Hudson River, Saturday June 28

Real low water this past weekend. I believe the river was running somewhere around 2.8 feet. took a group of guys from Fort Ann, NY up there for one of the guy's bachelor party. They were alright, nice enough but they wanted bigger rapids (and I can't blame them) so I encouraged them to come back in the spring or to go down the Black River. I swam the bachelor twice and one and a half of his buddies. One guy fell out kind of in the Narrows (he still had his feet in the raft he was just under water, so he was the half). The other swims occured in Big Nasty (due, ofcourse, to a rock) and Mile Long. I kind of like it when people fall out when the river is this low- it adds a bit of excitement, which is nice. I got stuck on quite a few rocks, which can be expected at these summertime levels. It poured really hard for most of the river trip- it was really nice. At one point I was thinking that it couldn't possibly rain any harder and then it would rain harder. I liked it but the bachelor was like 'boo hoo I don't like the rain'. I called him a 't-shirt guy'. The rain brought the river up to about 3.5 feet so I'm sure today's trip was nicer. We got pretty far ahead of the bubble (that's what we call the extra water from the dam release in Indian Lake) and we all got stuck a lot. It was a lot of work out there this weekend. I hope the river comes up significantly as I'm planning on taking a few of my buddies down the river next Thursday. We won't go if it's below 3 feet ish. It's storming right now in Albany so hopefully it's raining up north too.

Me and Heather are going down to Long Island for the long July 4 holiday weekend, so I won't be on the river. It should be a good time, we'll be staying with Heather's sister and her Fiance. He runs a big farm out on the east end so that will be a good time and we'll do some fishing for Blue Fish in the Peconic Bay. Last time we went down we caught like 15 fish and grilled them up- pretty tasty!

I'll be going away until November pretty soon for my 'real job' (the term we use for gainful employment that's not raft guiding) so I'll be done with river trips for the year shortly. It's kind of a bummer that Summer just started and it's already ending for me. I'll just have to enjoy what time is left before I have to go away.