Without a Paddle

It's another Monday morning and again I'm exhausted. In weekend-warrior fashion, Katie, Jenna and me piled in the Jeep and headed for the Tennessee state line. There we white water rafted down the Ocoee river. We don't have big rapids in the South; the Middle Ocoee river is mainly class III and a few class IV. Luckily we had another good tour guide who let us take some of the riskier routes. Coming out of a class IV rapids, he shouted instructions to spin the raft for the 360 spins which were fun. We did end up getting stuck in the hole at the bottom of Double Suck (hence the name) and I lost my oar in the process (embarrassing!) but we were able to retrieve it downstream.

The rafting trip was a bit impromptu; I didn't call and make the reservation until Wednesday afternoon. The only spot left was the 5:30 evening time. At first I was disappointed because every prior rafting trip I had done in the morning. I severely underestimated the time slot. Halfway down the river, we were treated to a sunset behind the Great Smoky Mountains, which lit up the sky in pink. We rafted the last third of the course by moonlight which made the trip more fun because we couldn't see some of the smaller rocks because of the glare on the river. We pulled out our raft in complete darkness. I don't think a lot of people have shared that experience, so I highly recommend dusk rafting.

Then we piled back in the Jeep and headed towards the closest Starbucks which happened to be back across the state line and 30 miles away. The state line was in the center of this small town, so that one side of the red light was one state and the right-hand turn we needed was the other state. As we stopped at the light, we shared the being-in-two-places-at-once experience a la A Walk to Remember. True city girls, I don't think we relaxed until we had our mocha cappuccino fix. On the ride home, we took turns debating whether our next adventure should be caving or rappelling, and what our costumes should be for next year's Warrior Dash.

Sunday was the kickoff (pun intended) of our kickball league that all seven girls in our group joined. It's a co-ed league. None of us have played since elementary or middle school, so we weren't really that surprised when we lost big time. We had no idea that there are people out there who have stayed with the same team and have played all Spring, Summer and Fall seasons together for the past three years. We took it as a victory that we even scored one point when we found out we were playing the league champions. Everyone was a good sport, except for one guy on our team who had a competitive streak to put it nicely. He yelled at us a few times. Jenna got a black eye by being barrelled down by a runner on the other team, but I think she was okay with it because he was cute and he helped her back up.

I'm a little sore today, and I have no idea if this is from white water rafting or playing kickball. But I'm taking that as a good sign that I do so much, I can't even place my injuries.