Tuesday, June 15, 2004
You can't not smoke on the river
Since my co-workers and I clearly don't drink enough under normal circumstances, we decided it was high time to hit the river for some tubing on Sunday. As luck would have it, the mighty Tangipahoa (pronounced phonetically) just opened up for tubing several weeks ago after years of being too polluted for recreation (though I'm not sure who made that call or how much of a vested interest they have in money made from river recreation).
So ten or so of us stripped down to our swimsuits, laying bare to the world the toll of our lifestyles, and braved the sluggish, brown waters in Tickfaw, Louisiana. Two of my buddies had planned to quit smoking shortly before the trip but, as one of them astutely observed, "You can't not smoke on the river." As a result plans were made (poorly) to keep a bag of smokes and lighters out of the water.
We were quite a sight getting on the river. Already drunk and toting three cooler tubes full of beer, I couldn't help but think of the headline of the story on the inevitable drowning about to occur. "Flotilla of drunken journalists capsizes, all feared drowned: few mourn as police spokesman holds back laughter at press conference."
The biggest tragedy of the trip, however, was that about 15 minutes in we realized that some of the cigarettes and all of the lighters were wet and unusable. Fortunately we found a kind, mulleted man drinking a beer on the river bank who rescued us from not slowly killing ourselves with a well-timed light.
After a two hour ride, we wobbled onto a bus that took us back to the launch spot. After we grabbed some suspiciously squirrelly "chicken" at a Tickfaw kebab stand, we did it again.
So ten or so of us stripped down to our swimsuits, laying bare to the world the toll of our lifestyles, and braved the sluggish, brown waters in Tickfaw, Louisiana. Two of my buddies had planned to quit smoking shortly before the trip but, as one of them astutely observed, "You can't not smoke on the river." As a result plans were made (poorly) to keep a bag of smokes and lighters out of the water.
We were quite a sight getting on the river. Already drunk and toting three cooler tubes full of beer, I couldn't help but think of the headline of the story on the inevitable drowning about to occur. "Flotilla of drunken journalists capsizes, all feared drowned: few mourn as police spokesman holds back laughter at press conference."
The biggest tragedy of the trip, however, was that about 15 minutes in we realized that some of the cigarettes and all of the lighters were wet and unusable. Fortunately we found a kind, mulleted man drinking a beer on the river bank who rescued us from not slowly killing ourselves with a well-timed light.
After a two hour ride, we wobbled onto a bus that took us back to the launch spot. After we grabbed some suspiciously squirrelly "chicken" at a Tickfaw kebab stand, we did it again.
