The Weekend In Review

Friday
So Friday finally came around and that meant that Ruth and I were off on a road trip to Auburn to go river rafting. So when 5 o'clock rolled around it was time to hit the road and break out of town. Of course I had to open my big mouth and say that traffic was light... because not even 30 seconds after I made that statement we were sitting in the thick of it... Lucky for me, Ruth had purchased some tasty snacks and loaded up the CD changer with some good toons. So a few hours later, and a couple of different snacks later, and a bunch more traffic, and a few good CD's later, we finally arrived at our destination and hooked up with the second half of our group: Two of Ruth's brothers (Dom and Nick) and their ladies (Shelly and Angie). We met up at this super good burger place... the name escapes me at this time... but it was good. Anyway, we ate burgers there, I had a mushroom burger that was off the hook, and then checked into our motel. After we got our room we went to this crazy bar that was doing country music karaoke. We were by far the youngest people in the place. It was fun. We had a few beers and then headed back to the motel for some shut eye.

Saturday
We woke up early (7ish) and got ready to meet up with the rafting group behind the local Safeway. From there we took two vans down to the river. It was about a 35-40 min drive down into the bottom of the American river valley where our send off point was. Once we got to the river the guides gave a little talk about the dangers of the class 4 rapids that we would be rafting through and what to do if you fall out etc. etc... I was a little nervous to say the least. The first real rapids we came to were crazy. I believe the name of the section was "tunnel shoot" or something... It was crazy... Water going everywhere and huge waves etc etc getting through it filled the entire boat with water... haha... we all had to duck down into the raft to keep from falling out and stuff... it was wild... crazy fun. There were some pretty intense sections of rapids... but for the most part the trip turned out being not as scary or difficult as I thought it was gonna be. For the most part we just paddled around and chilled. It was awesome. Beautiful scenery and lots of fun. I got to ride in the front of the raft after lunch... quite an experience. Really gives you an interesting view when you go over some of the big drops in the river... At one point, on this really big drop, Dom and the Guide fell out of the boat because we hit these crazy rapids at the wrong angle...we were like oh shit Dom fell out.. and then we were like OH SHIT THE GUIDE FELL OUT TOO!!!!!! hahaha there was a momentary panic where we spun the raft around in a chaotic circle and there was some yelling while a few of the crew members considered jumping ship... haha but we got out of it fine and looking back on the whole thing it was really kinna funny. Dom actually said it was the funniest part of the trip for him.. hahaha So anyway, the trip was lots of fun and it was a pretty good work out too. I had a great time and highly recommend that you try it out some time. Once we got back to the cars it was back off to the bay area again. This time without any traffic, thank goodness.... so yeah, Ruth and I drove back and then we just crashed out... it had been a long day.

Sunday
Ruth and I got up early and went to breakfast at her Grandpa's place. It was a lot of fun. Ruth's Grandpa is super funny. He had some neat stories to tell and showed me his garden out back. Reminds me of my Grandpa Bell. Super nice and super fun to hang out with. After breakfast was done I went back to Ruths and helped her paint the deck in her back yard. It was hot out... but it was fun to do a little manual labor. When we got finished we cleaned up and then walked down to Pizza my heart for some super good slices of pizza... yum! After pizza I had to cruz up to MV to take my grandma shopping at the market. When I finished there I cruzed over to the MV skatepark and got my shred on. It was rad. I even learned a new trick... "Tail-stall-backside-180-revert". Stoked. It was awesome. I hadn't learned a new trick in a long time.... so that was super cool. Progress... something I haven't made in skatebarding in quite a while. Cruzed home and got to watch Detroit serve up a beat down on tha Flakers... oh yeah!!! so rad!!!Later on Ruth came up to the house and we just kicked it and chilled. It was a great weekend. The End.

--El Blogosaurus Rex