The Whole 14 and 15: or why I will never go whitewater rafting again.
Fad diets, man.
I tried the Whole 30 in July of 2014. If you don’t know what the Whole 30 is, in basic terms, you’re only allowed to eat non-processed meats and vegetables. No bread, no added sugar, no dairy and certainly nothing fried or for that matter, tasty, for 30 days.
I’ve been overweight/chunky/chonky since probably 4th grade but I think I really became aware of it when I started liking girls. I’m not saying becoming attractive to girls was the reason I did the Whole 30, I am saying it’s probably the reason I made it past the second day.
That month, I also started my first “big boy” job with the University of Tennessee. One weekend, Day 14 of the Whole 30, I got a call from my co-worker Trevor seeing if I wanted to to go film the football team whitewater rafting on the Pigeon River just east of Newport in the Smoky Mountains. It was optional but it sounded fun. Sure, why not?
I imagined whitewater rafting with the football team being a good story, that’s a win. But I also remembered all the conversations with my mother about how dangerous whitewater rafting was and how many people die doing it. The dying was more on my mind on the bus ride up to our selected spot on the Pigeon River.
But as all good stories go, the hero overcomes his doubts, straps on his helmet and lifejacket and gets into the boat. The football players all buddied up in their own boats so that left ours with a very small crew. Our guide was a young hippie dude who spent the rest of the year doing some type of hippie farming. I don’t remember his name so we will call him Hippie Farmer.
Real quick, you will need to know some whitewater rafting lingo to best understand this story:
dumptruck
/ˈdəmp ˈˌtrək/
a dumptruck occurs when everyone in the raft falls out but the raft continues on downstream, upright and without its passengers.
Hippie Farmer was a fantastic guide and it worked well for us as video guys because he knew how to guide our boat around all the other boats to get great shots. It was a warm summer day so there were many boats out on the river but Hippie Farmer was Aragorn leading us scared hobbits down the Anduin. Visions of drowning, getting caught on rocks on the bottom and my face being on WVLT that night faded and I was enjoying myself.
Then we came to “The Big One.”
I don’t know if “The Big One” was the name of this rapid, but our guide said it was the biggest on the river. Torrents of cascading white water plunged through a gap in the gray bastion rocks just wide enough for a boat. All of the water concentrated on a single spot that was being pounded incessantly by everything the Pigeon could throw at it.
And there was a problem. A boat from another group was pinned against one of the bastion side-rocks. And our boat was heading straight for them.
“Paddle! Paddle!” Hippie Farmer shouted. But the currents above the rapid were much stronger and our crew was so small. We strained, paddled, t-gripped with everything we could muster but it didn’t matter. We slammed into the other boat which we now saw was full of screaming high-school girls. The moment our boat hit theirs, the current lashed us to them while also pushing the side of our boat down into the water leaving us sitting in water up to our chests pinned on top of “The Big One.”
Hippie Farmer was a maestro. He immediately got up, checked on the other boat because their guide was clearly rattled. After getting a few forced smiled from them he set about trying nudge the boats loose walking about as if on a Sunday stroll and not defying death.
As he swept by me to pull on a strap on the front of the boat, I asked Hippie Farmer “Should I be panicking right now?”
“Nah, we’re good dude!” he said with a smile. He then reached for the strap, slipped and fell headfirst into the rapid. Gone.
I turned to Trevor and shouted “I don’t think he meant to do that.”
Hippie Farmer popped up safely at the bottom and looked to be trying to swim back up but he eventually gave up and swam out of view.
The other guide seeing this, didn’t move. He looked shell-shocked. The girls continued to scream and I tried to fight the panic rising in my stomach with my Whole 30 pancakes I’d had for breakfast.
And then a boat full of linemen came hurtling down the river on trajectory to whack our boat as they soared down the rapid.
They’d been in the weight-room all summer preparing to take on Alabama defensive tackles so they were able to steer clear of our disaster but even still, they clipped the edge of our boat and spun us free.
We settled down into the rapid with the elegance of a butterfly, ever so delicately and without turbulence.
Important detail. After my “Should I be panicking right now” question, Hippie Farmer said “Oh, by the way, when this raft comes loose, it’s going to dumptruck us.”
As we spun down the rapid, I saw blue sky above then I saw the side of the boat rocket into the air and then all I saw was green as I hit the water at the base of the rapid.
I felt the creeping cold of the Pigeon River slap my back and my nostrils filled with bitter water. Somehow I managed to close my mouth and take a deep breath, puffing out my cheeks and clutching the sides of my life jacket. I was hurtled down by the water and bounced off the rocks on the river bottom. When I came up, I thudded into the orange vinyl bottom of the boat; it wouldn’t give an inch keeping my trapped in the water unable to breathe.
I don’t remember what I said to Jesus in that moment but I doubt it was elegant. I bounced off the boat and went back down to the bottom; more swirling green, currents pushing me and hurtling me about before I felt my back hit rocks again. I lost all sense of direction and gave up control to the currents of the river.
Then I shot to the surface and fresh air— fresh air, blue sky and tree canopy. I cleared the surface and felt my lungs fill with a loud “huooooooAHHHHH.”
Trevor stayed in the boat. I didn’t see it but he was sitting on the edge that went up into the air and I think he somehow threw his back into the 90 degree angled boat and knocked it flat (to date, it’s probably the coolest sounding thing I’ve ever heard). He helped me back into the boat and I sat there and trembled for a while before realizing I’d lost both GoPros I’d had with me. Other than my feelings of safety and well-being, nothing else was lost. We went over a minor bump of a rapid at the bottom and I felt like I was going to die but outside of that, the rest of the trip was smooth.
I haven’t gone whitewater rafting again.
As for Day 14 of the Whole 30, I went to Cracker Barrel and got sweet tea, biscuits, mac and cheese and fried chicken. I was good the next 15 days and lost 12 pounds.