Not a fiasco, an adventure

I have to admit that things don't always go smoothly when my friend Mike Swope is involved. When we plan a early spring river trip it will be rainy and cold, we call it Swope weather. He has been known to lose the keys to the shuttle vehicle. Once on a trip on the dry section of the New River with the guides from Appalachian Bible College they lost the keys to the take out vehicle and after making their way back to the put in vehicle those keys were "lost" also. I'm glad that I wasn't on the trip. The things that happen when Mike is involved are always funny looking back on them, but often frustrating when they are happening. I think that if you googled Murphys Law - there would have to a picture of Mike, although Mike always says that Murphy is an optimist. We've had a lot of rain here recently and Friday afternoon Mike came down from Morgantown where he lives, I took the afternoon off and we "planned" to go boating on the Upper Meadow River, there is
a four mile section of river there that is beautiful, remote and continuous, if there is a better section of intermediate whitewater available I am not aware of it. It never stops, just small eddies to catch your breath and get ready for the next maneuver, it is a great run, it could easily become my favorite. I've only been able to do it twice. The Meadow is a small river in between the New and Gauley Rivers and has three sections, the uppers that Mike and I wanted to do, like I said an intermediate run, the middle Meadow which is close to home and has a short shuttle, so although it is an easy run the easy shuttle and beauty of the river make it worthwhile. The Meadow also has a lower section that flows into the Gauley River (right above Lost Paddle Rapid for those who have been there with me) only serious paddlers attempt the lower Meadow, kayakers like JB make it seem easy, but it has claimed a few paddlers lives. I plan to run the upper section more. I just need a paddling buddy close by that has Mike's sense of adventure. Anyway, the river run should have been about an hour and 1/2, the shuttle should have taken about an hour and we should have been home by 4:00 o'clock, but that is not how it went. First we had a delay because the Dept of Highways had a road crew working on the one lane road that we were taking to the put-in, Murphy's law in full force. Then we couldn't find the turn off for the trail down to the put-in, Mike thought that he found it and we pumped up the boat and started off, it did seem odd to me that we were going uphill when we were trying to get down to the river, and the trail wasn't really a trail, more like an overgrown right of way, it was full of briars, which kept getting in between my toes and that is a wonderful feeling, but I digress. Mike never lost faith that this was the trail down to the river even when it became obvious that we were headed up hill and in the wrong direction. After we abandoned all hope in that course of action, Mike then decided to hike down a small creek bed nearby which obviously had to go to the river, I had gotten smarter by this point and waited at the truck, choosing to spend the time picking the briars out from between my toes. When Mike came back we drove around for awhile and found the right road for the put-in, pumped the boat back up and hiked down with a renewed sense of purpose, remember that the plan was to be done with this river trip and be home by 4:00, well it was 5:00 o'clock and we still hadn't gotten our feet wet.
All I can say was that the river portion of the trip more than made up for all of the troubles, we saw a bald eagle and a strange looking duck. Funny thing about birds that you scare on the river, they tend to fly away from you down stream, so in a few minutes there you are again, I'll bet they are convinced that we were are a predator chasing them down. At the end of the four mile rapid there is an eight foot water fall and we had an exciting but successful run on it, we had planned to get out and scout it, but we hit a rock on the way into the eddie just above the waterfall and we had no choice but to run it on the go, just hoping our instincts were right and we had the good line. They were and we did. Anyway, we had a successful trip even though it turned from kind of a fiasco into an adventure. That is one thing I have always enjoyed about hanging out with Mike is his sense of adventure. He takes the road less traveled and I like checking it out with him.