Green River

Billy punched the gas as we headed toward Charlottesville to pick up the grease car. Before we left, we were careful to select a plastic dinosaur to represent each of us for good luck. Billy lost his dinosaur twenty minutes later. I was visibily upset. We stopped at Wawa in Fredericksburg to buy hummus, apples, and yogurt. We ate our food with joy and talked about the trip. We arrived at the grease car to find it in good condition. We filtered a measely two gallons of grease from a Chinese food restaraunt in a back alley behind the auto shop. The mechanic assured us the grease car was operational, but we quickly found out he was full of nothing but a pack of lies and false promises as we sputtered to a stop at a traffic light. We scrabmled to get the car going, but she stubbornly refused. Finally, we threw her into park and she started right up. We continued our trip toward Lexington to rendeazous with the John and Curt.

We consolidated our gear into the grease car, bought a pizza, and a tent from Wal-Mart. We never used the tent, and returned it on Sunday night. Wal-mart is a great place to rent gear for the weekend. They also sell lingerie that is suggestive and revealing.

We continued our journey into the depths of the western Virginia wilderness. We spent the night at John's parent's place, outside of Speedwell, Virginia. Speedwell is a unique town, with a tradition of stock car racing and fried squirrels. It was dark when we arrived, and dark when we departed. The air was cold, and the anticipation was buildling.


We settled into our cold gear with hostility and regret on Saturday morning. We were offered roles in an upcoming adventure show on the Discovery channel, but we wholeheartedly declined the offer, and suggested more beautiful boaters who might be interested. We just wanted to sneak a run in on the legendary Green.

We slogged down the trail toward the put in. There was no water. It was cold. We sat and waited until Duke Power decided to release some flow. I became a bit cold and decided to scrape down through some rocks into a little pool, so I could paddle around a bit and warm up. The water arrived shortly after, and a huge cluster of boats floated downstream. Everyone was running into each other trying to make it downstream before the race started. We made it about as far as 'Go Left and Die'. At that point we decided to walk down to 'Gorilla' and watch the rest of the race.

We saw plenty of good lines and plenty of bad lines at 'Gorilla'. We watched as one racer went off backwards and upside down. Luckily, he popped through the 'speedtrap' unharmed. I was impressed by the size and risk involved with running 'Gorilla'. The guys decided to continue on to the take-out, while I elected a steep portage out of the canyon. Folks looked at me and declared me crazy, insisting the hike out was way too steep to do with a boat. I forged ahead, and soon found myself clinging to a rope on a hillside of loose dirt, ducking, dodging, and getting poked in the eye by thick rhodedendron. The canyon was extremely steep, the trail was tight, and the footing was tenuous at best. I am not sure what possessed me to hike out. I just did not feel like boating anymore that day, but in all honesty, I mourned my decision as I trudged toward the road. I found some company when I reached the top of the steep part, and we chatted on the way back, taking my focus away from the fact that I knew my legs were about to cramp in a bad way. Eventually, they pushed ahead. My pace was much slower with my boat in tow. It was quite some time since I had seen the crew, and just as I imagined someone might wander down the trail looking for my sweaty remains, I looked up and saw John walking toward me. He offered to carry my boat, but I insisted on carrying it myself. At this point, it was a personal challenge to finish unassisted. I thought about starting a new kind of race, a portage race out of the canyon. My body was weak and I felt absolutely empty. The tree line finally broke and I threw my boat into the road. We strapped it on top of the car and I was happy to drink some water and heave a few potato chips into my mouth to get some salt back into my system. Unfortunately, it was too little too late and my legs began to sieze in violent muscle contractions. There is a lot of pain involved with muscle cramps, and in order to get rid of them you must punch and massage the muscle out of contraction, being sure to swear violently in the process.

We partied into the night at the Liquidlogic house and saw friends from around the country who took part in the race. Jason Hale threw some free gear off the deck, and I caught a new throwbag and Lunch Video Magazine disc. We clawed our way through the dark woods back to the grease car. We were in a desperate search for food and headed toward a pizza joint near the highway. We piled our plates high with pizza, salad, tater tots, and a thick lathering of ranch dressing. We all agreed it was the most delicious food we ever placed into our mouths. After our meal, Billy decided to take a nap on the floor.

We followed Will Selle back to his house in the mountains. He was generous and offered us a place to crash in his basement. John kept telling us we were almost there, and then we would drive ten more minutes. After fifty minutes or so, we finally made it back to Will's house and a heated room to rest our heads.

We woke up in the morning, gathered up our gear and headed toward the river. I was looking forward to seeing the rest of it. My favorite rapid is 'Groove Tube' a twenty foot slide, into a curling wave and a fifteen foot boof. Passing through the 'Tube' is a complete white out and the landing catches you by surprise.

The drive back went much quicker than expected. We split up the drive time and had some great conversation. We periodically had to open the car doors to air the cab out. All of us were generating smells that were quite intolerable.