Tube Terrors: A Tale of Floating the Boise River

As I mentioned in my last post, one of my favorite activities is to float the Boise River. It is the right speed to relax and keep moving at the same time. It also has about 3 rapids that make for a little excitement providing you miss the big rocks that really can bruise the bum...not really hard to miss if you know what you are steering clear of.

So when I went to visit my sister this summer I really wanted to do this. We were a little uncertain about the logistics of it because normally we have two cars so one driver can park at the finish then drive with the other driver to the start. The problem was we only had one car this time. We thought about inviting others to join us but we didn't want to invite someone just for their car. Fortunately we discovered a shuttle that was relatively cheap that would take us from the finish to the start.

So, we drove to the finish, got on our suits and sunscreen, grabbed our tubes and waited for the bus. The float down the river is approximately 6 miles, I imagine the drive is a bit longer since you have to take the streets.

This river is also great because they provide air filling stations at the put-in area, which is great when you are carrying tubes on a bus. It would be crazy to have a bus full of people and inflated tubes and rafts. When we got there however, we discovered that our tubes were missing their valve caps.

At first we weren't concerned because tubes have valves that prevent the air from escaping unless you push on them in just the right way to release it, but when we started to fill the tires we discovered it was more difficult than it should be. Even when we were able to get some air in them the air wouldn't stay in! That is when we discovered the the stems were empty, there were no valves in them!

So there we were standing in only our bathing suits with two deflated tires and no way to return to our car. We were seriously debating if it would be faster/easier to swim down the river or walk back to our car (on the main roads in only our bathing suits I will remind you).

As we considered our options, like looking for a small rock to fill the hole. Then I thought there must be some caps people had dropped just lying around so we kind of walked around looking for whatever we could find that might solve our problem.

We saw that some people had abandoned some tubes that clearly had been through the ringer and were full of holes. There was clearly some attempt to patch them but, clearly the tires did not come through with success despite some serious duck tape usage. It seemed apparent that no one would be returning for them so we took the cap from the one that had one...they too were missing their stems or we may have taken them as well.

So while my sister blew up one tire that would have a cap I continued to look around. Desperate I ripped some of the used duck tape from off of the abandoned tubes thinking maybe I could tape mine. Then we discovered the cap was broken and had to use the duck tap for reinforcement on the cap...but I went and got some more old, used, abandoned tape on a tube for my tire.

In the end we had two tubes which we filled to capacity hoping that between the two of them we would be able to have enough air in at least one of them to get us both to the end of the journey...we did this knowing that the time might come very quickly and that we would be sharing one tube.

It was apparent that the duck tape alone did not work as well as the duck tape combined with the broken cap. As I sat on it in the water little bubbles came out of it and when I pulled it out of the water a small hissing noise could be heard. Knowing that our only other option would be to walk the roads in our suits we headed out on the water and prayed for the best.

It was a fun float, we talked as we tried to steer clear of the edges and avoid cliff and tree divers. We joked about how quickly we would be sharing a tube and when we would have to swim the rest.

Amazingly enough both tubes made it to the end and though a bit smaller than than when we began not too small that we had to take such drastic measures to swim or walk.

All in all the whole story may sound funny and be poorly told, but we laughed and amused ourselves by our McGalver-like abilities to make due with only used duck tape.

Floating the river once again came through as one of my favorite activities!