the first time i went river rafting

Jarrett Jochum
5/10/11
Block 1
The First Time I Went River Rafting
It was such a beautiful day. The crystal blue sky on a mild summer day, with a temperature pushing about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. It made you think it was going to be one of those days that nothing could possibly go wrong. As I was sitting in the car, waiting to get out I thought to myself what I could get myself into trying to conquer this untamed river. As I walk in the rafting store I quickly figure out that I am under age and that the people that work there shouldn’t legally allow me to go white water rafting. At this time any rafter should be 16 of age but I was 12. Even though I was under age, they still let me raft because the people there felt bad that we drove all the way up there for nothing. We got on a bus and we slowly approached the top of the river. Me, my mom, my dad and three other people including our instructor anxiously awaited to attempt to attack this beast. Our instructor was speaking to us very slowly, with loud expressions. It didn’t matter how loud he spoke because I couldn’t stop thinking about what could happen to me if I fell off the raft. The rapids this year were also particularly high, almost doubling the size from last year. Getting into the raft was one of the most frightening events of my life. This is when my intuition kicked in, telling me that it was not okay for me to get into that raft. But I did it any way and I thought what could go wrong, especially since I had both of my parents with me. Nothing goes wrong when you’re with your parent’s right? Wrong, and the bad thing was that I could see it coming. As we were going down the river, I was easing my way into this whole river rafting idea. Everything seemed okay, and I felt like that maybe I could conquer this challenge that I was up too. The guide we had was nice and good at what he did, and every time we needed to paddle he would let us know. His Australian accent really enhanced this whole rafting experience. There was nothing like a young Australian guy telling you what to do. It was classic. It was a pretty calm ride for most of the time until we got farther down the river. Our guide let us know that the farther we went down the river the more intense the white rapids would get. There was so much water, so much that I barley had a chance to catch my breath. We made it down the river with a struggle and with everyone in shock because no one had a clue what we were up for, but we made it. It got way more intense, and our guide was informing us that there was this vortex monstrosity in the river that could possibly get us stuck if we didn’t paddle fast enough. We were coming up to it and our guide was telling us that this was the most challenging part of the journey. He told us to paddle and to paddle as fast as we possibly could, but it wasn’t good enough. We didn’t have much muscle on the raft, me, my mom, my dad, these two small ladies who never rafted before, and our guide. You couldn’t be able to pus over a little kid with that much muscle. We got trapped in this monster and it felt like we were stuck in the worst earthquake you could ever imagine. I tried saving our guide, but the force of the water shook the raft so hard that the guide fell off. Soon after the guide fell off, my mom did too. I couldn’t see her in the water but all I did know was that she was no longer on the raft. I panicked frantically and did my best to help keep a hold on my dad and the other people on the raft. We finally got out of this vortex, and I was trying to find my mom. Looking downstream I see this head pop up, and I see my mom on the side of the river standing on the gravel in the shallow water. I knew it was going to be okay and that my mom was also going to be okay. She listened well to whatever our guide told us on the bus and it saved her life when she was caught under the Colorado rapids. This was the scariest day of my life, and I knew at this point that I would never go white water rafting ever again.