Table of Contents
July 6, 2006 General Meeting Minutes
2nd Quarter Pool Session Report
Trip Reports
Marilyn Kircus: Lake Charlotte
Justin Ceterski: Pedernales River
Jared Davidson: Week of Rivers 2006
Christy Long: Week of Rivers 2006
by Jared Davidson
For
the past year a group of friends and I have been training in all the water
safety rules and maneuvers with our good pal Dave Ramsey, so when he asked
us if we would like to join him in North Carolina for Week Of Rivers,
you can only imagine how quickly we jumped at the offer. We packed and
planned and prepped and finally took off on the 29th of June at about
five in the morning.
Dave drove most of the way with a few spots where I took over when he got tired. We met up with Susan Eda and Pat Isley at the motel where we were staying that night. I don’t remember what town that was because frankly I was far to tired to really care (Gadsden, AL. - dwr).
The next morning we took off and ended up at the campgrounds at around two in the afternoon. After we set up camp we went into town for dinner and to just look around for a bit. Dave showed us the Nantahala Outdoor Center and we all found gear that seemed to burn a hole in our wallets.
The next day was our first day on the water. At last we would get to try out our white water skills on a real white water river. Our first river was the Tuckaseegee. A class 2 - class 3 river if I recall correctly. It was a nice run and definitely good for us beginners who had never really seen true white water.
Over the course of the week we ran a number of rivers, which included the Tuck, the mighty Nantahala, the French Broad, and couple of others whose names have slipped my mind (Ocoee – rafting, Hiawassee, Lower Pigeon. James was invited to kayak the Ocoee with Terri Phoenix. - dwr).
We met a lot of nice people and talked about white water as if we had been doing it all our lives. Week of Rivers truly was an odd trip full of fun people and good times. The four of us, James Minshew, the only one to break a paddle, Geoffrey Winter, who swore he would not buy a boat and now owes Susan four hundred dollars for his Dagger, Dave Ramsey, the world’s youngest old guy, and I, look forward to returning to Week Of Rivers sometime in the future, and maybe bringing others along.
Sure, we ended up bruised, freezing, and dripping wet at the end of the day, but the stories we now carry are of greater value to us than anything we could have done at home. So for those of you that read this, whoever you are, take it from me, nothing and I mean nothing, compares to the great outdoors.
See you next year!
(dwr = David
Ramsey)