Once again this year Emily and I joined Nicole and Cody on the annual Deschutes River Rafting trip! This year Martin and Shannon, Ian and Colleen, and Sarah and Adam joined us as well making it officially a couples trip this time! After some debate we decided to leave early on Saturday morning to make it to the Warm Springs put in by 11am on Saturday. Read on for more photos and details.
We picked up Ian and Colleen in Sandy on the way and would have made it on time had it not been for my lead foot going 85 miles and hour through the Warm Springs Reservation. Officer Roth, clearly in training, pulled us over. He was super nice and I pretty much knew I was getting a ticket as soon as I saw the other officer giving him advice behind us, but I was definitely in the wrong in a 60 mph zone so I knew I was screwed. 
But, lucky for me, when he came back he informed me that because it was on Reservation land it wouldn't count against my license in points and my insurance company would never find out. We even joked with him about it being Ian's last name as well. Still, the $250 ticket was painful. Felt like our nearly free rafting trip with friends had turned into an expensive guided one for us!
At the put in we were pretty quick prepping the rafts with our gear bags and plenty of booze and cans of beer. Without Ben there I knew this would be slightly less of a booze cruise which I have sort of grown out of anyway. Martin and Shannon loaded up their oar boat with most of the gear and Nicole and Cody guided their own rafts respectfully with Sarah, Ian, Colleen, Emily and I joining Nicole. We had beautiful weather and were enjoying our wonderful float past fly fishermen and diving ospreys when we came upon.... THE PIRATES!
This group of older rafters from Seattle were clearly a group of bartenders and strippers. They were all dressed as pirates and were definitely tore-up drunk. Several of the girls were topless having a great time and one girl had two guys clearly trying to slide into third base with her as sh was peeing off the back of the raft in clear view as we very closely bumped into them... yeah.. awkward and we all did a double take on that one! One of those things it takes a while to erase from your memory. Fortunately, they seemed to be a merry group of happy pirates who were happy to share their drinks with us. Perhaps that was a bad idea to take them up on.... ahhh hind sight....
Throughout the day we played hopscotch with the pirates as we took our lunch breaks at separate times and they were always partying hard as we passed each other. At one spot We all took turns back flipping off a raft and Emily got a chance to try out Martin's oar boat with Nicole in big Eddy where we took out for the night. Oh, and Nicole found a great 'Merica Flag trucker hat in the river... not sure where that ended up at the end of the trip though! 
We had the entire campsite to ourselves for about 45 minutes until another big group of people began to arrive and set up tents around us. This group was clearly drunker than we were and as Emily and I were laying in our tent we began to hear a really obnoxious dude talking rudely to what appeared to be his girlfriend. At first I thought maybe he was imitating a funny movie or something but then when I paid closer attention I realized he was actually being a total drunken douchebag to her. He was repeatedly calling her stupid, as well as a few other choice words while she was apologizing softly for choosing what he clearly considered to be a poor camp spot. 
After throwing tent poles at her and calling her a few more choice words I sat up, poked my head out the tent and said, "hey asshole, if you are going to continue treating your girlfriend like shit, you can move the fuck away from us because we are sick of listening to verbally abuse her with your douchebag comments". His jaw dropped as he stumbled in his drunkenness to gain his footing in the sand. His reply clearly summed up his intelligence, "well you're stupid". Then the Back to the Future Biff look-alike meathead just stared threateningly at me, all the while wobbling back and forth. It didn't take long for three of the guys from the group to come over and drag him away. Emily and I both told the girl she should leave him on the river. 
Shortly after he was dragged away the guys came back and profusely apologized for his behavior and told us they didn't know him and it was their first, and would be their last, trip with him. We told them to just keep an eye out for the girl and to keep her safe and preferably away from him. For the rest of the evening Biff, as I like to call him, remained belligerent and sequestered by his group to their side of the campsite despite him glaring over at me the entire time. Although I've never kicked anyone's ass before that guy was about an inch away from it. 
That evening we Martin got out his guitar and Cody and Nicole brought out their usual farm fresh meat for dinner! Ian and Coleen even found the cutest baby owl sitting in a branch next to their campsite. We walked over to check him out and he didn't even flinch as we took photos of him, even a couple flash ones. He just sat right above our heads and looked down curiously at us. 
I think Cody as almost as excited as I was to potentially fight Biff next door if we needed to, and I doubt his group would even lift a hand to stop us by the way they talked about how awful he had been on the trip so far! But, after a full day of sun and drinking we all were pretty tired so we dispersed to our tents rather early around 10pm I think for a good nights rest. It was the best campsite I'd been to on the Deschutes with a really nice outhouse and plenty of room. We will have to remember it for next year!
On Sunday we awoke to yet another beautiful day on the Deschutes. Biff and his group left as we were eating a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes if I remember right.... Highlights of the day include a naked Cody running between rafts, a very drunk Shannon killing a huge slice of watermelon, lots of drunk antics, plenty of sun, and some beautiful grazing horses up on a steep hillside. We never did see the pirates again as they had floated by our campsite the night before trying to make it much further down the river in one day. At lunch we did however somehow catch up to Biff's group who we waved to as all but Biff were cool people. 
This year we passed by the cliff jumping spot and also didn't bother to go to the underwater water slide as we had all done that plenty of times before. Last year I even sprained my ankle there! We easily cruised through all the "big" class III rapids and decided not to stop at Maupin, although I believe Ian and a few of us did hang our assess off the side of the raft for all as we floated by... hehe.
At the takeout we unfortunately ran into Biff again. He was again being belligerent and I had been drinking so I started to mouth off when I probably shouldn't have about him being a real winner. We clearly heard people in his group say to him that this was his first and last trip with them. When he started to get grumbly towards me two guys pretty much threw him in the back of a car and told him to shut the fuck up. This was good and also slightly disappointing as I really wanted to take a swing at him and teach him some manners.. oh well. 
We had paid a shuttle company to move our cars to the takeout for us but I didn't realize there was 3 levels of parking so it took me a while to find the Prius and I thought they had forgotten our car! Finally, we did find it and I felt kinda stupid for not spotting it. A big thank you to Cody and Nicole for organizing the trip and pretty much taking care of all the food and supplies! It's always great going on pretty much a guided professional trip with them for simply the cost of shuttling cars and booze! Em and I love everyone on the trip and can't wait till next year to do it all again, hopefully without a face-to-face pirate crotch experience or Biff!
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