Showdown!!!

Right so I have to start this post by apologising from the for the blatant lack of quality in my recent posts, especially the last post detailing the thunder booze cruise through the gorge and everyone visiting. I really didn't do the whole thing the justice it deserved. Needless to say the thunder cruise was epic even if my account of it was severely lacking. The trouble is that I was pretty worn out and tired by the whole weekend and the lead up to it so I really wasn't that inspied while writing the posts. So once again sorry to all involved and those of you who took the time to read the post. Now having said that, I've had a couple good nights rest, well as good as they get around here, and whats more I have a story that is truely worth detailing in all its glory. So sit back and relax, it might take some time to tell but it's worth it so enjoy.

So I'd been working pretty hard the last couple of days. I had a full day trip on Monday, a double slam on Tuesday and another full day on Wednesday, yesterday. To top it off they were all on oars and I wasn't doing to well with tips. I attribute that to shaving off my moustache but oh well. Yesterday went better but I had a bit of excitement in spikebuck rapid. I parked the oar boat on picnic table rock with a four load up front. This is the rock that everyone wraps boats on and has trouble with. We had to pivot the boat off by loading up the front, while highsiding. It was graceful like ballet, the nutcracker christmas special had nothing on us with moves like this. The boat got vertical on its nose catching water on the upstream tube before she spun around, still vertical on her nose. Mike in the boat behind us thought we were flipping for sure but I had the boat tamed like a purring pussy cat and she settled down nicely so I could row away like a champ. Oh yeah, it was like poetry in motion. But that is not the real story here, it's just a prelude to the main attraction. Mainly it was cool and I wanted to share it with you.

So when I got back to Echo base I jumped in a car and headed downtown to go to an internet cafe so I could write my paper for the conference that I'm going to back in California. It's due on the 30th so its getting a bit critical. I put in a good couple of hours before heading back to Echo. It turned out that the drytop I ordered had arrived and on top of that, the boys were going out on a booze cruise down the bighorn. So I jumped on the trip and took Pickett's pop to paddle and test out the new drytop. We had an oar boat, a paddle boat, the mini-me and me in the kayak. Things were going ok and everyone was having a good time having a few brews and enjoying the river. We made it through the first few rapids and I had a beer in the float between the rapids. Aaron decided he was going to try and ride the front of my kayak so we gave it a shot. We wobbled for a while but inevitably we went over. It took a while for him to get untangled from the boat before I could set up the roll. My first roll was strong but I rolled into Aaron who was right next to the boat so I didn't make it. The next attempt I rolled up into the raft. I tried a good couple more times but I was gettin gpushed under the raft so i ended up having to swim. So my expedition wasn't starting too well. It didn't really matter too much. The swim was easy, it just annoyed me that I swam. I thought I was getting quite good and swimming in flat water isn't really what I want to be doing, regardless of the fact that I was rolling up into a raft.

We carried on down the river and I had decided to not only paddle the pop to make things interesting but also take some more interesting lines in the rapids. So at spikebuck I took the left line up top and though the bottom. I caught a few rocks and some bad water and ending up upside down again. Shit. I got my roll ready and hit it. It got me all the way up but I did the full 360 barrel roll after hitting some stuff right as I got up. So upside down again, but this time I was dragging and bouncing along shore, upside down in water about a foot deep. I wasn't really in a position to roll so I figured I had to pop the deck again. When I reached for it I realised I had made it into deeper water and could probably have tried another roll, but it was too late. I already had my mind set on getting out of the boat. So there I was, swimming again. However, this time it was in a shitty shallow rapid bouncing off all kinds of rocks. What can you do? I swam the boat to shore and sat down truely pissed off with myself. I took a couple of minutes before setting off down river to catch up to everyone else hanging out at harvey's. I chilled out and had another beer, probably not helping my balance and paddling much but I figured I was in for a penny, in for a pound. Also I was curious to see how much it would really affect my paddling. So after feeling shitty for a while and being pissed off for swimming twice I got oevr it all. That was when we realised that Jaclyn had forgot to bring her keys for the shuttle car. They were at the put in with one of the other trucks. Great. Austin and her were in the mini-me so they decided to take off and just cruise the rest of the river and try and hitch hike back to the cars. So they took off and we hung out a little more.

After a bit we floated off to finish the river. It was getting quite dark by now. It was the first time I had paddled the rievr in a kayak in the dark so it was another thing that I was curious about to see how well I got on. I was a bit wobbly on all the easy flat water but I made it through the rapids just fine. It was kind of wierd. It was like I was paddling on my own even though I would wait around to make sure one of the rafts was near me as I went through the rapids, just for safety. But I pretty much knew they weren't going to do much for me if I swam or got into trouble. Not like other kayakers would do for me. I mean I knew if I got into serious trouble they would be there for me but I felt alone being the only one in a kayak. That combined with the dark made for a really surreal experience. I've paddled a river on my own only once before and I remember being quite worried about it even though it was the washburn and I was leaving one group and trying to catch up to another group. But last night was different. I guess I do know the water really well but still I was surprised at how comfortable I was with the feeling of paddling on my own. Anyway, we cruised down the river without much further drama. The only real drama had been the paddle boat, who were getting bitchy with eachother for not paddling when who ever was guiding needed it. Instead everyone was drinking beer, but they got over it.

The real excitement started when the paddling stopped. So like I said, we didn't have the keys to the shuttle car. That meant we had a lot of drunk people hanging around trying to organise everything. That's when Austin had the idea that while Jaclyn was hitch hiking to get her car we could deflate all the boats and roll them up and put them in the back of his truck. Aaron thought this was the stupidest idea ever and wasn't quiet about voicing his opinion about it. In fact he basically said that it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard and that Austin was an idiot. Okay, but he didn't stop there. He started calling him out for being a pussy, for being a bitch and that he would ass rape his sister when she came to visit. Basically saying everything he could to try and wind up Austin and he was doing a good job. There were some attempts to try and calm Aaron down but in the end no one thought either of them would actually do anything about it. So after about tem ot fifteen miuntes of abuse Austin was gettin greally wound up and ended up shoving Aaron to the ground. This didn't really do much to cool down the situation and Aaron got up and back in his face. At this point Chris came down from carrying a boat up to the road and took a different approach to everyone else who was just watching the show and got in the middle of them and tried to break it up. This ended up with Chris tackling Austin to the ground and Aaron trying to get in on top and dry hump them, or somethign like that. At this point I figured Aaron wasn't helping calm things down so I grabbed him by his life jacket and dragged him off them and threw him inthe river. This worked to cool things down for a least 30 seconds, maybe even more. I couldn't really tell, I wasn't timing the ordeal. In this time Austin went back up to the road to get away from Aaron. I thought we might have sorted things out with that. I had Aaron sitting on the boat and we almost had him chilled out. But no. As I said it lasted a good 30 seconds or more.

At this point Aaron started yelling more shit. I was keeping him down by the boats but the consensus was that it would be really cool if Aaron would kick Austins ass. I thought that this was probably not a good idea since Aaron was pretty hammered by now and would probably come off worse in any conflict but the boys said they would handle it so whatever. They went up the hill to the road and I chilled out down by the boats with a few of the guys who couldn't give a shit what happened at this point. Well things escalated a little bit and after hearing a bunch of comotion up by the road we went up to find that Austin had punched Aaron in the nose and broke it. Cale and Chris were playing doctor and were debating how to rebrake it to set it straight. So that was pretty entertaining. They actually did a really good job and his nose is pretty much straight. At this point we had some cars back with keys so Arthur, Jaclyn and myself took off to pick up the rest of the cars. In the time it took to run the shuttle Aaron decided to get Austin back and gave him a good elbow to the face and then everyone immediately tackled Austin to prevent him fighting back. So that's the scene we found when we got back after running the shuttle. Arthur took off pretty quickly with a car full of people, including Aaron. Jaclyn and Austin got into words and she took off in a big huff. Then Austin jammed out pretty quickly, I just had to make sure the mini-me was strapped down well enough along with the kayak and my gear. That left the rest of us to load Aarons van with both boats and then we took off. We packed the van full. He lives out of it so he built a bed in the back and had storage under it. Chris went under the bed, about ten people were on the bed and five more were up front riding shotgun. It was a cosy ride. I put on our summer theme song, Wagon Wheel and we had everyone singing along and for a second we could all forget the drama that had just occured and just shout out the song and enjoy the crazy ride. But that would all change once we got back to Echo base.

We pull in and start sorting out all the gear and the boats. We pretty much get everything sorted and I pull Aarons car up to its usual spot were it transforms from being a normal van during the day into high class, luxury house by night, right by the bunk house. I thought things would start to settle down. At this point I think Aaron had got what he deserved. He was winding up Austin, wouldn't let him go, got punched and broke his nose. They had straightened it out just fine and everythign was alright. They had both sucker punched each other and we were back home were, hopefully, everyone could go their separate ways and chill out or go to bed for it all to be water under the bridge in the morning but no, this is when it really got interesting. So I walk over to Aaron who is getting some medical attention from McIver on the bunk house porch. Right then Travis rolls up and says "Hey Aaron, Austins got a gun and wants to shot you. You should get out of here." Sweet, I love the good ole US of A. Everyone has guns, isn't it great. You can always be assued of your right to carry firearms for self defense. So we figure its probably a good idea to get out of sight. Right as we were walking towards the road, away from the bunk house, I see Austin down at the other end of the bunk house. A quick change of direction and we head over to the Whitewater bar next door by going the back way through the fence. The bar was closed so we didn't have to worry too much about other people. We did run into a few of the guys who kayak oevr there. We chattedd for a while and told them a bit of what was going on. Then Victor came over and everyone decided if someone with a gun was running around wanting to shoot Aaron we'd probably be best to move a bit further away. You know not near the inocent guys who were just hanging out that we chanced upon. So we moved away to the otherside of the bar and chilled out on some tables and just waited to see what happened. Victor was doing us the job of keeping us updated as to what was going on next door the whole time.

So what it turned out happened was that Austin was walking around with a gun in his belt talking about how shit was going to go down and don't get in his way or else you'll get it too. Sargent Cale USMC, trusted by everyone, friend of all and ever the peace maker, went up to him and tried to convince him to give up the gun. Austin reached for it and was about to give it over but changed his mind. Cale didn't. he went for the gun and after a bit of hand wrestling got it away from Austin. It turned out it was a pretty cheap gun with no safety and a round chambered, ready to go. Pretty lucky that it wasn't fired in the exchange. Oh and as a side note, the guns serial number came up as reported stolen in Missouri. So Austin no longer had his gun on him and someone called Andy, the big boss of Echo. He turned up and called the cops to sort things out. Before the cops show up we see Austin drive his truck away. Then two cops cars roll up. The whole time I was chilling out with Aaron next door. Eventually McIver rolls up and says the cops want to talk to Aaron so we head over next door. Andy is there with the cops and they talk to Aaron, get his statement and take a few pictures of his busted up nose. Austin is nowhere to be found. It urns out he drove off back Texas, oh yeah so I forgot to mention he was from Texas, go figure. So with almost everything sorted out for the night everyone is hanging around talking about it all. I manage to round up all my gear, which I had put in Austins truck to get back to Echo, everything including my new drytop but missing my helmet. Shit, but it does give me an excuse to get a new one which I have kinda wanted the whole summer. Anyway, everything is pretty much sorted out. It's decided that Aaron should go into town and stay in a motel, just in case Austin decided to come back. So Victor drives us into town and we get a room for the night. Bonus, I get to sleep in a bed, watch TV and have a shower and that was pretty much that.

So a pretty exciting day. Sargent Cale was the hero. He could set Aarons nose and disarm Austin, a regular Walker Texas Ranger bad ass. But it just goes to show that having guns around (which isn't allowed on Echo property in the first place) is really just a stupid idea. You get yahoo cowboys who think they need guns for self protection in case the boogy man comes to rob there trailer and all that happens is that a silly punch up turns into a full situation with guns and the police showing up. If Austin didn't have a gun there would have been a bunch of shit talking, a few punches and a bit of a scuffle and that would be that. We would all have gone to sleep after a bunch of drama and woken up this morning and it would all have been water under the bridge or at worst Aaron and Austin would just not talk to each other and avoid each other. Instead we have captain texas, the yahoo cowboy, who goes back to his trailer and pulls out a gun to try and make himself feel big and powerful trying to take the law into his own hands and what happens? He gets disarmed and loses his gun and flees back to Texas. He's lost his rafting job and is now probably wanted by the cops for a possible fellony offence of threatening to kill someone. So this gun which he intended for self protection has just backfired and put him into a potential fellony offence. I imagine this is probably the case for a lot of cases where people own guns for self protection. They get used in situations that aren't self defence just because they are available and around. This supports all my theories on why gun ownership is bad. I guess I'm not against gun ownership in theory, but in practice it just seems to escalate situations and get people into more trouble than they were in. Although I would love for people to be able to own guns responsibly I just don't know how its possible. Maybe if we just gave Texas back to Mexico a lot of these problems would be solved.