My Birthday (Yes, its been a while)

I have been putting off writing about the adventures of my birthday in lack of time, between school and social life I found little time to get into writing about it.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to go canoeing on my birthday. Something I enjoy to do, and get out there and do it for a few hours in the morning, then get back onto my other projects prior to a dinner I had planned that night. It was Liz, her sister Jes, and her friend James that went canoeing together. I thought it would be a fun trip, it was mostly nice outside (had rained a few times briefly) But we were doing oxbow to lewis and clark on the Sandy river. A trip I had done before with little issue and loads of enjoyment.

We all set off on an adventure, Jes and I, and Liz and James. We had gotten through the first few rapids and I had navigated the canoe to get Jes as wet as I could, and I had a great laugh about it. Low and behold a few rapids later Jes freaked out rocked the canoe a little much and flipped us right infront of a big rapid and log jam. We were fortunate enough to get in a little jetty that had little to no current so i thought at the time, I had a coat on with not planing on even getting wet which quickly became an extra 25 pounds while trying to tred water, and stable the canoe, Jes, and I. I was eventually able to flip my canoe back over to right side up, and supported the canoe to allow Jes to climb into the canoe. While all this was going on, Liz and James headed into the jetty and was able to get to the shore. I was without life jacket holding onto the canoe and trying to swim it to shore. What little current I thought was there really had like a black hole effect and I couldn't swim hard enough to get out of the current I was in. Essentially i was stuck, 20 feet from shore and unable to swim us there. So with help from James and Liz we were able to get to shore. I took off my 25 pound coat and tied it into the canoe. Put my life jacket in and complained about my frozen jewels for the next 10 minutes.

All four of us prior to getting back in the boats put on our life jackets just to be safe. Later to realize it was probably the best decision made this day. James and Liz climbed into their canoe and built speed up trying to break the current and get past the log jam. This didn't quite work out how they planned. Soon after hitting the current they got thrown into the log jam, canoe flipping over and James and Liz getting wet too. Now all 4 of us at this time had the privilege of swimming in the Sandy river. While Liz got smashed into a log, sucked under and held on for dear life on the other side of that log, James finagled himself out of the water and headed to help Liz. I was on the shore 30 yards away, and after laughing for a moment realized the severity of the situation and began cutting through the brush, cutting up my legs and feet as I forced my way to the log jam. I soon made it to the log James was on trying to help Liz out of the water and to safety, looking into the log jam I saw their canoe standing almost straight out of the water with half the boat under the water and wedged. I feared that the Williams canoe would be stuck forever i headed out to the edge of the logs while getting yelled at by everyone to be safe. After about 10 minutes of messing with pushing, pulling, working leverage and everything I finally freed the canoe. I lined it down to the end of the log jam and around some rocks to where the water was more shallow, but realized we had lost a paddle.

In an attempt to salvage our trip, I had Jes and Liz head to my canoe and try to line it up the river a little bit to avoid the current and get past the log jam. They dug in the water, and sure enough hit the log jam at the same spot Liz and James did. Only this time my canoe was submersed and wedged in between two logs. Jes floated down river and finally got back up to us after a bit of work. Liz nearly drowned, getting sucked under the logs. I quickly jumped around and ran up the logs to get to Liz, thinking now my canoe 2nd trip out since i bought it was going to be stuck forever. So i headed back out to the end of the log jam and worked, and worked it loose, except I was not able to hold onto the rope, the current was to strong and I had to let go, It was a little nerve wrecking watching my canoe float down river thinking I wouldn't be able to catch up to it. So instead I ran up the logs, jumped over, under and around the logs to get to James who was waiting at the other canoe. We dug in with an attempt to catch my canoe. Sure enough a few hundred yards down river, my canoe was stuck on some rocks. After about 5 minutes of work James and I were able to free it and pull it to shore.

So after about 3 hours we had gone less than a mile down river, the whole 12 miles we were going to do should have only taken us 3 hours to do.

We ended up with a warped canoe (mine) and missing two sweat shirts (Liz and James')
We found the lost paddle of Liz's
All of us got a chance to go swimming
We all got rained on, and even hailed on for a while during all this.

And something I always say, take a picture or it didn't happen so HERE it is.....