Hudson River 4/18. Pretty good water, really good times

I'm in the office enjoying a lunch of a chicken sandwich made with leftover chicken from the rafting company (which is really good and I think I might make this a habit; It gives me a little taste of whitewater I guess you could say, in the middle of the week). This past weekend I was up on the Hudson for the Saturday trip. ARO had 12 boats on the river and we got a rather early start and beat most of the other companies on to the river to ensure that we were not in the middle of the mass of other rafts out there. It was good to see all of our Hudson River guides again, like Lynn, Mark and Critter, but there were also a few newer faces that I didn't really recognize (again, too much time away from the water I guess). Stevie U, Alex Erika, Larry and Mike also made it up which was nice. It was just nice seeing everyone and having some good times out there.

The Hudson was running at just below 5.4 feet with the dam release. I had a smaller 14 foot raft with six college girls from Mansfield College (it's in Pennsylvania, but near Elmira, NY I'm told). They seemed to be nice girls and I was on my best behavior careful not to curse too much or tell any really dirty jokes or talk too much about crazy partying. They seemed to have fun and I had a blast. We went a bout as big as we can at these levels without anyone falling out of the raft. In fact, the only swimmer I saw all day came from Erika's boat of goofballs (She and Alex had one big group and one of the boats was dressed as Indians, like Native American Indians, and the other was dressed like Cowboys, like with guns, not the Dallas Cowboys). Anyway, she had a swimmer at the top of Big Nasty but the guy got back in the boat pretty quickly.

So anyway, I'm being really nice and respectful to these girls and not crazy or too loud or cursing, basically, not really being my normal self at all. And at the end of the trip they gave me a $40 tip. Now $40 is not great or anything but I was thinking the whole time that since they were college kids I wasn't going to get a tip at all. So I was thinking "wow, I guess I was right to be a little more mellow out there for this group." But then, after we put the boats away and hung up the wet suits and did all the other work around the shop, Larry comes over and tells me how he got an $80 tip from his cllege group (part of the larger group from Mansfielf College). And I'm like "Damn! Larry's being his usual crazy self out there and he gets double my tip!" Hahahaha! I guess the moral of the story for me is that I always have to be just be myself to get the best tips. After the work was done I drove home to Albany and enjoyed a couple of scotch on the rocks's. I actually turned down work with another rafting company for the next day because I had a few things to do around the house with Heather, namely plant our recession garden out on the deck. We planted tomatoes, zucchinis, green beans, egg plant, bell peppers, cilantro and chives and Heather planted some wildflowers. I'll post pictures of our container garden as things progress.

For next weekend I'm hopeful that we'll be back on the Moose as we're supposed to get some good rain all this week. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed. Also, I'm working on getting out with Chaz one day maybe run the Hudson or something rad, I guess we'll see.