The summer of 2016 was quite busy. My wife retired, my oldest son got married,
my daughter became pregnant, and my youngest son moved back home. In addition, my wife and I took some early
steps toward moving from our home of 33 years in Pittsburgh across the state to
West Chester which is the hometown of our daughter, son-in-law and future
grandchild. With all that going on,
there wasn’t much time for rest and relaxation.
So when our 25-year old son invited my wife and me to go “tubing,” I
thought it would be a great way to spend a summer day.
Tubing
involves floating down a river while sitting in a big inner tube. It’s kind of like the Lazy River ride in some
water parks except you’re in a real river or creek and copious amounts of beer
are involved. My son-in-law, an experienced
tuber, had taken my son and me tubing a few years back on the Brandywine near
West Chester. We had had a great time
floating on our tubes, drinking beer, listening to music and taking an
occasional dip into the cool water.
Consequently, my son decided to invest in some tubes
and found a stretch of Loyalhanna Creek that worked pretty well for
tubing. He had taken several tubing
expeditions on the Loyalhanna with friends before offering to take my wife and
me. This would be a first for my wife
and only my second tubing experience. We
got a later start than we had hoped due to some commitments we had that morning.
As the day moved toward mid-afternoon, we
hurried out of the house to be sure we’d have enough time to enjoy a 3-hour
float on the river. As a result, I forgot
my water shoes, which was the first mistake I made that day. These streams are usually pretty rocky, so
foot protection of some type is essential. Fortunately, my son remembered to
bring his water shoes, so he offered his flip-flops to me.
My swimming trunks didn’t have pockets, so I took
along an old fanny pack to hold my wallet, phone and other essentials. Tubing requires two cars – one upstream where
you get into the river and one downstream where you get out. I drove my car to the downstream point,
parked it, locked it, grabbed the fanny pack and climbed into my son’s
truck. He drove a few miles upstream where
we inflated the tubes and carried them down to the river. Before my son locked up the truck, I
carefully placed the fanny pack with my valuables under the front seat so
would-be thieves would not be able to see it.
My son tied our three tubes together along with the
smaller tube that carried our snacks, our music, and most importantly, the
cooler filled with beer. We put the
tubes into the creek and began our journey downstream. The creek was a bit low that day. There were several stretches, particularly at
the beginning, where the tubes got hung up on the creek bed, and we had to get
out and walk. During these stretches, I
was grateful for the flip-flops because the stream bed was quite rocky. When the creek got a little deeper, we
climbed back into our inner tubes. It is
surprising how little water is necessary to allow the tube to float, though you
have to be ready to lift your behind when the lead tuber yells, “Bottoms up!”
Once
we got to a point where we were floating pretty freely, my son put on some
music, we cracked open some beers and opened up some of the snacks we had brought. The sun was shining, the water was cool and
we were having a wonderful time laughing, chatting and enjoying the day. The stretch of stream we were on was fairly
isolated. We saw no homes, businesses or
even farms. Trees and the surrounding
woods lined both sides of the creek. We
saw some blue herons, deer and other wildlife as we traveled lazily downstream
enjoying the sunshine, the blue skies and the beauty of nature.
When we had gotten to about the halfway point, my
wife asked an innocent question. “So
what happens when we get to the car? Do we try to pack up everything or do we first
drive to get the truck?”
I suddenly sat up straight in my tube as the
realization of my second mistake hit me like a ton of bricks. “Oh, no!” I had placed the keys to the downstream car
into the fanny pack which I had so carefully hidden under the front seat of the
upstream truck.
My son started laughing.
“Are you serious?” my wife wanted to know. I admitted that I was and started apologizing
profusely.
We decided to beach the tubes while we figured out
what to do next. My wife suggested that
we start walking back upstream. If we
followed the stream, we had to eventually make it back to the truck.
My son stared at his smart phone for a few minutes
and proposed an alternative plan. According to the map on his smart phone,
there was a road just beyond the woods.
He proposed that he would make his way through the woods to this road while
my wife and I continued floating downstream to the car. Once he got to the road, he would walk back
to the truck using the phone map, and then he would drive to the downstream car
where he would meet us.
My wife saw some major flaws with this plan. First, she felt that separating would be a big
mistake. Second, neither she nor I had a
cell phone so we had no way to stay in communication with my son. Third, she pointed out that my son’s phone
could run out of battery charge. Fourth,
we couldn’t be sure cell service would be available in the middle of these woods. Fifth, the phone’s map gave no indication of
the terrain between the stream and the road.
Finally, my wife and I really had no idea whether we would be able to
see the downstream car from the creek to know where we should get out. She pointed out that my son was the only one
of us who had done this before.
Logic and good sense dictated that I should agree
with my wife and immediately start walking upstream. But sometimes I think
there must be a “stupid gene” on the Y chromosome that activates at the worst
possible time. So of course I sided with
my 25-year old son and his smart phone.
A huge argument ensued with the three of us shouting
at each other in the middle of the woods.
Despite feeling strongly that her plan was our best bet, my wife reluctantly
agreed to go along with my son’s proposal as long as we stayed together. So the three of us walked across the shallow
stream toward the woods.
As we stepped out of the creek, our feet sank up to
our ankles in mud. That should have been
reason enough to make us reconsider. Instead,
we pulled our feet and shoes out of the soft, thick mud and slowly made our way
up the bank of the creek. As we entered the woods, we saw there were no
pathways, which forced us to forge a trail through briars and thick underbrush.
At times we heard what sounded like road traffic, but after twenty minutes of
getting scratched by thorns and bitten by mosquitoes, we seemed no closer to a
road than when we had exited the stream.
At that point I fully realized my third mistake – not listening to my
wife. Coming to my senses, I turned our
expedition around, now fully prepared to do what my wife had suggested in the
first place.
We slowly trudged back to the creek, the brambles
and briars biting into the exposed flesh of our arms and legs. When we arrived at the stream bank, we saw that
we had traveled only about 100 yards upstream from our beached inner tubes
during the half hour we spent wandering aimlessly through the woods. Unfortunately, we had to abandon what little
progress we had made in order to retrieve the tubes. By now, the sun was sinking low in the
sky. Soon it would be dark. With the tubes in tow, we began the long, slow
walk upstream. Now I was really
regretting having forgotten my water shoes because the flip-flops were slowly
cutting into the flesh between my toes as I made my way through the water.
It took us more than an hour to get back to the
truck. We arrived just as dusk was
starting to fall. We hurried to load
everything into the truck before it was completely dark. Then the GPS in my son’s smart phone directed
us in a convoluted way back to our downstream car. What should have been a 10-minute ride turned
into a half hour tour of the area’s country roads. It was pitch dark when we arrived at the
second car and headed back to Pittsburgh.
When we got close to home, we ran into a massive traffic jam because of
construction in the Squirrel Hill Tunnels.
It was close to 11:00 PM when we pulled into our driveway.
My
wife called my son-in-law to get his experienced opinion on what we should have
done when we realized we didn’t have a key to the downstream car. Without missing a beat, he said, “Walk back
up the stream. That’s the only thing you know for sure.” When she mentioned my son’s smart phone, he
said, “One smart phone; two dumb men.” Not
content to leave it at that, he threw one final zinger. “If at first you don’t succeed, do what your
mother (or wife) told you to do in the first place.”
If he hadn’t been so right, I would have vowed to
get him for that. Somehow he had
overcome the effects of that masculine stupid gene – at least for that day. Maybe it comes from being raised in a home
with only sisters.
As we unpacked the truck I asked my son, “When do
you think we can try this again?” I was,
after all, raised in a home with only brothers.
It was the third of January when I received the
letter. I remember vividly that it
arrived in a purple envelope. No, I
guess one would better describe its color as lavender. It was addressed to me. The address was written in red ink in a delicate
cursive, slanted precisely the way our second grade teacher had taught us. There was no return address on the envelope
to give me a hint as to the sender’s identity.
The postmark was smeared. I did
not recognize the name of the city. The
state looked to be CA, GA or possibly LA.
Maybe the zip code could narrow it down if I went online to look it up.
“Fondly,” and no signature. Think of that – no signature. I stared out the kitchen window for a
moment. Then I laid the letter on the
kitchen table and filled the electric kettle with water to make myself a cup of
tea.
