Thought I would do a quick post before I left this afternoon for the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I am heading to the Glazier Football clinic, which is located in Bloomington Minnesota. Bloomington is home to the Mall of America and about a 20 minute drive from the city. Over my last 6 seasons at Trinity, I have become very familiar and actually quite fond of this area of the country. We have traveled to this region for many road games including our annual Dome Day game in the Metrodome. The clinics are a great environment for learning the game and getting the chance to meet and network with a lot of coaches from around the country. I have helped staff these clinics the last few years in both Minnesota and California, but this year I am attending as a paying customer. Looking forward to sitting back and soaking it all in. Sessions start at 8 am and then run all day until about 9 pm each night.
I also thought I would write a little about the close calls I have had rafting. First, let me say that I am not a pure adrenaline junkie. I have always liked downhill skiing and white water rafting, but you would never catch me jumping out of an airplane or bungee jumping. I am also a chicken when it comes to those roller coasters that twist and turn in every way possible. I have actually had some formal training on the river as a rafting guide. I trained for a few weekends on the Cheat River in West Virginia and the Youghigheny River in Pennsylvania when I was in college in Maryland. I had given some thought to becoming a guide for the summer, but decided against it because I lived rather far away from these rivers. My first misadventure with a raft happened about a year after I had this training. I felt rather confident in my abilities and I coaxed my wife (then girlfriend) and two of our friends to rent our own raft and go rafting down the Yough river in OhioPyle, PA. I told them I would be the guide and I assured them everything would be fine. After all, the water levels were low and the water was mainly class II and class III rapids. There would be no crazy Class IV sections to navigate, so they signed on for the trip. We finally decided to head out one beautiful spring afternoon in May. Our friends had never been rafting before, so there was a little nervous excitement in the air. We rented the raft and I went over the instructions and commands with them before we started out on the water. The river was running slow where we put in, so the first part of the trip was actually quite tame. After a bit, things began to pick up and pretty soon we were encountering some excellent rapids. We bounced through wave after wave and I was proud of the way my crew was responding. After about 10 minutes of moderate adrenaline, I noticed that we were approaching a very rocky section that was full of boulders and swift flowing water. I yelled for the team to paddle "all forward" so we could approach each wave from the best possible angle. We had almost made it through the churning waters when we suddenly struck a boulder that seemed to come out of nowhere. I had been in the back of the raft paddling and steering the boat, and my feet weren't lodged in particulary well at the moment we struck the big rock. Out I went!! I was in the water and big waves were pouring over my head as my body was being pulled downriver and smashed against the rocks. My boat mates looked back in horror as more and more distance came between them and myself. After what seemed like an eternity, the river slowed down and I was able to maneuver myself over to the raft and climb aboard. When I finally climbed in the boat, I realized I had literally lost my shorts and my legs were bleeding from smashing against the rocks. We paddled to shore and I climbed out in my shredded shorts with more underwear than shorts showing. My legs were bloodied and my pride was bruised, but I just wanted to get out of that river. The worst part was we still had to carry the heavy boat back towards the road to drive it back to the rental shop. In order to do this, we had to walk past many people who knew something very unfortunate had indeed happened to me. Needless to say, my friends never went rafting with me again, but my wife did. I will tell you about that in my next post. Lights out.
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