While Sue is heads-down planning her trip to London, I have turned my eye to the whitewater rafting portion of our trip to the Southwest.

Who knew that doing an overnight whitewater rafting trip would require a 13-page preparatory document?  I’ve seen articles in Scientific American less detailed than this.  The only thing that seems to be missing is a schedule:

Wake at 07:30

Brush teeth 07:32 (3 minutes)

Wash face 07:35 (2 minutes – 30 second to dry face)

etc…

Anyway, me being me, I read the entire thing. (Steven is very bored at work these days.)  The section on what to bring was fascinating…

Not surprisingly, they recommend a safety strap for your sunglasses, quick drying shirts & pants, sunscreen & a hat (with a string or hat clip).  One thing on the list caught my eye….”Gloves for protection while gripping holds on the boat”…hmm…I hadn’t thought that one through…I guess I will need to hold onto the boat.  Now, they do have a recommended outfitter, so I could get them there…but what fun would that be?   Off to the Googles I go!

After a bit of poking around, I found that there is an entire class of gloves made for sailing which have padded palms, are quick drying, and come in full-or half-finger.  As you would expect from the interwebs, there isn’t a single source of truth nor agreement on the best gloves. However, I seem to have found the Gill Deckhand gloves on a few lists and so that is what we are going with.  Full-finger gloves (which by the way don’t have a full finger on the index finger so you can play with your cellphone while trundling down the river) because I figure we can always cut them down to half finger if they are too warm, but can’t make the half finger ones longer if they are too cold. (This man is so smart.)  Here is a link to Sailingworld.com’s review of them.

Into the Amazon basket they go…along with waterproof covers for our cellphones, safety straps for our sunglasses, a small flashlight (I know I have one….but where the hell did I put it???).

One more item caught my eye…”Major credit card and photo ID in case of evacuation”…well that’s a bit worrying isn’t it?

Finally, a few other words of whitewater rafting wisdom:

“Weather is always present on a river trip.”

“A smile is a curve that sets a lot of things straight.”

Should be good fun.