This year's winter has been a little bipolar to say the least; weird at best. With no real measurable snow 'storms' and a few 60 degree days thrown in, it left me putting my sweaters away and then pulling them back out, all in the same week. I'll be the first to admit that I love winter. I love cold, close-the-roads-down blizzards. Bare ground and 50's in January...not a fan. This is Colorado...act like it! But now that spring has officially sprung, I've given up hope for any huge blizzards and am reluctantly embracing the warmer weather. Every year around this time, I get these small yearnings to go back to my former lifestyle. Now before you raise an eyebrow and get wild ideas of what I mean by that, it's nothing too out of this world. Long before my days were filled with diaper changes and sippy cups, I was a river rat. From early May to early September, my days were spent up in the mountains...in the sun, by the river, on the river. It was heavenly and was a big part of my life for many years.
Growing up in the mecca of Colorado river rafting, it was kind of a given I'd end up working for one of the dozens of companies one day. I started off as a whitewater rafting photographer, sitting on the banks of the river; shooting rafting trips as they went thru the rapids. It killed 2 birds with one stone...being outdoors and using a camera. And I had a killer tan. You couldn't spend enough money at a tanning salon to get that kinda tan. And I'm paying for it these days but that's a minor detail ;) With working at that job for 4 years, I came to know a lot of the rafting companies in the area and realized that
that was where I really wanted to be. So I then started working for one of the local rafting companies...in the office booking trips and checking customers in for their trips and then guiding trips down the river on my days off. And if you were wondering where I lived during all this...it was in a pickup camper at the back of my company's property. No, not some cushy RV or even an apartment in town. A bonafide, 1970's, goes-in-the-back-of-a-pickup-truck-camper that I could just barely stand up in. There was an apartment over the office with a living area, kitchen and bathroom that all the employees shared lest you think I wasn't getting regular showers or cooking for myself. I loved it.
This was during my checkout run. Checkout run meaning this is where I was taking legitimate paying customers down the river and being cleared to take other customers down without a training guide in the boat with me. Mildly terrifying for me as some rafts from another company collided with some of our other boats in the canyon and there were people swimming and overturned rafts; I got sucked under our raft trying to help drag an unmanned raft to shore. I walked away with massive bruises and also as a commercial raft guide. I'll call it a win :)
I'll go on record as saying this trip scared me to death. Taking my family down the river. Nothing happened...I was just scared I was going to dump them in the river and kill them.
This was my last trip of the season so why not wear a bright red wig?!?
Just hitting the river with a couple of friends. Those were the best trips :)
My trusty sidekick, Finley. It's been a long time since this girl has seen a raft but she still freaks out whenever she sees me pull her lifejacket out. A true mountain dog and girl's best friend.
Would I ever go back to being a raft guide. No way. That's definitely a job that takes a beating on you physically and I'm too geriatric to try steering uncooperative tourists down the river again ;) But I will say it's one job that I was extremely proud to have had. I have asthma and a heart condition and my doctors didn't think it was a good idea to do it but I wanted to try and see if I could do it...and I did. I got to raft some of the best (and scariest) rivers around the country and it was a fun thing to add to my former life. Even if just thinking about it makes me want to call the chiropractor ;)
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