{"id":389,"date":"2011-08-17T14:04:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T21:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2011-08-17T14:04:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T21:04:25","slug":"wet-n-wild-juneau-08152011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=389","title":{"rendered":"Wet n’ Wild – Juneau [08\/15\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Iceberg, right ahead!<\/p><\/div>\n

Every so often, you feel the urge to do something totally insane. Last year, for me, that was going ziplining in Juneau (I love ziplining, closest thing to flying without wings that a human being will ever experience), this season though, the crew tour on offer was something different.<\/p>\n

I can now cross river-rafting off my list.<\/p>\n

Please understand just why this was such a venture into insanity. In Juneau it \u201crains 362 days out of the year\u201d (we don\u2019t know that that\u2019s the actual statistic, but that\u2019s what it feels<\/em> like), and today was no exception. When we all trooped off the ship into the pouring rain \u2013 and I do mean pouring<\/em> \u2013 we started to wonder if maybe we\u2019d made a mistake. Or at least I did. But, the tour was free after all, and it was something I\u2019d never done. Most people who know me will attest to the fact that \u2013 as long as it doesn\u2019t prove harmful to me or someone else \u2013 I\u2019ll try anything at least once.<\/p>\n

River-rafting is not really a simple matter of just getting a raft and starting to paddle. Particularly not when it\u2019s this cold out, and when a lot of the people in your raft have never paddled before. For myself, the last time I was anywhere near any kind of similar experience was when I was 9 years old and canoeing with my family during a vacation on the mainland. Anyway, before you can even board the raft, you have to be issued all the necessary gear. Rain slickers, rain pants, huge fireman style galoshes so that when you wade out to the raft you don\u2019t ruin your shoes. And life jackets of course.<\/p>\n

Looking out at the lake, and noting that there were in fact icebergs in it, I found myself fervently hoping that the lifejackets would prove unnecessary (don\u2019t worry, they did)<\/p>\n

So, there we sat, 8 of us, in a paddle raft. For the first little while we just paddled around the lake itself. In all honesty it took me a while to actually take up my paddle \u2013 I had this irrational fear of tumbling overboard, but eventually I put my arms into it with the others. There\u2019s a peace in paddling a boat, if you can find the right rhythm with the water. The others were all taking crazy photos and trying to figure out how to steer the boat in the right direction (not really cluing into the fact that it was actually the guide at the back on the main oars doing most (if not all) of the work). I was just using the time to think. I\u2019ve had a lot to think about these days. Some might say too much.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t spend too long on the lake. Eventually we joined the little convey of rafts heading down the river. For the first little while, it was very smooth, you could let the river do all the work. Then, after only about twenty minutes, we hit the rapids.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really want to call them full-scale \u201cwhite water\u201d, but they were definitely still rapids. And there is a rush to crashing over rapids that you really can\u2019t describe. It made me wonder what it would really be like to go real<\/em> white-water rafting. Of course, I can feel some of you looking at me like I\u2019m insane from here.<\/p>\n

The only downside of this whole adventure was the cold. Oh Goddess it was cold. As I mentioned, it was raining, and there was ice<\/em> in the lake. With 45 minutes left in the ride, our fingers were turning numb on the oars. By the time I got back to my desk (a little bit later than anticipated) I was drenched, shivering and my teeth were chattering. Fortunately I have an absolutely amazing Event Manager on this cruise, who allowed me to basically start an hour late so that I could thaw out.<\/p>\n

Worth it?<\/p>\n

Definitely.<\/p>\n

Check one more thing off the bucket list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often, you feel the urge to do something totally insane. Last year, for me, that was going ziplining in Juneau (I love ziplining, closest thing to flying without wings that a human being will ever experience), this season … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-6h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}