Those of you have known me for a long time (at least since Case), might be a bit shocked by the subject of this post. Unfortunately for all of my friends who would like to see me imbibe, the reasons for my hangover spawn from ingesting a different brownish liquid. But before I go into that, I need to tell a story.
En route to Coachella, Mike decided that he would like to leave the bay area on Friday afternoon, and spend Friday and most of Saturday in Three Rivers, visiting with Elizabeth. Once this course of action was decided upon, we needed an activity. Something easy like a nice hike in Sequoia is too pedestrian for Mike. Instead, the team decided upon some white water rafting, and he managed to rope Chris, Tanya, Zoey, Nate, Jessica, and Anjali into coming down to Three Rivers as well. After many e-mails, plotting, and planning, it was decided that we would do a morning rafting trip on the Kaweah river, and afterwards Mike and I would continue on South towards Coachella.
It seems that the Three Rivers area has been going through a bit of "crazy" weather the last few months. The winter and early spring were especially rainy, and this week a heat wave started up, which caused the snow up in the mountains to start melting. What this all means is that the Kaweah river is really rockin'. I was told that the rapids today would be class 4, and that the Kaweah river is especially challenging, because the rapids come in quick succession, without breaks in between.
As we were preparing to get into the water, I noticed that we were basically going to deploy our two rafts right into the middle of a big, hairy, class 4 rapid. I wasn't really too freaked out about, because I have been rafting before, and it was totally fine.
But, in retrospect, I should have been more nervous about the launch. Apparently, we didn't start off too well, and ended up in the "harder" fork around a giant rock. Pretty quickly, our raft knocked up against a rock, and myself and 2 other people on our raft fell out.
Immediately, I was sucked underneath our raft via the pooling currents in the area. I figured this out pretty quickly, and managed to scramble my way out from underneath there. I don't really remember if I had my eyes open or not, but I think I got pretty lucky in that I chose the correct direction in order to swim out from underneath the raft.
When free of the raft, I immediately popped up above the water (thanks life preserver!), and recognized that one of my fellow rafters was holding a paddle out for me. I managed to grab onto the oar part of the paddle with one hand, while trying to tread water with the other. Unfortunately my grip failed, and that was the last I saw of the raft for quite awhile.
So much happened to me as I bounced down the rapids that I don't remember every single thing. I do know that you are supposed to keep your head and toes above water, in order to minimize broken bones from rocks, and to lessen the chance of getting a foot caught by a rock, forcing your head to be submerged. I think this failure of position was partially due to a somewhat weakened state, from being under the raft for 20ish seconds (without getting a deep breath before going under), and the cold temperature of the water. But it was mainly due to how much I was being jostled around.
I found it extremely difficult to keep my head above water, and facing down-river, much less keep my legs up and attempt to swim upstream towards the raft.
All that I can say is that my head submerged a number of times, I was turned around a number of times, I probably swallowed some river water, and my feet banged against a number of rocks.
Being in that rapid sucked, and it wasn't too long before I realized that I was in serious trouble. I got extremely lucky to have made it through the rapid basically intact. Coming into a section of flat water, I was able to get my bearings, and could see both banks of the river, and another rapid looming up ahead. Even though my body was more stable, I was still having some difficulty catching a decent breath -- I think that I was hyperventilating at this point.
Basically, my feeling at this point was that if I didn't make it to shore, I would pretty-much be done for.
So, judging that I was closer to the right bank, I mustered the strength that I had remaining, and swam. Amazingly/fortunately/thankfully, I was able to swim enough to make it to shore. I spent about five minutes just sucking wind, with my torso still in the water, but my head and shoulders laying on land. During this time, some nice people across the river spotted me. The called the sheriff, and also set out for the other side of the river, to come and see if I was okay.
As I began to get my heart rate down a little, my stomach that it had had entirely too much exertion and river water. And so that, is when I threw up.
A lot.
The most, in fact, in quite some time. My body got literally everything out of my stomach. Just when I felt I was better, I wasn't. When I stood up for the first time, I found that there was more. By the time I finished, I had collected a pretty decent audience.
Three natives of the town managed to get over to me, and verify that I was more-or-less okay. Next, my raft materialized. Once I was able to prove that I could stand, and stop throwing up, I was able to get back on the raft and go to the other side of the river. By this time, there was an ambulance waiting for me.
The paramedics checked me out. They were primarily concerned with fluid in my lungs, but they weren't able find any signs of that. They gave me some O2, and recommended that I go to the hospital anyway, just in case there was some fluid in my lungs that they couldn't detect. I wasn't really sure what to do, but I didn't exhibit any of the symptoms that they mentioned, so I decided to go back to the cabin that we rented and just rest.
At this point, the symptoms that I have are mainly due to the throwing up - a lot of sinus drain, headache, nausea, various aches, pains, and sore spots, which when I thought about it, sounded a lot like a hangover.
The game plan for now is to get a lot of sleep, and see how I feel tomorrow. I think I will most-likely still be going to the concert, but I might go later than I had originally planned.
-Andy.