So I did a couple of things Sunday that I haven’t done since my pre-Ian years. The first one was absolutely amazing. For the first time in seven years, I kayaked the Ocoee with my husband. Then we locked our boats in the bed of the truck and jumped in the raft, which we intentionally flipped, something else I haven’t done since becoming a mother.

My driving force in getting through my lessons with Ace Kayaking this summer was to be able to get back onto the Ocoee consistently with Brinn. Before having Ian, we used to go out regularly. Granted, Brinn basically had to hold my hand on those trips, and I always walked around Tablesaw. Nonetheless, I was able to put in at the rails or Staging Eddy (whichever had a parking spot open) and mostly make it down the river with Brinn. I had mishaps for sure, including swims at Surprise (my most hated rapid on the entire Ocoee) and even at Powerhouse (because I’m special like that), but I was out there. After becoming pregnant, I quit paddling altogether for two years, and it was nothing like riding a bike. Not much came back to me naturally.

So here I am, seven years later, taking lessons and plaguing Brandon with the worst student of his teaching career. A few weeks ago I went back for my last lesson, and worked with Jake, another great instructor at ACE. I don’t think I gave Jake quite as much of a headache as I did Brandon, but I still found ways to amaze him with my ineptitude… like when he wanted me to leave the eddy above Moon Chute and surf across a wave to ferry over above the rapid. I left the eddy…and started to ferry onto my surf, but my bow was too high, and the current rejected me. I should’ve have gone back to my eddy and came in again, with a lower angle, but nope, I tried to plow on through, so I blew right past my surf, and then past Jake, and ran the whole thing backwards and caught an eddy below Moon Chute where I waited in chagrin for Jake to come find me.

Regardless of my mishaps with Jake, he somehow managed to cram some new information into my brain and help me build on the skills Brandon had initially installed, and now kayaking isn’t quite as scary as it has been for the last five years. But for weeks now, we’ve wanted to go rafting. I think I forgot to mention this, but we bought a new raft this year! After saving for the last few years, and sacrificing most of our tax return, we finally bought the Super Puma we’ve had our eye on for years. More about that another day. We have this awesome new raft, and we’ve only had it out two times all spring and summer long. Rafts aren’t meant to stay dry. It needed to be on the Ocoee surfing. So Brinn and I finally had a Sunday that wasn’t accounted for. I didn’t have kayaking lesson, neither of us had a rescue course, and we hadn’t scheduled to go with a group to a different river. It looked like we finally had a day we could hit the Ocoee with our tree frog green raft. Except I realized that I kind of wanted to kayak. On the Ocoee! I thought I was starting to burn out a little bit after 5 lessons and multiple trips outside of lessons. But when we started planing our day without Ian, I realized that I really wanted to get back out there again. So we decided to do both!

Once we started our ungodly early drive to the Ocoee, which was even earlier than planned because someone mistakenly set his alarm for 4:00 AM…, my nerves started to build and make themselves evident. I won’t say I regretted asking Brinn if we could kayak first, but I was starting to worry a bit going out for my first post-Ian non-lesson trip down the Ocoee. Then I received a response text from our beloved Mrs. Anderson who completely changed my perspective on the situation. I hope she doesn’t mind that I’m sharing her words: “Don’t worry. You will have a wonderful day. What a blessing to paddle with your husband.” I immediately shared her text with Brinn, who drove in silence for a bit as we both thought about Dr. Anderson for a few miles and how much we miss him. And how much more Anne must miss him every day, especially when we beg her to join us on the rivers that she paddled frequently with him for years. Anne was right. I’m extremely blessed and fortunate to have the opportunity to paddle with my husband anytime that I want, and I should absolutely take that opportunity whenever it presents itself. So I went to the river stronger and more thankful.

People often wonder why I am so reluctant to go boating without Brinn. I mean, I managed to paddle for months before I met him, so why couldn’t I do it now? Because I’m a dunderhead without him. I had offered to let Brinn put in at the ramp with Jeremy so they could both run Grumpy’s and meet me at the rails, but Brinn valiantly declined and insisted that he wanted to paddle with me. It’s a good thing, too, since I got to the bottom of the stairs and went to screw my drainplug in, and found it missing! It had been attached the evening before when I loaded this exact boat into the bed of the truck. How did it just up and disappear? Fortunately I had MacGuyver #1 and MacGuyver #2 with me for the day. After Brinn failed to find my drain plug in the truck or the raft, he yanked his out of his boat, and screwed it into my boat while Jeremy hunted for an appropriately sized stick. Brinn pulled out tape and a lighter, and somehow sealed up the drain hole on his boat, and we were river worthy and finally able to put on while Tabitha drove down to Goforth Creek to pick us up.

Because we were going to raft as well, Brinn suggested that we only kayak a half lap so that we wouldn’t get too worn out. This sounded like a great idea to me, except Brinn wanted to do the top half of the run, which has always intimidated me more. Usually when we did a half lap, it was from Goforth down. But here we were, running the scarier half of the river, with conservative lines at Broken Nose and Double Suck, and we ended up having a fantastic day. The drain plug ended up being the only mishap, and we had an amazing trip down the river with Jeremy, who I didn’t even run over. No surfers were harmed by my refusal to look where I was going on this trip.

After our kayak lap, we said a quick hi to Rick Ford, then piled humans and boats back into the truck and drove back to the top to unload the raft. And guess what we found? My drain plug! It was safely wedged into the raft, so at least it don’t blow or bounce out. Now it is safely screwed back into a hard boat. Brinn dumped the raft and gear out by the ranger’s stand and he and Jeremy left to park both vehicles down at bottom and to pick up Mrs. Anderson who was joining us for our raft lap.

This is the day we hit every eddy we came across.

Tabitha and I are still working on getting comfortable in the Super Puma. The higher rocker really helps it punch through holes and over waves, but it also makes it a bit harder for the front paddlers to brace in as we keep sliding back. It didn’t matter, either way, as Brinn wants to test the limits of this boat every time we take it out so we will be fully prepared for winter creeking in it, and to avoid mishaps for trips with Ian. On the last trip, Brinn and I R2ed and he wanted to see how many eddies we could catch in this boat…including the teeny tiny kayak eddies. We only managed to catch one eddy through Tablesaw, to his disappointment, but we did catch the eddy directly behind Diamond Splitter rock that day. On Sunday, rather than catching eddies and making hard ferries, Brinn wanted to test to stability and weight distribution of the raft. Actually, he really just wanted to flip it, but he built compelling evidence for the need to flip it. So after Hell’s Half Mile, he moved me back beside him, and Tabitha and Anne directly in front of us. We went through the first big wave, and caught some air, but the bow settled back down. We went through the second big wave, and thought we were clear, but then the stern of the boat (with all of our added weight) did exactly what kayakers try to never do: lean upstream.

As soon as the stern buried in the current the bow climbed again and inertia did its job. Hydrology and physics worked together to take us over spectacularly. We didn’t just dump truck. We flopped the whole thing right over on top of us. Seeing the carnage coming, I settled back and grabbed hold of the chicken strap in anticipation. After we completed our flip, I reached up to feel the raft over the top of me, and used the chicken strap to pull myself out from under the boat and I popped up right behind it, still hanging on. But then Brinn shoved his paddle at me and said “here, hold this.” He grabbed the boat, so I floated away from it and started looking for my eddy. Brinn struggled with the boat, so I swam into the river right eddy directly across the current from Jump Rock. Funny, I just spent half my summer ferrying back and forth between these two eddies. After watching Brinn go deeper in the eddy and still not flipping the boat, I resigned myself to the fact that he probably wasn’t going to be ferrying back across to pick me up. Tabitha was even further down in the current and Jeremy was helping her swim for the bottom of the eddy. Anne waited right behind Jump Rock, where I should have gone. I waited for a few kayakers to go past, then left the eddy high, but lemme tell ya, that current was a lot pushier without the benefit of a double blade and a boat. I swam, and swam, and then swam some more. Finally I got near the eddy and Jeremy darted over to grab the paddles from me so I could finish my swim on my back, because my muscles were done.

Brinn got the raft back right side up and we discussed tactics for flipping it next time. Ultimately we agreed that he should’ve shoved me on top to flip it because his shoulder chose to disagree with climbing on board. I’m thinking hitting the Green Narrows less than a year after major surgery may have been a bit too much for him this year. We all climbed in and laughed about our experience. Even Tabitha showed good humor at her unrequested bath. Jeremy delivered our paddles to us, so we were able to head back down river.

Jeremy was the major MVP of the day. We left the ramp with five paddles, and we arrived at the takeout with all five paddles! Not a single loss on Jeremy’s watch. I bought him a beer that evening.

By the time we made it down to Flipper just a few rapids later, Brinn didn’t even ask if we were up for surfing. I think he knew that we were all exhausted from swimming. I decided then and there that I would be visiting the campus pool a lot this winter to swim with a paddle. I obviously need to get stronger and more efficient with a single and double-bladed paddle because, well, swimmers are going to swim.

Going through the Doldrums, Tabitha motioned toward her husband and mouthed for me to flip him. Jeremy had decided to ride down in my Nomad for his second lap of the day. I knew I couldn’t be stealthy enough to pull it off from inside the raft, so I motioned for Brinn to swim over and grab his boat. Unfortunately Brinn telegraphed his intent all too clearly and Jeremy saw it coming. I launched out of the boat to grab the bow while Brinn shoved the boat over. Despite his unsealed skirt, Jeremy refused to swim. Even when Brinn flipped the boat over, Jeremy came up and held a brace against Brinn flipping him again and through clenched teeth he yelled “WILL.NOT.SWIM!” Somehow Anne came out of the raft after I did, so Tabitha and Jeremy ended up being the only two to not swim here.

After Jeremy drained about 600 gallons of Ocoee water out of the Nomad, he jumped back in and we floated on downstream. Our second mishap of the day came at Tablesaw. Brinn wanted to try for the top eddy on river left, and called for Tabitha and I to paddle hard as we crashed over the top wave. The bow rode up so high that we struggled to get our paddles in the water, and we blew past the eddy. As Brinn regrouped and aimed for the next eddy, Tabitha went bonkers and started yelling about her foot. With her T grip waving around in my face, I quit paddling as well  and stared at her. The side of her foot had locked up in a giant cramp, and it refused to relax. I grabbed her foot to mash my hand into the Charlie horse, and she came unglued. She yanked her chaco off and threw it in the floor of the boat while hopping around in her seat. Brinn thought we were both possessed and yelled at us for not paddling. Tab’s moment finally passed and she was able to put her shoe back on. Neither of us remember anything about going through the rapid.

We completed the rest of our trip smoothly with no additional mishaps. I think Brinn would’ve liked to back stack at Hell Hole, but I didn’t have it in me to swim for another eddy. I would’ve just floated to the takeout… So instead he had Tab and I scoot back just one thwart so we could brace in a bit more securely, and we had no issues plowing right through both waves, then floating over Powerhouse. We arrived at the takeout both tired and hungry, but every bit of the exhaustion was worth it. It’s been a hard summer of ferrying and eddy hopping, but I finally feel like I’m back!