Tubing a River in Oakdale, 359 words

During my senior year in high school, a group of my friends and I would get several inner tubes of various sizes. The truck inner tubes were the preferred tubes, but we would use regular car tubes, if needed. We would take two cars and blow the tubes up near a river that winded through cattle country. We would park one car near a bridge that crossed this river. We would then hang on to the filled inner tubes and drive upstream to another location. We would then hike about a half mile and put into the river. The river was very swift and bisected a large piece of pasture land. Bulls were kept on the far side of the river, and cows pastured on the side we put in. We went to this place many times to “tube the river.” For a period of time, we had to walk past a decomposing body of a cow who had its legs pointing up to the sky. We would run past this point, because the smell was so bad. Once we put in, we got the ride of our lives! The run had several standing waves and ended at the bridge. Here, the water gathered together and then dropped about five feet into a swirling pool of currents and undercurrents. The key was to hang onto your inner tube. I could sit in the hole of a truck inner tube, hanging onto the sides with my hands. Once you hit the pool, you would be submerged to the bottom. There, you would be held down by the currents, moving this way, and then another way. After a few hair-raising seconds (which felt like minutes) you would finally pop up to the surface. The hair-raising excitement isn’t over yet. You then had to quickly get yourself over to the side of the river, because there was a barbed-wire fence crossing the river just a few yards away. How we avoided death or serious injury, I’m really not too sure. We did have a scare once in a while, but we were 18 and 19, and we felt invincible.

My sister, Donna, came on one of our many trips and took pictures and wrote a narrative on the back of each photograph. Following, are the pictures and what she wrote: