John's perspective for Sat Hudson, Sun Black

I just wanted to add a couple of things to Chaz's post about this past weekend. It was super-cool and super-badass.

Saturday, I was also on the Hudson. We ran two waves of trips. I was out on the first wave with 'regular people' (not boyscouts, school groups or camp kids) and Chaz, as he mentioned, was on the second wave with boyscout group. I was surprised that Chaz wasn't on the first wave with the other half of my group as we work pretty well on the river together and show people a pretty good time. Just a couple of weeks ago we both had rafts of the same group and we had a good old time splashing and goofing off, even during the drops. Anyway, I had regular peopl, a group from the city and Syracuse, led by a couple of people who have been rafting with ARO on numerous occasions this season (they love us, what can I say?). The weather was a nice solid rain for most of the river trip and turned into a solid downpour after lunch, just above the Narrows. Noone fell out of the boat and we all had a great time. I hope they come back and raft with ARO again soon.

As Chaz said, we drove to H2O ready to party and we got down pretty good. The river trip was also one of the best ever for me- Chaz and I went real big, as big as we could possibly go on the Black. It was a great time and I'm sure Chaz will post pics/vids as soon as we get them. I suggested to Chaz after the trip that we quit guiding people down the river and just do rad shit like that from here on out. Basically the only way to go bigger would be to run the Bottom Moose in a raft and I'm hoping we can do that before the end of Summer. As I've been telling people lately, Chaz and I are basically the two coolest and most badass Raft Guides you know.

Update: Here's some photos from the trip...Sarah was nice enough to send them along.