2 Stupid

We all do dumb things, make stupid mistakes. We leave ourselves wondering "what the hell was that?" from time to time. Some folks do it more often than others, maybe because they're more prone to dumb mistakes or maybe because they're more observant and honest with themselves about those dumb mistakes. Thankfully, I'm not too prone to dumb mistakes but I certainly do 'em right when I do - and I am too observant to miss them. I also have a memory like an elephant - I don't forget my dumb mistakes. My biggest dumb mistake in life was in high school. The fad at the time was to wear boxer shorts and nothing else on my legs. I was one of the cool kids, walking around school in nothing but boxers. I'll clarify, I was pretty cool until after school, at the bus terminal where a few hundred people were milling about waiting for various bus connections. My girlfriend & I hopped off our bus and we had a little make out session to say "good-bye" for the day. The stupidity of the mistake of wearing only boxer shorts to school was soon, uh, obviously apparent. My error was looking right up at me. The topper was that they were white boxers with little red hearts on them. They had been loose fitting 5 minutes earlier. In hindsight, I'm still not sure how I gracefully exit that one. Of course, there is the obvious, pro-active answer. But try telling that to someone in grade 12.

So, enter 2 stupid mistakes on this year's trip to New Zealand. In fact, day two of the trip brought stupid move #1. Amelia was lined up on a nice fish in a shallow, gravel trough. I was on camera and so set up the tri-pod to film. She closed things on her end and the footage wonderful. But the fish turned and came downstream and she followed, coming past me. I moved out of the way and stepped backwards. And, of course, I heard a crushing, popping sound of a really nice Helios 4 wt rod. It was the only rod we broke this year, but having it happen on day #2 is stupid, especially since the obvious preventative answer was to put the backpack on the ground and lean the rod against it.

Oddly enough, stupid move #2 happened on the 2nd last day of the trip. Before flying to New Zealand we ordered a raft from China. We were told that the raft would be shipped by boat the next day and arrive within 5 to 7 business days to CHCH. With that kind of promise, I wondered if the money was gone, or, if the boats did arrive, would it be a Wal-Mart special. It took considerable effort, emails, tele calls, but the rafts did arrive 4 days before we went home, over 3 months post - ordering. Our raft is now waiting for next year's trip. There's a hitch, of course. We took our raft out for a spin on a river near our friends' place. The first was a short float on a nice, summer day with him. It was wonderful. The next day we took her out on a section of water above what we'd done previous. It too was a wonderful float. In fact, we were beside ourselves for how amazing a piece of water was right beside where we'd been so many times. The river was in prime shape, the rapids just perfect, everything was just amazing, really.

And as we came out of the open gorge, there was a short rapid with 4 or 5 waves of about 2 or 3 feet. At left of the first wave was a log poking up, so my plan was to have us paddle over the first wave and skirt left to avoid the bigger water to the right as it was covered in willows. No sense in needlessly testing the raft's sturdiness on willow branches in the rapids. But as we drew near, the log at left began to look a little 'off'', 'not quite right', different somehow. The first wave looked great through - a big, white roller with a beautiful wave to have some fun and roll through. About 4m up from the wave, the log at left wasn't a log - it was a metal post of an old guard rail sticking right out of the water. As we made that discovery, the boat came up and over the big, white roller - which should have been amazing. It was amazing. As Sharron came over the rock, mid air, she saw another big metal post - hidden under the wave. And then the raft simply came down with a thud onto it. And we were stuck - harpooned and sitting like a donut with a stick in the hole in the middle of a rapid. We stood up sideways and rocked and pulled. In 10 seconds or so we were able to un-harpoon the boat from the post. But, instead of floating away from the hazard, as I sat back to paddle, my end wedged up. I was now on yet another metal post of a guard rail stuck in another rock in the rapid. This time I pushed off the rock wall beside me and we drift off. We got to shore and walked back upstream. All along the opposite side of the river, tucked under the waves and in the willows, were old guard rail posts with 2" cable running through. Clearly, the old hwy had sloughed in and the railing wedged into the river bottom.

It was a stupid mistake. Our raft has a pretty good tear through the pillowed floor. It can be repaired, but having it happen on the second float on the second last day of our trip - not something we hooped for. But the mistake was obvious and a good lesson to learn. Given how often and voraciously rivers flood in New Zealand, no matter how much you get into the rhythm and feel of a river, never take anything for granted. Farmers lose hundreds of KM of fenceline and thousands of fenceposts each year to flooding rivers, and at any time and any place they might stack up and cause one heck of a river hazard. Thankfully we always play the safest route and float rivers that are likely to fish well, meaning we avoid class 5 rivers. But in all these years of guiding and floating rivers, I've never come across a 500 m section of river with 30 or 40 guard rail posts stuck into rocks facing upstream, all connected by 2" cable like that. In fact, this is the first hole I've ever put in any inflatable boat - and we've owned quite a number of them.
As we said upon getting out and looking - even if we'd gotten out and looked at the first post, we wouldn't have seen the others in the waves as they were completely hidden by the waves. Had we looked though, my hunch is that we would have walked that boat around 'just in case' given what we saw downstream. It wasn't a hard paddle, not a scary river - in fact it was a fun river. Who knew? But it opened our eyes to the hazards waiting in New Zealand rivers. Waaaaay too much farming to go blindly into any other river. Why is this a stupid mistake? I think we've only walked about 5,000km of rivers in NZ - you think we'd have put 2 & 2 together to figure out that there might be a few hazards due to flooding and earthquakes in NZ.