So this is what you meant when you said that you were spent.

Arisa's blog post inspired me.  The part where she talks about the river with the big tires reminded me so much of that one time I went white water rafting in Lake Tahoe.  I realized that you folks back home may have never heard this story, so I'll regale you.  (No idea if I used the word "regale" correctly at all.)

Last September I went to Lake Tahoe with The Captain, his family, and his dad's family.  The purpose of the trip was to spread his grandmother's ashes in her favorite part of the lake, Emerald Bay, which we did (*cough*illegally*cough*).  Of course, we had a few other things on the list while we were there.  One of those things was white water rafting, which I had never done before.  TC and his family had.

We were with a large group, so the group was split into three rafts with three separate instructors.  In one boat was myself, TC, TC's cousin, TC's sister's friend, and our instructor.  In another raft was the rest of his family, and in the third raft was the rest of the group.  I'm not much for extreme sports, but I like to say that I'll try anything, so I was really scared but also very excited.  Truth be told, we had a lot of fun--most of the time.  Our leader was a really nice, young, hippie guy, but I'm not sure he was quite as experienced as the others.  This is where I could kick myself for being a part of the "young" group.

It's been a while, so I can't remember now if I went under twice or thrice.  I feel like there was one time where I fell in by myself, but I can't be sure.  The perhaps second time, it was TC and myself, as we were both on the same side of the raft.  This wasn't so bad.  The water was cold, but by that time we'd had a long ride in the sun, and it felt nice to be wet.  We did everything they told us to do if we fell in, and we were rescued almost immediately.  The perhaps third time was not so calm.  It was toward the end, and there were lots of rocks and rapids.  This time our entire raft flipped, and there was no hope for any of us.

[Side note:  I had splurged ($80) on a nice, new pair of sunglasses at the golf shop the day prior, something I just never do.  Spoiler alert:  They didn't make it.]

Let me just tell you, that was the scariest moment of my life.  Up to this point, I was sure that no matter where I fell into the water, I would survive.  But in this moment, I was sure that I was going to smash my head into a rock or get my foot stuck on something and drown.  It was close to impossible to put our feet in the air as we were instructed to do.  There was a moment when my body was just being dragged across rocks (smooth ones, thankfully).  When we were finally rescued by another raft, I was having a full-on panic attack.  Once I realized everyone was accounted for, I calmed down, and thankfully, the trip was almost over.  From that point forward, though, I was sure every rock I saw was going to plunge me into the river again.

All in all, I had fun.  I faced a fear, and I survived.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely.  But probably not any river with a higher difficulty than what we did that day.