By Josie Barker
I love to travel. However, there’s something I love even more than traveling: travelling with my favorite person, Naomi Volinsky. So when Naomi and I planned to go to Tahoe together, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, there was one tiny problem: she planned a three-week trip to Israel the week we were scheduled to go up north. I begged my dad to change the days, but to my dismay, he said no.
I accepted my fate, preparing myself for a miserable, lonely, drab summer. Luckily, through an incredible twist of fate, my stepbrother–who was a huge participant in the organizing of this week-long excursion–had ankle surgery. Consequently, the entire vacation was rescheduled to accommodate him. His injury, although very unfortunate, was a miracle for me. Boom. The Tahoe trip was back on, Naomi was coming, and thank goodness, summer was saved.
Crammed in a car with my brother, father, and freaky friend, the four of us trek up north in the family’s tesla. After a day full of disgusting Dutch Bros drinks and greasy Taco Bell nacho fries, we arrive at the Airbnb. The house immediately greeted me with something I had never experienced before: an alarming number of dead animals staring at me from the walls. I have never been surrounded by so many mounted animal heads in my life. Bleh. Naomi had the misfortune of sharing a room with me and my messy manner, but I got the top bunk, the top bunk that felt like a slab of concrete on my already bad-back. I got tired of living in the same cabin with two middle-aged, passive aggressive millennial-joking men pretty quickly. Every time I would ask a question in that dwelling I would be met with a condescending remark from the echo generationals.
Despite my growing aggravation towards some of the inhabitants present in the vacation rental, I put everything aside because we had an awesome rafting trip planned.
At least, that was what I had been told.
Getting to the river was somehow its own adventure. Finding a singular bottle of sunscreen in that house felt like an archaeological excavation. I was told there was a dry bag, but upon arrival my dad said all belongings had to be left behind due to the severity of the stream. Big lie, I could have totally stashed my camera on that tube.
In my opinion, the company could have been organized better. The parking situation was very troublesome, primarily due to the fact that there was none. Additionally, there was no human station either. We all had to squeeze next to a line of porta potties while another family obliviously wandered the lot dodging the doom of being bulldozed by a herd of mini vans. The river outfitter was operated by a group of teenagers looking for a summer job, so you can imagine the atmosphere.
At this point, I should have realized that this was not going to be the relaxing river experience I had imagined.
Before this trip, I had no clue what rafting was. In my mind, rafting was essentially a more adventurous version of a lazy river. Some fourteen-year-old-looking employee stuffed all seven of us into a float that appeared to have been designed for approximately four people and handed us three paddles. Apparently, seven people, three paddles, and one inflatable tube were all we needed to survive several hours on a river. This ratio felt off. He snapped an off-guard photo of our pod and set us down the river. The waterway was packed with dozens of other paddlers, but soon enough the stream cleared up because all the other groups decided to enjoy their time at the river beaches rather than the water.
The website described the Tahoe tubing experience as having “small rapids,” which I interpreted as, “you will experience absolutely no danger whatsoever.”
This interpretation would prove to be incorrect.
Things were going well until around fifteen minutes in. My dad kept steering us into shrubs and eventually we almost capsized, causing the paddles to sink into the water. Olivia, Ryan’s girlfriend, jumped in after them, followed by Ryan. Ryan unfortunately severely jammed his right index finger upon diving into a rock. Now drenched and miserable, we all had to endure the rest of the three hour journey. On top of that incident, my dad and step-mom were picking fights the whole ride. Bad fights. My father, overly confident in his navigating skills, continued to steer us directly into more trees and rocks. At one point, Olivia was actually ejected from the float. What was supposed to be a relaxing afternoon on the river had somehow transformed into a three hour hostage situation orchestrated by Mother Nature. We cut out the part of the plan where we were supposed to enjoy our afternoon on the river bank and instead paddled as fast as we could to the end of the route. Eventually, we became completely wedged in a bed of rocks. There was no moving forward. There was no moving backward. There was only rock. Have you ever seen a ginormous gym junky of a man try to get a family of seven out of a strainer? Wow. Watching a grown man violently shake an entire seven-person float while we all sat helplessly inside was not exactly the peaceful Tahoe experience I had visualized. He got on all fours rocking the entirety of his body weight back and forth until he freed us.
There wasn’t even a point of using the paddles for the rest of the ride, the river did not care, clearly mother nature wanted me dead. Rock after rock, I watched my life flash before my eyes. As a die-hard atheist myself, I even said a prayer. That’s how concerned I was for the safety of my family. At this point, I genuinely thought I was about to become the subject of one of those two-minute TikTok videos with ominous background music and a speed-talking narrator describing the gruesome details of a devastating death. I could see the title flashing in my mind, “respected Tahoe rafting company watches as innocent tourists get bashed to death against river rocks.” Closing my eyes, and screaming for my life, I patiently waited for my demise.
Thankfully, we made it out alive. Despite the arguments, the rocks, the trees, the terrible mattress, the taxidermy, and my brief acceptance of my own mortality, I wouldn’t take the trip back. After all, I got to spend an entire week with my best friend, Naomi.
Next time, though, I’m taking the lazy river.