Friday, November 4, 2016

Down the Tubes

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.







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