Tubing Misadventures =)

Dina and Fallon drove down to Austin today so Dina could look for places to stay during her obgyn rotation. The first house we went to was in a ghetto neighborhood (not too safe), and the second house was in a cute, quiet little neighborhood and home to a 100 lb mastiff that couldn't stop growling at us. This didn't sit well with Fallon. Another dealbreaker was that the woman who owned the house smokes. So Dina thinks she might just stay at an extended living hotel.

After we left the second house, it took almost an hour to get to New Braunfels, but fortunately, Texas Tubes on the Comal River was not terribly hard to find. When we arrived on site, a man came to my window and asked, "Ready to tube?" before directing us to a parking spot. The three of us each spent $14 on a tube with a bottom (we thought that meant our butts wouldn't get soaked; we were wrong), and though Fallon advised against it, Dina and I brought our cameras onto the river. That soon proved to be a mistake; it started to rain, first a light drizzle that eventually progressed to some majorly heavy rain. Fallon and I were close to a shore (Dina got separated from us ages ago), so we managed to pull ourselves (and our tubes) out of the river. Dina continued to float downstream, so I went back in and helped tug her tube to shore. Thanks to all the previous rain, the river was deep and I couldn't touch the bottom sometimes. Once we were all on shore, we wondered whether to stop tubing right then and there (we'd only floated several yards downstream) or continue. The rain was stopping by this point. It was obvious that we wouldn't be able to carry our electronics downstream, so we swam across the river (with our tubes, of course) and I dropped off the cameras and Dina's phone at the front desk. After our things were safe, we continued our tubing adventure.

It was a very relaxing experience at first, just lying back and staring at the sky. Then we ran into the first chute, a sloped tunnel that shot us into another part of the river with lots of rapids. At one point our tubes got trapped in a circular current that pushed us back to where we just came from. Fortunately a man on the sidelines (possibly the guy who welcomed us to the tubing place) was around to push us back into the downstream current. There was another chute up ahead (and a sign that read "Weak swimmers please leave the water"), but instead of going down the chute, we went down a steep vertical drop. I was swept downstream but Fallon and Dina were stuck in the falls (a young kid later pulled them out), so I got out of my tube and stood in the water to wait for them. The current was very strong and almost swept me off my feet several times, but I managed to stay still until they caught up with me. Then it was more floating until we reached another chute. This time we went down the chute, but still wound up drifting in a circular current again.

There, we got separated again as Dina and Fallon got into the current before I did. I'm not sure what happened after that, but just as I got into the current (I think someone ran into me), my tube flipped over and knocked me into the water. The current was strong, but fortunately my feet were able to touch the bottom and I managed to grab on to a nearby ledge to keep from being swept downstream without my tube. I'd lost my water bottle, my shoes, my T-shirt (which had been resting in my lap), and my tube when it tipped over, but luckily nearby strangers recovered my shoes while my upside-down tube floated right in front of me. That was a close call; I'd been worried about the prospect of paying $20 for a lost tube. In the meantime, Fallon and Dina had grabbed on to a tree branch and were waiting for me to rejoin them.

By this time it was almost 3:00 pm, and we'd only covered half of the river. When we saw a sign that said, "Estimated time to the end: 1 hr" we were worried b/c Dina had to catch a flight back home at 6:00 pm. Then we saw a sign up ahead that said, "Public tube exit," meaning that we could leave the river at that point. The problem: we were across the river and the exit was approaching fast, so once again I went back in the river and helped pull the three of us to the exit. It was really tiring, and there were times when I thought we'd float past the exit and lose our chances of getting on land, but we made it. Then Dina lost her tube while climbing ashore and another guy downstream picked it up and brought it back. People on the river are so nice =) The three of us decided that though we had fun, that was enough tubing for the day, so we lugged our tubes up a flight of stairs onto the street and walked a block or two to the pick-up point (the shuttle was waiting, fortunately). I didn't take any pictures at the river, but I have a few bruises, cuts, and scrapes on my legs to remind me of this day.

In the end, we got Dina to the airport in time to make her flight, and Fallon and I had sushi with a friend of ours from college who was very amused when he heard of the numerous fiascos we had on the river (he's been tubing countless times). But now we know better, and the next time we go tubing (maybe we'll try the Guadalupe River instead of the Comal River), we'll be more prepared and have less accidents.