Saved?

Sometimes I wonder if my life is being taped. After the Truman Show, don't we all often wonder this?

Yesterday, JM organized a tubing trip in Harpers Ferry, WV through Butts Tubes.

20 people. 20 tubes. 6 cooler tubes- bottomless.

You'd think... at $15 a person... when the business just has to rent you a tube, a life jacket, and bus you to the top of the river and retrieve you at the bottom...

You'd think they could have at least put bottoms on the cooler tubes.
AND advise that coolers while white-water rafting (even though it wasn't that extreme terrain) might be a bad idea.

The 20 of us were doing okay at first. We met up on a rock after about 45 minutes out in the water and ate lunch. That was quite fun, but unfortunately, we didn't empty as many coolers as we probably should have.

After lunch, I paddled back to join up with APK. We've decided to take a step back in the relationship and breath a bit. It's probably best. Both of us are under a ton of stress, and it's not be great on the relationship. I'm not saying it doesn't hurt, but I understand that relationships are sometimes best examined from afar.

We enjoyed the view as we lazed down the river. The only people up ahead was BG and another girl, linked together by a cooler tube. How all of us ended up on the side of the river is also a bit of a mystery.

We saw JM and the rest of the group up ahead at a rock formation in the center. We all probably should have stayed in our tubes and passed by, but instead we got out of the tubes and began paddling. This was a really stupid decision. I didn't have my life jacket on (tan lines would have been weird), and APK was dragging about 45 pounds of beer in the cooler tubes. As he put it, with that much weight on your raft, wherever the current is going is your ultimate path.

My flip flops flew off and my knees began to hit the rock formations. BG had left his tube to retrieve his hat and a bag that went missing from APK's cooler tube. APK was moving with the current, and BG's tube was already much out of sight... with another person an cooler tied to it, it also had to continue with the current.

I grabbed BG, and we pulled the tube to a rock to regroup. His legs were cut and bleeding. I sat on his lap within the tube, and we paddled to a further rock where APK had lodged his raft.

BG took the coolers from one of the cooler tubes and went down the river on my tube to another rock where JM and the group had stopped to gather the group. I laid in one of the cooler tubes until the tube started to take us away from the center of the river where we would be unable to meet the group. I got out of the tube and began pulling it towards the rock formation. APK had numerous coolers on his lap, and although he asked to pull, I knew it would make less sense.

As we approached the group, another current began to pull the tube away from the rocks. I tried to pull, but I wasn't strong enough. BG swam out and pulled me onto the rock. JM pulled APK and the tube onto the rock.

I sat on the rock for a bit. My body is still soar today.

If I needed to be saved, who would save me? Sensational ain't it? BG.

And maybe I didn't get it when our of 31 new Shabbat Cluster's formed, we ended up in the same one... but when, out of 20 people, you end up on the same tube in that situation... you say "Thank you." And then you make plans to have lunch during the week.