A Bradmax Adventure, Five Rounds Rapid
A little explanation I feel may be necessary; two years ago this weekend I had one hell of an almost life-changing adventure. I will let the story I posted on Facebook at the time tell the whole story, but as some of the adventure shows up in my dreams/nightmares from time-to-time and it affected my already bum knee, it sticks with me as the thrill ride it was. At the time, I was relatively new to the East Coast and had taken to writing up the adventures I had begun to have. This was the third entry, if you will, and I had it in mind to bastardize the first paragraphs of books I enjoyed as lead-ins to these.
The present adventure, as I’ve written, was the third of such ones, and the beginning of The Return of the King was the book being bastardized. Once you understand what the adventure entails, you will understand the chosen title. I hope it stands up to my…wonder of the time!
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“Bradmax looked out from the shelter of the cloak of the bedsheets. He wondered if he was awake or still sleeping, still in the swift-moving dream in which he had been wrapped so long since the great dream began. The great world had been rushing by and the wind had sung loudly in his ears. He could see nothing but the walls of the bedroom chamber, and away to his left vast shadows against the bedstand where the phone alarm was loudly proclaiming the beginning of the day’s adventure. Sleepily he tried to reckon the times and stages of this journey, but his memory was drowsy and uncertain on an early, normally sleep-in morning.”
-Quote from the 3rd book in the trilogy “The Floored by the Streams”.
I work with a very good group of people, there can be no doubt whatsoever about this. We celebrate all of the months birthdays on one day of that month in a smorgasbord of sugary delights, mostly, and on the anniversary of our leader/founder’s birth we try to do something special as a group. The last few years that has been a white water rapids float trip. Last year was my in my first year of working at the dental lab and though I was hoping it would work out that I could join in that rapids revelry, my parents and I had just purchased our house and there was just too much to be done. This year, that changed!
Yesterday, Friday August 2nd, was this years’ white water rafting trip in celebration of our boss’s birthday. 27 friends, employees and family of The Boss drove just over 2 hours from Granite Falls, North Carolina up and over to Erwin, Tennessee and the Nolichucky River. At this time of year, the 8 miles of our day’s water journey was a river of Class 1-4 rapids, Class 6 being the highest. The day at the Nolichucky began with equipping ourselves with a personal floatation device, a helmet and a paddle, a hop on the bus that would take us to the top of our river rapids run, and our safety orientation on that bus trip. Y’know, the stuff that can save your life should you or someone fall out of a raft. Those main points were: do not try to stand as your foot would likely get trapped in the rocks of the very rocky bottom and and the current would pull you under; float on your back and not on your stomach because your face under the water as you rocket down the rapids would be bad, not only because of the water all up in yer grill and wanting to drown you, but your face hitting a boulder....well, the helmet does not cover your face; as well, aim your feet upstream because the PFD has a flap that hangs off the back of the neck that flips up to help the water to slice around your head and face so that you might continue to breathe and not get a face full of aqua. Those in the raft need to, of course, keep their heads and do their best to pull whomever should be ejected from the raft back in. Such things as using the T-grip handle of the paddle to extend towards them so that they may grip that handle and thereby be pulled back to the raft and then be pulled back INTO the raft by the raft leader by gripping the shoulder straps of the PFD and pulling up and into the raft by falling back into it.
A series of ‘jokes’ on the last leg of the bus ride and we make it to the beginning of the run site. Our group was split up between five rafts, a bit of further orientation with each raft leader as to paddling instructions, what to listen for and positioning each person in the raft, and then one by one each raft crew picked up and brought their raft to the water and into the river we went! I was given the front most left seat, which our leader said was the pace-keeper, all others were to go off of my paddling speed. Kinda cool!
It was really a perfect day for it; slightly overcast but not cold, actually warm enough to start to sweat with the well-tightened PFDs on, so I think we were all looking forward to getting splashed with cold water from the rapids.
The first rapids we came to, relatively quickly were called the Last Chance rapids. Class 1 and pretty easy, as you might expect. We found a pretty good paddling pace and moved on to the next set of rapids that I believe were called On The Rocks, though for this and all the coming rapids I have not retained the names of other than ‘Roostertail’ for reasons that will become obvious in the next few paragraphs....
On The Rocks is a Class 2 rapid at this water level and it turned out to quite rapid enough. At almost the first major rough waters, our raft took a sharp, deep drop through a ‘V’ in the boulders that rocked the raft front down and tilted to the right, which popped me right up and almost out of the raft, right on top of the guy who was in front to my right, Justus. I do not recall what I did with the paddle, but I am sure I let it go pretty quick, because I was half out of the raft, arms in the water feeling rocks under the flow of water with my left hand and trying to push myself back so I could stay in the raft. Then....no more rocks and my hand went in deep enough that I tipped right over and off the raft, beginning my own, personal, raftless rapids journey.
I am going to backtrack just a bit here and give a bit of a shout-out to Justus, the guy I fell on just before I was out of the raft. I am not sure if he went out right away or if I was holding him in with my bulk, but he did fall out, as well, and although he was able to grab onto the side of the raft, his lower body was pinned under it for a bit. He mentioned that he had a bit of a time extension moment where that 10-15 seconds he was pinned seemed much longer, but he was safely pulled back into the raft pretty quickly.
Some things remain crystal clear; others, at a certain point, became clouded with rising panic. To begin with, I remember coming up and seeing/facing the raft, trying to reach out to grab at the raft or someone and then floating away. Going through my mind immediately was ‘don’t try to stand and get those feet away from the bottom’. When I came up I was facing upstream, so when I missed grabbing the raft and began that personal float trip, I just tried to lay back and keep my feet pointed upstream and keep a lookout for help. That was so much easier said than done. To begin with, I would come in contact with the bottom and rocks with the small of my back and my ass, and not only would that mean an almost immediate full submergence after contact, rising up almost out of the water over the stone/rock/submerged boulder, plunged back under and into a mouthful of water, but it seems that I would always get turned one way or the other after each ‘bump’, which meant feet heading downstream and possible broken legs, so I would do my damndest to right myself every time this happened. As I fell in pretty much right at the start of these rapids, I was trying to right myself a lot, and it was really difficult to see if a raft was nearby.
I do not recall the number of times I heard a raft close by, as I could hear the raft leader as he called out directions to get closer to me, but when I did hear, I would reach out that hand toward that sound. I have no idea how long I was in the water by this time but it was getting tough to keep my calm together as I kept bumping into and hitting rocks and getting water in my mouth and trying to catch a breath after I was submerged and so on, so when I finally, clearly saw a raft to my left that had to be within 5 feet of me! I felt relief and thrust up and out that hand hoping to feel either a T-grip or a hand grip. Another rock hits my back, I get submerged again and when I pop back up, that raft (at least I think it was the same raft, as I can only see upstream and that was the only one in sight) is now a good FIFTY FEET AWAY!
I like to think of myself as a brave fellow, but at this point I was, if not actually panicked, on the threshold, because I felt that scared thrill in my belly, my breathing quickened (not so good with so much water!), and I am certain if I wasn’t already in cold water that I would have felt my body go cold. It was not at all a good feeling and all my efforts turned to what I could remember about body orientation and....just keeping afloat. I do not mean to be morose or overly-dramatic but there were a few of those life-flashing-before-my-eyes moments and the main one I will share is the thought of what it would do to my parents to lose another son, as we had lost my brother Doug to cancer not too much earlier. Yeah, panic.
Again, time seemed to stretch seconds into minutes and I really have no more clear memory until I heard multiple raft leader orders being shouted and I was suddenly between two rafts, grabbed, and finally hauled into what just happened to be my original raft! Hoo, boy, I can tell you it is a weird commingling of feelings to be so relieved and so tired all at the same laser-point moment. It took a little bit to recover and take my new seat and get my paddle and I can tell you I was not at all thrilled that there were still 95% of the river rapids float trip to go through, and rapids up to Class 4...
I had taken in so much water, probably on top of hyperventilating, that I was not sure I wasn’t going to deposit it right back into the river, but that calmed after a bit and onward we went. I was surprisingly exhausted, as well.
I was told at some point that my solo journey through the rapids took maybe one minute. That was one loooooong damn minute!
After maybe 10 minutes of continued rafting, I realized my right knee was hurting. When a calmer moment allowed, I felt my knee as I could not look at it the way we sat in the raft, and that sucker was swollen! I have no idea at all when I whacked the heck out of it, but it had to be when I fell out of the raft because, at least insofar as I can clearly recall, that was the only time I was not floating on my back. At any rate, it surely made it’s presence known for the rest of the trip! I also have found a few scrapes on the left leg, since, but there have been no broken bones or lasting physical injuries.
The only other almost-serious out-of-raft experience on the trip was that the Boss was almost pinned between his raft rammed a boulder and when that raft damn-near up-ended and he went out before the raft pushed against the boulder. He was really fortunate to not have gone out head first. In all, I think it was a total of 6 of were ejected at some point or other, but I ‘won’ the most time in the water.
To be honest, the rest of the day, at least after I was able to relax again, was an amazing trip, day and experience. Everyone had a wonderful time, all told, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, the company was, is and will be perfect, and I am grateful for it all.
I really cannot say that I had a near death experience, very likely far from it. At that point where I missed grabbing the raft, and then it was suddenly 50 feet away though, the man with the black cloak and sickle felt pretty close. Let me just suffice to write that, despite being in pain in almost all of my right leg, my lower back, and sore muscles from doing some hard paddling, I know very well that I am a lucky and Blessed man, and very grateful for the day. It was, finally, absolutely worth it.
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There have been a few opportunities to go rafting again. I politely declined.
Here are a few shots the company took of the raft I was in at a few points on the journey; none were taken of me while I was a raft!
Now, a few shots of the aftermath of the Poor Right Knee…
The obvious scar on the last photo was from the ACL replacement surgery I had perhaps 25 years prior. Not a lot of luck with tho ol’ right knee. But, hey; I’m still walkin’!
