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It seems like summer has finally reached the northwest, and with the first good bout of sunshine I usually end up sunburning the crap out of myself. Sadly, I managed to do that on day two of Idaho last week.  Right now I’m starting to get my flake on, because there is nothing sexier than a woman who’s scalp looks like its snowing.

If you haven’t been reading my blog for long then you wont know about my little mishap with the waterfall last year while fishing with my family.  I was threatened with a life vest this time, or some children water wings if I was going to drink and fish this year.  Thankfully they were empty threats and I was once again allowed to fish and drink unmolested by misc floaty objects attached to my body. If you don’t feel like reading my old blog, here is the recap. I got drunk and fell off a waterfall. Don’t worry. It was just a little waterfall.

We got up in the early hour of 6 am, but by the time we got all the gear packed, and everyone rounded up it was nine before we reached the river.  Still early enough to be freezing cold, and the rainclouds looming overhead didn’t help much the temperature much.  My father has an inflatable raft that fits four people but since there were five of us he picked up an inflatable kayak for me and Curtis.  It was a little tippy, but we have been in one before and after getting everything settled we had a pretty easy time of it.  So we settled into a routine, stop, fish, drink, move on. I really tried to not start on the drink part until later, but when everyone else is doing it I wanted on that bandwagon.

And yes, if my family jumped off a bridge I would totally jump too. As long as they had beer anyway.  I love fishing with my family. It’s so relaxing. Everyone does their own thing, and if you need someone to babble to or run off into the bushes to pee with they are there for me.  Of course we have the obligatory fish-on moments. I even managed to catch two of the smallest fish in the river myself.

About halfway through the day it happened. You know that waterfall that tried to make me meet my doom last year?  My father told us to paddle to the right bank before it, and we would stop for a bit.  The water is pretty high this year and moving fairly fast. Curtis tried to paddle to the bank but the current started pulling us closer to the center.  It’s not deep, and so I tried to put my legs out to just haul us to shore. One leg out but the other got caught, in the mean time we were getting closer to my waterfall that I realized was chuckling evilly.  Nothing me or Curtis could do managed to stop our slow, and after you saw the bruises on my leg, painful descent over the falls and to our watery dooms.

So what is my family doing while we are drifting slowly off the edge? Standing on the shore telling us to stand up.  Really?  Seriously? Just stand up?

My sister finally noticed our plight and leaped into action by pulling us to safety.  I of course swooned over her as soon as I was no longer going to drown.  Also, there really isn’t much of a chance of that happening, but I’m a bit of a drama queen if you hadn’t noticed.  Unfortunately we had started to tip a bit in the water before we got rescued and that meant we were soaking wet.  I had thankfully put my camera and cell phone in a sandwich baggie, and they managed to stay dry, but the rest of me however was as soggy as a sandwich left in the bottom of a cooler.  We totally did that once.  Not very smart.

That’s when the sunshine came out.  It was total luck.  I was dressed in several layers, and it was so wonderful to strip all that soggy clothing off and wallow in the first bit of sunshine I had seen in weeks.  That was when the unfortunate sunburning occurred.  Before the afternoon was out I was a a lovely beet color.  It was still worth it.