I was recently looking trough all the photos that I took this summer and found some that were taken on a rafting trip on the Blackfoot River. During RMSP, the group that I was in decided to get together and raft, and what an adventure that was.
The day of the trip I met Donnie, he was our raft guide and river expert. He and I ended up becoming very good friends and shot countless games of pool together over the summer at my office in Charley B's located on the corner of Space and Time in downtown Missoula.
What made this trip such a circus was the ride there. I still laugh just thinking about it. We dropped all the cars off at the take out point on the river and then all 8 of us, a deflated raft, raft pump, life jackets, paddles, and of course the beer cooler loaded up into Donnie's Ford Ranger! Yes, I said a Ford Ranger... There was not one square inch in that truck that didn't have something or someone stuck in it. I thought the damn thing was going to blow up it had such a load on it, but hey, we're talking about a Ford here.
The road to the put in was a winding one lane dirt mountain road with no guard rails and deadly drop offs everywhere. A quarter of the way into the trip I turned to Melanie and told her that I thought it sounded like the exhaust was about to fall off. The truck was getting louder and louder with ever hill we climbed over, and I must say I was getting a little worried about what was going on with the Ranger.
We all keep a tight grip on something so we wouldn't fall out and kept laughing at the sight of all of us in the back of this truck. All of the sudden the exhaust system of the truck fell off and was dragging along the road under us, making a hell of a noise. At the time I had no idea what the hell had just happened, for all I knew the motor had fallen out because of the bind that it was in.
Wouldn't you know that all of this happened when we were going up one of the steepest slopes of the road. Donnie stopped the truck and instantly slide under it like Pete Rose with no shirt on to see what the malfunction was. All the sudden the truck started rolling back!!! I dove into the drivers seat and put my foot on the brake. I screamed at Donnie and told him he didn't set the emergency brake. It doesn't work he screamed back. Great!!! He tied the exhaust back up with a shoe string or something and we were back on the road with the truck sounding like a NASCAR!!!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment