Sometime in 2007
We went tubing down the Arkansas River in Pueblo.
So a couple of weeks ago I was reading the Gazette, it showed a guy floating down the river with NO cares in the world and I thought to myself WOW my family would LOVE that!!!! I told my neighbor about it and she said "lets do it on Tues. morning I have a dentist appointment at 3:30 I should make it back by then, OKAY!!! "
Tues. morning is here Dave says "call Debbie we need to go early because it's going to be 105 degrees in Pueblo and we want to get down there early."
I call Debbie KNOWING that she is NOT a morning person, and it's 7:15ish..... she answers the phone and I just start talking not knowing that she is still asleep, at the end of me talking she says "what time?"
I said "Dave wants to leave by 8:15, it's going to be HOT today"
she says "ok "...with a grumble and we hang up
So, I start reading the article again and I realize that it says that they only rent tubes on Sat. & Sun. I call the number on the paper, some guy answers the phone like I woke him up.....I said "Hello I must have the wrong number I'm looking for the Nature Center."
He say "No..no...no you got the Nature Center."
"Did I wake you up?" I said
"yeah, that's ok, if you are reading out of the Gazette they have the wrong directions." he then tells me the right ones....
and I say "so are you renting tubes today?"
"oh yeah, I'll be there at 10:00" he says still half asleep.
"ok we will be there." I said VERY excited about my day!!! But when I read the article some more I realized that there was NO shuttle so you had 3 options, have another car there, rent a bike or walk back!!!! Debbie is going so we will have 2 cars!!!
The phone rings "what did you say to me a minute ago?" Debbie says now a little bit more awake but not really.
"I said we have to leave at 8:15."
" go without us".....then at least 50 reasons why she wasn't going
I say back to her "ok....we will leave at 8:30 tell your kids to get going and we will leave then." after tackling all the 50 objections she said , she would be at our house at 8:30.
When she arrives I know that she is going to be cranking, she is not a morning person, just like I get cranking at night because I'm not a night person. All she says to me with her head down and scooting her shoes up the driveway is "really 7:15AM ?" (that's when I called her the 1st time)
We drive down there NO problems everyone in our car is singing and Debbie is behind us and we are flying down the Highway NO traffic, life is GOOD!! We get there at 9:40ish and we ask some lady where the rentals are, she tells us and says "I will go call Chuck he is always late." but I'm thinking well sister I already called him this morning I woke him up he will be here!!!!
10:15 Chuck finally shows up. Debbie and I both see the ankle bracelet that he is wearing, Now let me set this up a little bit. Debbie and I have NO patients at all and when you have 2 women that are not patient, 4 boys and then Dave who is talking to anyone and everyone that comes by, sitting in front of the garage waiting for Chuck for 35 minutes things aren't looking to good for Chuck!!!!. Not to mention there is 4 people in front of us and then now a crowd forming waiting for Chuck. Chuck opens this little garage, it has so much shit in it that he can't walk in he is taking things out 1 at a time to get to the tubes, Dave knows that I'm going to open my mouth at some point so to avoid that he offers to help and Chuck says no. Okay so the people in front of us is 4 tubes.......we are 7 tubes. Chuck figures out he doesn't have enough tubes so he walks back to his van and gets more tubes. Now I'm mad......if you are running a business and people are paying for tubes damnit have your shit ready at 10:00.
So now he is getting air in all of these tubes, which seems like forever, the kids are now fighting on the play ground with some other kids and rocks are flying everywhere. So Debbie starts yelling at them to knock it off and I'm sitting there calling Chuck a lot of BAD words. He finally gives us our tubes and then starts telling us what to watch out for, but he has NO ones attention because now it's 11:15 and we are hot and pissed off!!!! So Dave says he has a way to get all the tubes on the suburban and tie them off, well after that kicks his ass for about 10 minutes in the HOT....HOT parking lot, he gets it where he wants it and one of the tubes POP!!!! All you hear is air hissing, I said the tube just popped.......Oh my gosh, you have never heard so many bad words fly out of my husband mouth, and I'm not talkin under his breath, he was SCREAMING them!!!! We untie everything and get that one out of the middle, Debbie takes it back to Chuck. Dave and I get the tubes tied back up and we drive over to where Debbie is. Chuck is re-patching it AGAIN!!!! It is now 11:45 we get the tube from Chuck and we are all now dieing from the heat. We pile in the truck ....and you can hear the air coming out of the tube, I now wanted to hurt Chuck in VERY bad ways. Debbie say "I don't think I'm making my dentist appt." So Dave drives to town and goes to Discount Tire....NO TUBES!!! We then go to Auto Nation or something and he gets the tube, we then go to the gas station and blow it up, put it into the car and we are now on our way!!!! Dave's the MAN.
We get to the "put in" Dave ties everyone up who wants to be tied up...which is Dave, Matthew & Andrew. Dawson can do it on his own and Devon well ......Devon should do it on his own! Oh...Oh....Oh don't forget the cooler that Dave had to bring, that now has water. pop and a Ziploc bag of cherries with the keys to both cars in it! Off we go it was very pleasant, you know the usual Devon whining because we are going faster then him Dawson getting upset because we are leaving his brother....the stuff that you can block out and lay your head back and get some sun. The 7 of us are floating and Debbie kind-of falls back and she is sunbathing in her tube, I have Devon close to me and Dave is tied up to the 3 boys (Dawson wanted to get tied up because it was a little scary in some parts).
I see a tree in the water and I mean the whole tree, I don't remember Chuck talking about a tree, so I start yelling "tree.....tree" I then look at Devon and say "paddle" all of us start paddling except for Debbie who is catching the rays, the water started flowing really fast and I was looking back at Dave and knew that there was NO way he would get those boys away from the tree. At this point we are all screaming and I can see Debbie pick her head up, Devon is crying and screaming VERY loudly and then we hit the tree Dave hits first and all the boys are yelling, all of a sudden "BANG" Dave's tube pops, and then I yell at Devon "don't hit the tree," so he puts his hands out and is crying the other boys start crying and Debbie is trying to get to us. Dave was screaming stuff at me but the water was so strong that it kept pulling me down and Devon was out of control at this time, I hear this small voice come up "everyone calm down it's ok" Debbie says to Dave, once I heard her voice I no longer listened to what was happening over there I had to figure out how to get Devon out of here. I started feeling around the tree, "Devon I feel a branch, put your tube over the tree and hold on to it, then climb on the branch and get yourself over the tree."
"I can't do it....I can't do it" he says
I looked at him and said "there is NO other way." So I helped him up trying to keep my head up because I'm now in the middle of the tube and the water is pulling on me hard. He gets over and in the tube, "I tell him to calm down and don't let go of the tree until I tell you to, everything is going to be OK." I then realize that Dave has taken the kids out of the tree and has got them to a safe place, Debbie is now in the tree holding the cooler and is stuck not on the tree but if you don't know Debbie she is 5"2' and under a 100lbs so she is holding on to the cooler with her life and can't get out of the tree branches, so I pull myself to her and she says "we have to get Dave's tube out of the tree." I start pulling on the tube Dave is yelling at me "I'm coming just get out of the tree." I finally get the tube out, Dave says "go under that branch" so I went under the branch and I was free I yelled at Devon to let go and Debbie then went under the branch. Dave jumped into the water to catch us because we were still going pretty fast, he grabbed the cooler from Debbie and Devon wasn't paddling over to the side, so I went to him he was still crying so he couldn't paddle. Dave had to swim to get us because we were passing him. He gave me the cooler and grabbed the tubes and tried to stop us, I flipped over and tried to help but when I did that the cooler opened and all of our waters, pops and cherries with keys started floating down the river, I started screaming "David....David" Devon reached his hand out and got the bag of cherries not even knowing that the keys were in the bag just that "oh moms cherries"
We were all OK now, very tired and really trying to figure out what just happened, we rearranged the tubing and put Matthew on Debbie and down we went again. We got to the end at 2:40 this was a very long day. The kids all had their own story of what happened and Dave admitted to me that he really thought that it wasn't going to be good after we hit the tree, he thought we were going to have to be rescued. Andrew said that he thought we were going to die FOR SURE. Devon said that he would NEVER do that again. Matthew and Dawson both said that they would do it again. and for Debbie and I.......we said we are getting our own tubes, because we NEVER want to see Chuck the stupid FUCK again!!!! EVER!!!! We got home at 5:00 now it's time for this day to end......Thank the good lord for that!!!!!