From the Pennsylvania Files

I spent four very wonderful and strange years in college in the heart of central Pennsylvania, land of Amish commercialism and Hershey's chocolate. For my own amusement, but also for the sake of posterity, I will post the following account of a junior-year adventure which originally appeared on a group blog, "Group Therapy," maintained by my fellow Buttresses and myself.

The Great Whitewater Rafting Adventure
So there we were, at the butt-crack of dawn, me driving up to bumble-f*** northern PA in the Ghetto Cruiser [editor's note: this was the name of the maroon 1994 Buick Skylark I drove my final two years of college]. Lauren was to my right, Pete was to my rear, and Angie and Jude were beside him respectively. We were following cars that were going 90 mph and instulting old women on the walkie-talkies we had to keep coordinated, which made the ride imminently ammusing. However, there was one retarded female who somehow managed to kill EVERY SINGLE joke that anyone said. Jesus Mary and Joseph I wanted to rearend the car she was in and make her fall into the ravine by Wilkes-Barre (sorry to unleash that kind of stupidity by you, Alison.)

Anyway, homicidal feelings aside, the ride up was fun. We found it [the river], bought wet suits, and we got into our rafts. Actually we drove on a bus for 15 minutes to get to the river. Then we got into the rafts. Our raft consisted of Slappy [previously-mentioned Lauren], Jude, Angie, myself, and Matt, this kid from two of my classes.

So then we set for the open Lehigh River. Our raft immediatley hit shore and stopped, but then we didn't have another debacle for the longest time.

We floated down. We floated and floated and floated. The scenery was amazing. The water was manageable (slightly too manageble if you ask me) and we had fun. We ate lunch in some nice little grove, then continued back.

The second leg of the trip was the most adventerous for us. About 20 minutes after lunch, the biggest debacle our raft faced occured. There was an entire spance of open river with two rocks about 3 feet apart from eachother. The two groups before us went through the rocks, got stuck, and set themselves free. We therefore assumed that that was the path we were supposed to take. So we edirected our raft to float towards the rocks and plowed into them, only to get horribly and intrinsically stuck. These were tall ass rocks too--Sarah size, and that's pretty big for rocks!

So I stuck my foot out of the raft to kick the rock to shake us free, and I got my foot stuck. We aren't talking wedged slightly between rock and raft, we're talking up to my ankle, unmoveable. This made the raft get even MORE stuck, and my foot started to go numb. Somehow, by the grace of our father in heaven, we were set free and my foot returned to my body. Halleluijah.

We continued to float. When the sun came out we stripped a bit and splashed cold water on our heads (well, I did anyway. I think the others just sort of pointed at laughed at my truly hideous hair situation.) Then we hit debacle #2. I only call this the second worse debacle because the first one wreaked physical pain on my person, and this one did not.

We got bigtime stuck again, only this time on TOP of a rock. While Slappy and I argued who would get out to set us free, Matt, evidently knowing that 2 women fighting over something neither wants to do is a neverending process, hopped out and dislodged us from or stoney prison. FREEDOM.

Then it was over and we went home. Sorry I ended so abruptly. Maybe I'll finish it sometime...maybe I'll pull a Coleridge and leave you to fill in the blanks.