End of training

So we had the last day of training today. But a bunch has happened since my last post. We went up to the Four Corners office in Buena Vista for a week of training on the upper sections of the Arkansas river. The volume is quite a bit lower and the lines are a lot more technical. More rock dodging and paddle comands to get round them. The river was fun up there and much better for kayaking and they have a really nice campsite by the river in a grove of cottonwood trees. Its got a much smaller atmosphere and a bit more hippie, outdoorsy compared to the more frat like Echo Canyon office. I decided to stay down at the Echo office. Mainly because the majority of our training class will be own here, we get more trips (and therefore more money) and if I do want to head up to Four Corners I can always do a quick switch for a few days to get up there. I do feel a bit quilty about not being up there though because there are some really good people up there and they do have a more outdoorsy mindset, but its also a bit too hippie for my liking. Anyway, I'll be downstream at the Echo Office, if they hire me which they should do but they haven't made any promises until we check out.

While we were up at Four Corners there was the FIBArk festival which is a big boating festival with all the kayak and raft events and music at night. I made it down for a couple of nights which was really cool. I saw some good bands and checked out a few of the contests. However, I did miss the hooligan race. Basically, people build their own rafts out of anything and just run the play section of river through town trying to get maximum carnage. Arthur got some video and pictures so I'll have to get them off him and post them for you. It looked pretty cool. But I missed it and the reason was my foot. It hadn't been getting any better and was starting to get pretty badly infected so I decided to go to the hospital. Since it was the weekend I had to go to the ER and it took for ever. I waited around 3 hours to get maybe 10-15 minutes of care which constituted of the doctor looking at it and giving me antibiotics. I had to return the next day and got maybe 20-30 minutes fo care as the doctor pulled out a few cactus spines from the tender areas of my foot. Can you guess the cost of this? $865. Thats right. A big antibiotic shot, a prescription, a few local anesthetic shots and some spine pulling with a total of 30-40 minutes of care cost $865. Its rediculous. I have travel insurance but I have to pay the costs up front then get reimbursed. So I'll be out of a lot of money for a while. Thats the lsat time I go hiking around in some cactus bushes.

Anyway, the foot is getting better now and training is over so hopefully I'll start to make some money soon. Oh, ifg anyone wants to come out here and get some rafting in come on by and we'll hook you up. We can get you down the river pretty much for free if we set it up right.