just keep paddling, just keep paddling...

A few months ago my good friend Lara invited me to come camping and canoeing this weekend with a bunch of her friends that I'd never met before, and I think before she even finished asking me my response was HELL YES, LADY.

So I pick Lara up Friday night, and we spend the next 4 1/2 hours driving to Moabi Regional Park, off the Colorado River (on the border of California and Arizona), arriving a little after midnight.

"Please tell me we don't have to get up at 7 am or something ungodly like that to go canoeing," I tell Lara.

Lara checks her text messages and then laughs.

"Nope. 6:30 am!"

Riiiiight. Have I mentioned I'm not a morning person?

We get up grumpily on Saturday morning and I try not to walk into things as we get ready to head out for the day, then grab a van down to the shore where our rented canoes and paddles are ready to go and waiting for us. We have packed lunches, sunblock, and our cameras. We're ready to go!

Upon arrival, I immediately buckle and strap on my life vest, as I am not a strong swimmer at all, and as we are waiting for our canoes I realize two things:

1) I am the only one wearing a life vest. Everyone else just kind of throws theirs in the canoe.

2) I am definitely the only one wearing my life vest while I am standing on the shore, thus outing myself as the Goddess of all Dorks.

We get in our canoes, and here's where a couple issues arise: the first being that I am a MORON and packed my nice, expensive camera in a ziplock bag in our cooler, the second being that I stupidly also packed my CAR KEYS in Lara's backpack, so a sort of panic explodes in me as I realize that if our canoe tips over at all and we lose the cooler or the backpack at the bottom of the river, I am facing losing my very nice camera, and/or losing the keys to my car which I need to DRIVE ME BACK TO L.A.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"Lara," I say, and the urgency of my tone of voice causes my friend's head to whip towards me. "We cannot lose the cooler or the backpack. Having the canoe tip over is NOT an option."

She stares at me, concerned, then nods. I try to feel better.

The second issue that comes up is one that happens quite frequently to me, as I am an impulsive, quick-thinking decision maker who occasionally (okay, frequently) jumps into something without getting all the facts.

We're canoeing down the Colorado River, it's 100 degrees in the air, 60 degrees in the water, I'm trying not to think about drowning or the canoe tipping over or me drowning while trying to recover my car keys at the bottom of the river when it occurs to me that I have no idea how far or for how long we're canoeing today. So I ask, and the answer I get is this:

17 miles.

We are canoeing down the Colorado River in 100 degree heat for 17 miles and oh my god please kill me now.

And I think back to those times at the gym where I've done rowing exercises or whatever and I think, when I'm at the gym and I get tired I can just stop and walk away and get into my air-conditioned car and then go eat McDonald's to go undo all the excercise I've just done. THAT was nice.

Because when you're paddling in the middle of the river and you get tired and you stop, your canoe stops too, and then it's just you and your canoe buddy and you're not going anywhere anymore except drifting down the Colorado River. So you have to keep paddling, because nobody is going to haul your canoe or your butt for you.

So I kept paddling. My arms are killing me.

The good news is that I calmed down quite a bit about the whole drowning thing about halfway through the morning, the canoe never tipped over, we stopped frequently for breaks, and when we finished at 4 in the afternoon I was still (mostly) standing.

That night we feasted on salmon, korean bbq, sausages, mashed potatoes, caesar salad, twice baked potatoes, and a huge spread of cheese, crackers, and salami. Much better than McDonald's. I washed it all down with s'mores and root beer. And then I spent a good half of the night staring up at the sky, lost in how beautiful the stars are. I really miss seeing stars.

What I have to show for my amazing weekend is: two sunburned knees (the only body part that got sunburned); 15 (at last count) mosquito bites; and really buff arms. And a very sexy farmer's tan from my t-shirt, yaaaaay.

And as promised, with my (stupid! stupid!) camera on board the canoe, here are pictures for your viewing pleasure:

ready to launch! Note the non-used life-vests...I took mine off halfway through the day out of sheer embarrassment.

view from the canoe.

some ancient Native American hieroglyphs you can find carved into the walls along the Colorado River.

Me! And Lara, in the background, doing all the hard work and keeping my butt afloat.


I hope you all had wonderful weekends! I can't wait to read all about them :)