Summer...

Oh the summertime.. I can't believe it is already almost July- the best season of the year is just zoomin on by! But anyways, this summer I decided to start trying to save for this thing called, "college". Yeah, totally foreign to me and my parents. We don't understand anything about this little process. Scholarships, college visits, FASFA? WTF! haha it's been a pretty interesting journey, and anyhow, my summer so far has been jammed with college prep, which is funny, because all my friends think I am crazy for working 4-5 days out of the week, taking online economics, cramming in volunteer hours, and spending the rest of my time on fastweb.com, applying for every 500$ scholarship out there. Yeah, let's just say its been an adventure. :) Granted, I have had lots of fun, though. But I think my definition of "fun" has become a bit ambiguous.. lets just say the highlight of my summer is going to end up being going to Girls' State, and Utah on college trips next week. Wow. I think most of my kick has been because I have lots of friends that are leaving me for college this year, and I just want to be in the "college mindset"with them, or something. Call me crazy.

In this schedule, I do, however, find some time to have a good ol' time, and lately, that time has been spent at the Boise River. Okay, so if you don't live in Boise, if you've never experienced the Green Belt, if you've never fallen off your tube on one of the rapids, if you've never seen some dumb guy get a few misdemeanors for having an open can, you will never be able to fully comprehend the majesty of the experience, but I will do my best to explain..

Okay, so the river. Man, if you are a River Newb, this little journey can cost you a fortune! First, you pay 5 bucks to park at Barber Park, the start of the river. After you've forked over this, it costs 30+ bucks to rent tubes/rafts/lifejackets, and a little baby roll of duct tape costs 5 bucks, too. (For when you are lucky enough to find a nice hole as a gift in your raft) So after the river, you have to have transportation back to the start, right? Welllll... it costs a small fee to park at the end of the river, too. If you don't want to pay this you can always pay 3 bucks a person to ride the shuttle back to Barber... yeah what a HEADACHE! Anyways, after countless trips down the river, my posse has figured out how to do our favorite thing for GRATIS. (free, in Spanish.) First, we always make sure to pawn a raft off of someone, and this year, my parents actually bought 2 tubes, so this waives the equipment fee. We always make sure to park in some random person's front yard in a gated community near the river, getting rid of parking pains. And last, we are always sure to get out of the river early, use the TCBY phone, and make someone's parents come pick us up. We all think we are pretty smart.

So anyhow, this week, we've gone 2 times so far. And let me tell you, they have both been an adventure. On Monday, Cloey, Diana, David, Will, and I braved the river. Everything went well until we filled up our raft at the river. Pretty sure we had a big momma hole in a very crucial part of the raft. Awesome. This is when we discovered the 5 dollar roll of duct tape for sale! Yep, it didn't even work. So anyways, we decided, eh, oh well, and set off in our raft and with my 2 tubes, and Will had one, too. Everything went well until the 3rd rapid. David and I always almost die when we brave the river together.. on this particular rapid! This time was no exception. On this particular trip, David fell off his tube, and me, exhibiting compassion, tried to wait for him... and was commanded to wait by him. So, I tried to stop, but the current is fast, and it is shallow! So this really did nothing for me but kill my feet. By this time David's tube was waaaay down the river, so I pulled over, and we decided we would just get out and run to catch up with everyone, because they were NOT waiting. So we got out, and, arm in tube, we ran on the rocky gravel path to a place where we thought we could get in and meet up with them. Nope, they were too far away. We ended up doubling on a little tube, using our feet as our "rutter" and arms as paddles. It actually didn't work too bad.. I think we should go into the sailing business or something! :D

Today we went to the river, too. This time me, Cloey, and Diana only really wanted to do the rope swing, so we floated to it, I managed to fall off my tube 2 times, (Cloey says it is just cuz I can't balance my body right.. yeah... uh huh!) and we jumped off the big cement blocks on the side of the river, and then made our way to the rope swing. It was really fun.. we got Diana to jump off it, which was quite a feat, but we did have to ask the police officer nearby to put an ambulance on standby in case she hit the tree. :) The sad story was that on the way home one of my tubes fell out of the bed of my truck, so I drove to where I could flip a U-ie, and SOME SCHMUCK HAD STOLEN MY TUBE! Yep, in the span of maybe 45 seconds, someone had jumped out of their car and taken my tube from the middle of the road. I was extremely angry. Who the ___ would do that? Just writing about it is making my blood pressure spike a bit. But eh, I think I might live. :) But those are my river stories so far. Hopefully they were enjoyed.