this is normal karen:
this is karen when her lips are on steroids:
okay seriously, apparently word spreads around pretty quickly and people keep asking me... so here is the long version of the story. you probably can't tell that great from the picture, but my top lip is seriously swollen to twice it's normal size - and i never even knew that you could bruise your lips until yesterday.
so a bunch of us went river rafting yesterday - level 3/4 since level 2/3 wasn't exciting enough for us last year. in my boat was dareyn, me, and peter on the left side, and bob, andrea, and phoebe on the right side, with our guide in the back. so as we were nearing one of the level IV rapids, kanaka rapid, our guide warned us that this rapid had three "holes." he said that as soon as we hit the first hole, we would be launched forward, so we began to brace ourselves from getting thrown forward. unfortunately, i didn't prepare myself from falling off sideways, and as soon as we hit the rapid, according to our guide, both peter and i got knocked over at the exact same time, heel over head. everything after this is kind of a blur - we still had two more holes to "swim" through, and i just remember getting swept away in the rapids. i was bobbing in and out of the water, and i could faintly hear our guide yelling to get our feet up or to curl up in a ball. unfortunately i could do neither because the rapid was so strong. all of a sudden, i saw this white thing roll on me - at first i thought it was peter, but i really have no idea what it was, i was in such a panic. as i tried to shove it off, i felt the rapid suck me in and i got trapped underneath the raft. at that point, i was in pure panic mode because i didn't even get a chance to take a breath, i couldn't hold it for much longer. and to me, i felt like i was trapped under there forever. honestly, the thing that was running through my head at that point was "Lord, I'm never going to breath again." hahaha probably a bit dramatic, but that's what it felt like to me at the time! when i finally resurfaced, all i know is that peter was getting pulled into the raft, i had a busted bloody lip, my sunglasses were bent out of shape, and my right contact was missing. so i have no clue what hit me in the face - i don't even remember getting hit in the face, but obviously something smashed into me. my neck is in major pain today as well. our guide later told us that he had a chance to pull peter back into the raft right after we got swept off, but peter was curled up in the fetal position, and didn't look up, so our guide couldn't grab him. hahahaha.
so there you have it, there's my story. peter bruised up his back/butt pretty badly, so he tells me. i'd post a pic of it, but i don't want a picture of peter's butt on my blog. hahaha. fortunately, we were by far the worst of the casualties of the day. i had a ton of fun, and our guide was great and hilarious. better than last year's guide. he even called on peter for being a dead weight since he could tell peter was "pretending" to paddle (basically splashing water around). our boat was obviously a great set of paddlers since on one of our rapids, our guide told us that it tended to throw the person in the back (the guide) off the boat unless we paddled well. and what happened? we lost our guide in the middle of the rapid. (although i think someone's paddle was flying around in his face, so he had to lean back to avoid it, and in the process fell out.) and then later we tried to "surf" on a rapid, but our boat totally missed the turn, and as he tried to get us to paddle back up to the spot, we were paddling our heart's content out and didn't even move the boat an inch.
would i go rafting again? heck yeah, i had a blast despite having to paddle with a busted lip and only one contact for more than half a day. but i'm definitely thankful to God that i am here today, able to type this story out. as my coworker said, as i was sitting in a meeting, shifting uncomfortablly because my lip, neck and shoulders were really hurting, and people wouldn't stop staring at me, "just be glad you're even at this meeting."
the end.
this is karen when her lips are on steroids:
okay seriously, apparently word spreads around pretty quickly and people keep asking me... so here is the long version of the story. you probably can't tell that great from the picture, but my top lip is seriously swollen to twice it's normal size - and i never even knew that you could bruise your lips until yesterday.
so a bunch of us went river rafting yesterday - level 3/4 since level 2/3 wasn't exciting enough for us last year. in my boat was dareyn, me, and peter on the left side, and bob, andrea, and phoebe on the right side, with our guide in the back. so as we were nearing one of the level IV rapids, kanaka rapid, our guide warned us that this rapid had three "holes." he said that as soon as we hit the first hole, we would be launched forward, so we began to brace ourselves from getting thrown forward. unfortunately, i didn't prepare myself from falling off sideways, and as soon as we hit the rapid, according to our guide, both peter and i got knocked over at the exact same time, heel over head. everything after this is kind of a blur - we still had two more holes to "swim" through, and i just remember getting swept away in the rapids. i was bobbing in and out of the water, and i could faintly hear our guide yelling to get our feet up or to curl up in a ball. unfortunately i could do neither because the rapid was so strong. all of a sudden, i saw this white thing roll on me - at first i thought it was peter, but i really have no idea what it was, i was in such a panic. as i tried to shove it off, i felt the rapid suck me in and i got trapped underneath the raft. at that point, i was in pure panic mode because i didn't even get a chance to take a breath, i couldn't hold it for much longer. and to me, i felt like i was trapped under there forever. honestly, the thing that was running through my head at that point was "Lord, I'm never going to breath again." hahaha probably a bit dramatic, but that's what it felt like to me at the time! when i finally resurfaced, all i know is that peter was getting pulled into the raft, i had a busted bloody lip, my sunglasses were bent out of shape, and my right contact was missing. so i have no clue what hit me in the face - i don't even remember getting hit in the face, but obviously something smashed into me. my neck is in major pain today as well. our guide later told us that he had a chance to pull peter back into the raft right after we got swept off, but peter was curled up in the fetal position, and didn't look up, so our guide couldn't grab him. hahahaha.
so there you have it, there's my story. peter bruised up his back/butt pretty badly, so he tells me. i'd post a pic of it, but i don't want a picture of peter's butt on my blog. hahaha. fortunately, we were by far the worst of the casualties of the day. i had a ton of fun, and our guide was great and hilarious. better than last year's guide. he even called on peter for being a dead weight since he could tell peter was "pretending" to paddle (basically splashing water around). our boat was obviously a great set of paddlers since on one of our rapids, our guide told us that it tended to throw the person in the back (the guide) off the boat unless we paddled well. and what happened? we lost our guide in the middle of the rapid. (although i think someone's paddle was flying around in his face, so he had to lean back to avoid it, and in the process fell out.) and then later we tried to "surf" on a rapid, but our boat totally missed the turn, and as he tried to get us to paddle back up to the spot, we were paddling our heart's content out and didn't even move the boat an inch.
would i go rafting again? heck yeah, i had a blast despite having to paddle with a busted lip and only one contact for more than half a day. but i'm definitely thankful to God that i am here today, able to type this story out. as my coworker said, as i was sitting in a meeting, shifting uncomfortablly because my lip, neck and shoulders were really hurting, and people wouldn't stop staring at me, "just be glad you're even at this meeting."
the end.
posted by karen at
9:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home