“Floating” the Tualatin River… Current Status: None

We were invited to float the Tualatin River our first Sunday in Portland. Our kayaks are at home, so we borrowed my friend Jess’s inflatable kayak for the day. My BFF Jess is the one person going that we really know in this group, we had met her friend Ryan a couple times, and then the rest of the group were new to me and Mike.

It was a lot of fun, laughing with friends, getting to know some new folks, eating some snacks along the way, and of course having a few beverages also. We all quickly discovered, though, that this wasn’t exactly a river “float” so much as a river paddle since the river doesn’t move much in this area.

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Well, things didn’t go so well the whole day. We hit a point where we were all wondering how much longer it would take as the expected time to be done came and went… the river went so slow and we had started out not really paddling a lot, so we were out there a few hours longer than we had planned…

Also, Mike and I bottomed out a few times. The river had a lot of logs, snags sticking up, and rocks. The folks we were with were so great to help push out off when we got stuck. And to help me back into the kayak (so graceful!) after taking a little “break” on the shore.

Then it all went to shit. We hit a really sharp branch we couldn’t see and POP went the kayak. Ugh.

As the air was bubbling out of the kayak, I looked up at Eric who was paddle boarding next to us and said, “What do we do?!” Well, I think he felt like he needed to save us. He jumped off his paddle board and all his things fell in…

Mike and I were fine of course, we got out and stood up in the water that was not all that deep. But we were left without a float. Eric had me climb onto the front of his paddle board (again… so graceful!). Patti was a bad ass paddle boarding with us, and she tied the kayak to the back of her board. Mike got back in when we realized it wouldn’t sink, and she towed him, while he attempted to paddle, for a while.

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AND this wasn’t all of it.

First of all, the towing of the kayak wasn’t working with Mike in it. It was too shallow and had too much drag. So, he hopped up on Patti’s padde board and they both paddled the rest of the way. Patti’s a bad ass, in case it needed to be said again.

Second of all, Eric had a worse day than we did.

Remember when his stuff all fell in because he was saving us? Well, his phone was outside of his “dry box” (a waterproof container you put things in to protect them while on the river, in case anything falls in) for that moment and had fallen in.

And it was gone.

Thirdly, as if that’s not enough for this guy, Eric had hit his foot on a rock (or something) when he jumped in and was pretty sure he broke a toe. Ugh. He didn’t tell us this until later, but he suffered the whole way back, paddling my ass around, and didn’t complain once.

So, yeah, it wasn’t the best day… a lot of fun was had, but also a lot of not-fun. Mostly, we felt terrible for Eric… and Jessie whose kayak had been popped. Ugh.

After the float several of the group went to pizza and since they invited me and Mike we hope maybe they don’t blame us too much…