those Brazilian kids who brought our cars to the Ball Field, well... oops, because the water is so low we would barely make it to ball field so instead the girls take a car that we had left at Carry Brook and have to drive to Ball Field, to drive back, and blah blah blah... It took a while, it took long enough for my imagination to start churning with images of burning Subaru's and Brazilian wreckage, but at 9:10 we see headlights and ta-da! The girls brought the cars back yay! Saved...
So even with the water level dropping to an almost unraftable level, and not being able to do any crazy stuff, we still had an awesome time going down the river and meeting some new frrraaannddzzz! Don has decided that Windfall should rename all the rapids to things that apply biblical meaning, (we actually thought this would be a sick idea) and we get to hear more about how Magic Falls runs its operation, as well as Pro River Runners who, by the sounds of it, have almost ended their Kennebec rafting days.
All in all, sick day... The Marshall even opened their kitchen for us and made Kyle, Joe and I burgers and fries at 10:30 at night. We ate them while the boom box played something similar to a Lamb of God song which we all found very inappropriate for eating. Alas, friends made, rivers run, burgers eaten. I'm going to start renaming the rapids now... except I'm actually going to bed because there is trip in the morning. WOOP!
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