“We booked tubing,” Phoebe told me.
Oh, lame, I thought. Tubing. The thing drunk college kids do. Jack even brought a six-pack of beer to complete the illusion.
“So tubing is much more extreme than rafting,” our guide told us.
“Can I still bring the beers?” Jack asked.
“No. It is not safe to drink beer. You will have to stay focused. This is dangerous.”
More extreme than white water rafting? Was I more extreme than white water rafting? I mean, I had talked a big game, but now I was stuck in it.
“So the people behind put their feet in the armpits of those in front,” the guide told us. Holy shit, I thought. We are making our own raft. This is insane. Who does that? Who makes their own raft out of people besides desperate castaways.
“You don’t get your dirty shoes on my t-shirt,” Jack said to Phoebe, sitting behind him.
“You’re gonna get dirty,” she says.” We are doing a level 3 rapids. My shoes are going to be the least of your concerns.”
It worries me that she was completely right. What did I sign up for? Should I have made my own plans? This wouldn’t happen if I planned something for myself for once. But no, I had to tag along.
“Alright, let’s go!” Our guide yells at us.
We walk down to the water, which is anything but calm. We are probably about 15-20 feet from the rapids. Not where I would have chosen to put in personally. But As I have established, I don’t get to choose because I don’t plan anything.
“You two first,” the guide said, pointing to Jack and me.
We step into the murky water splashing over our ankles. Jack looks nonplussed to be getting his shoes dirty.
The rest waded in. I had Joe’s shoes in my armpits. Staring at the rapids with thousands of tons of water smashing against rocks looks unpleasant.
“Here we go,” our guide yelled, pushing us into the thick of it.
My heart was beating through my constricting life jacket. Was this how it all ended? Strapped together with a bunch of English lads. Before I can think too hard about it, my face is slammed by a wall of water.
UH OH. I fell backward. Was I always halfway out of my tube? I looked to my left to see Jack yelling.
“I’m not gonna let you go!”
I’m reminded of canoeing the two-hearted river in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my dad, Jonathon, and his dad. It’ll be great, they said. Nothing to it, our dads assured us.
An hour later, we were dumped unceremoniously into the water. I yelled desperately.
“I lost my shoe!” Which was devastating. They were brand new, and I was very excited about them.
“I found your shoe,” Jonathon yelled back.
“I lost my shoe,” I yelled again, incapable of understanding human speech.
“I found your shoe,” he yelled back.
“I lost my shoe,” I yelled, water washing over me.
“Brian! He found your damn shoe,” my dad yelled over both of us.
“I lost my shoe!”
I found out a little later that my shoe was, in fact, found. But it was very scarring.
Before I got into the rapids in Colombia, I made sure my shoes were tied tight.
But in the rapids losing my shoes was far down my list of worries. I’m much more worried about my life. Where was that rock, I wonder, as I frantically scramble to reenter my tube, forgetting everything I had learned just minutes ago. I give up trying to get in. Just pulling my legs up, hoping the rocks pass beneath me. All these years later, wondering where my shoes are in relation to the rocks.
I found 17 years later that the only thing that has really changed from that trip to the UP is that my fear is internalized. I didn’t scream. That would have been very unbecoming for my emerging adulthood.
We make it to a calmer area of the rapids. Back in my tube, I turned to see that five of us had fallen in, including our instructor, who had jettisoned to avoid a rock.
“How is everybody?” He asked.
“Great,” I said, forcing enthusiasm. “How much more of this do we have?
“90 minutes,” he said.
If I could have given up right then, I would have. But all I could do was keep moving forward, just like life.
In San Gil, I tried a few other adventure activities. Tejo, where you throw a weighted metal disk at gunpowder and try to blow it up. It’s like if horseshoes and hand grenades were mashed into a single sport. And, of course, it is combined with drinking because nobody ever blew anything up stone-cold sober.
I tried the cheapest bungee jumping in the world. Which perhaps is not the adjective you might wish to use to describe something where you risk your life. But it was all very safe. Although in the video they showed at the reception of the hostel, the person doing it was dunked in the river.
I tried the sky bike, a rickety contraption hung over a chasm between two mountains. I tried not to think about it too hard as a drone taking pictures buzzed around my head.
The final adventure activity was also unplanned. It was a 5.9 magnitude earthquake that hit near San Gil. I didn’t even have to pay for it. I woke up in bed to a bang.
“What was that!” I yelled.
No one even answered, and I went right back to sleep anyway. I would not do well in a natural disaster.
I woke up covered in crumbs. I don’t remember eating, I thought as I got up.
“I can’t believe a bird attacked you last night,” Phoebe told me.
“So that’s what it was,” I said. “I didn’t know a bird could make so much noise.”
“A bird? Seriously?” Joe said. “It was an earthquake, you idiots.”
Earthquakes, rogue birds, exploding horseshoes, rusty sky bikes, bungee jumping? Nothing was quite as extreme as tubing.
