One needs to be properly wise around water as 'things' tend to happen if wisdom is not part of the day. I myself have not always been wise, I love to play in water and those home spun rafting trips I was talking about had a variety of incidents to prove my point. Would I do it again? Yup! One thing I quickly learned was to wear a simple hard plastic helmet with a tie down strap. I bought mine at a toy store. It saved me many a whack to the head that otherwise could have spelled trouble and it kept the hot sun off of my sparsely populated head. Even in a body float situation I would use the helmet as one never knows when something 'unexpected' could happen, besides I like taking care of myself. I almost always carry a pair of diving goggles with me and I wear some sort or running shoe for protecting my sensitive feet.
Rapids that one is not familiar with need to be approached with caution. Early one year before the spring runoff was truly finished I was down on "my river" when I noticed two yellow rubber ducky rafts headed in my direction. I waved the folks down and had a little share with them about what they were headed into. The guy and gal in the Mel Cottons two man raft that was leaking got out and hiked back out. The four man raft with the four guys in it were disgusted with me that I'd broken up the party and they went on telling me they had done this before and knew what they were doing. Two weeks later I came in with my group of four four man rafts with two men to a raft with added flotation to the floors and even though they were still yellow rubber ducky types the extra preparations made them white water able. Through one gorge, through the valley and down into the the real gorge. Half way through the real gorge where the down angle kicked up I yelled for a pull over. I'd spotted what appeared to be a yellow raft warped around a huge boulder out in the center of this rock chocked section of the canyon. We made a human chain out to it and were finally able to pull the raft from the grip of the water. As we gained on pulling the raft free this boot popped up in front of my face heel up. My heart went right to my stomach! It was an empty boot, whew. We checked the contents of the raft and I realized this was the raft with the four guys in it. So be careful on floats Especially if you are alone. That being said I do them, not that I am sane, but I do my best to be prepared for the adventure. If you are going to be in the water for a long time especially while stiring up the bottom then I would suggest using a wax type of ear plug as they keep out all dirt, Organic material being stirred up into the water during your investigations as well as the water.......63bkpkr
