New River Gorge

Clockwise from top: Dick (our friendly and burley river guide), the dashing Ashley Killender, moi, my man Myro, the famous (or soon to be) John Killender, Crazy Erin and last but not least, El Presidente, Chad. You really learn a lot about your friends when you face a class V rapid together - certainly nothing brings you closer and makes you appreciate them more when they all yell out to you when you fall out of the raft!

Look at the picture closely: see us grit our teeth, stick out our tongues in Michael Jordan fashion in pure concentration mode, note the excitement mixed with apprehension on our faces. And we are going back to do it all again on the Upper Gaully in September! The Upper Gaully makes the New River Gorge look like childsplay. It comes complete with 14' waterfall drops and mile long Class V rapid sections. But none of this would be fun unless you have your friends from school with you - like I did! That way they can make fun of you when you make a complete arse of yourself on the river - like I did! They all saw me dazed and very confused more than once after coming up out of the water with that "what just happened?" look on my face. That and I am sure there was a big string of snot across my face. Water tends to make every oraface in your body secrete slime. Lovely.

The river is wild, it takes you down and laughs in your face, it doesn't care if you can't breath or if you have sprained ankles, or if you are disoriented when you finally pop up from under your raft. The river swallows you up, spits you out and then you find yourself begging for more. You surf in the hydraulics, you find yourself looking at your raft mates flying in all different directions as your raft approaches vertical (a position you never thought you could experience) just nanoseconds before you realize that you too are going to be tossed in the river, and land in the rapids in slow motion. We went through 21 rapids in 12 miles. Each rapid has a name and my favorites were: Pinball (you actually "stall" your raft up on a rock before dropping down into the rapid below), Double Z which when you finish you ride back up into it and surf the hydraulic and try to stay in it as long as you can, and finally Strippers - the rapid that is known to take your shorts off. Thank God no one fell out during that one!

What else made this weekend fun? A beautiful drive to WV punctuated by beating up and getting beat up by your adopted little bro on the car ride there (ahem, Chad), playing bullshit in a leaky tent with your class mates while it pours outside, cliff jumping, rafting Class V rapids, seeing a wall of water coming at your face, enjoying the 900'+ rock cliffs, hearing all the West Virginia jokes your guides know, eating a steak cooked on the campfire at the end of a long and tiresome day, roasting the perfect marshmellow, hanging out live with the classmates that you usually only get to see on the TV screen (MOREHEAD!) and learning a new trick for making biscuits on a stick in the fire (my new favorite camping food taught to me by Kev-O). The icing on the cake: someone else building a fabulous fire that you get to enjoy (props out to Kev-O, again). Pure joy.

So, who's up for joining us at the Gaully?