The Characters You Meet on the River!!

I know it's been almost a month since posting. Mike and I had a great week long vacation (the longest I've seen him since April!) at the beginning of the month which I'll have to get to in another post, because TODAY I want to talk about the characters I meet on the river!

I've had some funny moments on the river and thought I'd share about the time I was french kissed on the river, the nudity on the river, and plain ol' laziness on the river!

We've been experiencing EuroMania here in Moab. From the end of May and up to this point we've had most of our guests coming from (in order of frequency) France, Germany, Holland, England, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Brazil . . . I'm multi-lingual now!! Okay so I only know about two or three words in some of those languages like "Go to left!, Stop!!, Swim here!" Anyway, not much representation from the home land. I blame it on gas prices.

So there's introduction to knew cultures and words (Like when the English say they need Lou, they don't mean a person - they want the bathroom please!! Where's the loo?? Yeah, that was a funny one my friend discovered the hard way.)


Then you're also exposed to cultural fashion and gestures . . . like the time I received a gracious french kiss from a man wearing a tiny speedo . . .

Yes. Clearly very proud of himself.

There really are good times to be had on the river. Some people are a little more open to "exposure". There's actually a designated spot for it. No, I've never hung out with naked people there, but sometimes you find yourself next to one without warning and if you're not careful you may become a nudist yourself!

Like the time I had all my guests swimming in the water as we drifted downstream. A rapid was coming up soon so one-by-one I pulled them back into the boat. The last one was an middle-aged, fun-loving guy who had probably played football in his younger years in high school - so a little on the big side. As I reached down to pull him in, my co-worker Richard in a boat next to me said "Oh, I've GOT to see this." and he lined up his boat directly behind mine to basically watch what he thought would be a slippery tug-of-war struggle.

With a count to 3 and large heave- ho, I pulled and leaned back as far as I could go and soon found that wasn't too hard! I had him mostly in the boat! But everyone was burst out in roars of laughter . . .
You know I don't think he really minded it that much, especially when his kids looked at me and said "It's okay, he's a plumber." Yikes.


The last time I was out on the river, I was guiding a paddle boat. Which means that everyone is paddling to make the boat go downstream. I used to like guiding this type of boat because it meant you got a break pulling all the wait on two heavy oars. Until this day. I was hired by Mike's river guide company Moki Mac to work on the Green River that day and was told the group was going to be from UNLV. That's Univ. of Nevada Las Vegas, so you'd imagine relatively in shape college students looking for a good time . . . NOT 50-65 year old, out-of -shape adults, looking for a nap!



They started off okay, but getting tired of paddling after 15 strokes is not going to get you anywhere. After the first hour I was really wondering why they had requested a paddle boat and was wishing I had the big oars just to get us to the end faster. By the third hour I was biting my lip from wanting to say things like "Uh, Cheryl, you have to PUT THE PADDLE IN THE WATER for it to do anything" OR "Susan, I know you said you don't like water and you don't like the sun, but since you're HERE, maybe you could just fake it a little!!" After we served them lunch, I actually heard these words, "I just ate a big lunch! This is too much work! I shouldn't have to do this." and put their paddle down. I was EXHAUSTED from trying to make to boat go with my one measly little paddle AND trying to coax the guests every 15 minutes to row just . . . a little . . . farther . . . c'mon guys, please? Just one paddle?