You’re Spending Your Vacation Whitewater Rafting?
9 Things to Say to Your Co-worker Who Doesn’t Get It
Not everybody in your office is going to understand why you want to spend your vacation in the wilderness floating far-off rivers. Here’s what to say to your co-worker who doesn’t get it…
1) You’re whitewater rafting; it’s not meandering canoeing. It’s not the same as an afternoon paddling gently across your brother’s neighbor’s pond and back to the house before lunch. Your vacation will be filled with Cataract Canyon’s wild snowmelt water in your face, while gripping safety lines fiercely as you drop into Big Drop Two.
2) Life is too short to spend your whole vacation by the hotel pool, always within arm’s reach of your squawking cell phone. You don’t want to hear highway traffic and step gingerly over hot cement to retrieve your cocktail. You want some adventure, some adrenaline, as well as some real quiet. And that, my friend, can all be found when you’re rafting through places like the Gates of Lodore on the Green River.
3) Why go to Disneyland and jockey for your place in line, standing and waiting for an hour to gain some five minutes of minor thrill? Why not go somewhere really wild, where few people go? You want to see rarely-visited ancient ruins like the native granaries of the Yampa River, or the cliff dwellings of the San Juan River.
4) You want to see stars. Not just the North Star and Sirius because they show through your cityscape’s lights. You want to really capture the details of the summer constellations. You want to study the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, the graceful implied cross of Cygnus the Swan, and poor Cassiopeia’s upside down fate. You want to be starry-eyed.
5) You’re pretty sure hotel security won’t let your kids ride an inflatable kayak through the Bellagio water feature in Las Vegas. Killum Rapid on the Main Salmon is a much better, rowdier ride, anyway.
6) Considering the fragile fine china and delicate linens, you can’t start the same caliber water fight at your in-laws house as you can while floating in the high summer’s heat of the Grand Canyon.
7) You want the hairs on the back of your neck to rise as you watch a black bear fishing. And there aren’t as many black bear sightings in downtown New York City as there are on the Rogue River in Oregon.
8) The Washington D.C. Smithsonian art scene, while impressive, doesn’t have the same effect as the mysterious Sheepeater Indian Owl Man on the Middle Fork Salmon.
9) There is no hotel air conditioning as delicious as the spring pre-rainstorm breeze on the Main Salmon.
A whitewater rafting trip is a different kind of vacation. Feel free to take a cue from any of these things to say to your co-worker, because not everyone gets it like you do. You’ve got the inside scoop.
Related Articles:
How to Sell a Rafting Trip to Your Non-adventure-loving Family
7 Reasons to Make the Leap to a Multi-day Rafting Trip
Top U.S. Whitewater Rafting Destination for 2014
