When I was in high school, a new community (Daybreak) was built about 10 minutes away from my house. My girl friends and I went to check it out and we discovered a little man-made lake in the middle of the neighborhood. Later, we were looking through my garage and we found one of those little kid rafts you can pump up... the ones you get at Target for about $30. Lake + Raft... It didn't take long for the raft to become our new best friend.
The first time we played on the raft, Maddy and I blew it up, stuffed it in her car, headed to daybreak at night, got freaked out, came home and decided to do it more often.
Since that day, we have taken the raft down the Jordan River, to Daybreak many times, to fountains and ponds on campus, in pools at apartment complexes, to Nude Lake (feel free to ask), and any other puddle, pond, river, pool, or lake we could find.
About a year after our first rafting experience, I was talking to some of my guy friends. They said they were going sailing (this was probably my senior year of high school). A little confused because we live about 15 hours away from any beach, I asked what they meant by sailing. They explained that a few guys in the group had some little kid rafts that they took to ponds around the city.
Were we destined to be friends? Yes.
After many failed attempts to get the raft past my mom and into my college apartment, I finally got it down at BYU my freshman year. Some of my high school friends and some of my college friends still would play on the raft with me. The raft got beat up, and we patched it so many times! What a champ that thing was!
The next year all my friends went on missions or to different universities. I brought the raft home with me for the summer, my mom found it, and threw it away because it had a hole in it. Mom we seriously could have patched that.
My rafting days were over for a while and I was not happy because of it.
So
Saturday, May 21, 2011
It was the only day in the last week and a half that it hasn't rained all day. Gavin took me to Olive Garden for dinner and when we came home it was getting dark but was still nice outside. "Wanna go rafting?"
We went to his garage and found his old raft that hadn't been used in over 2 years! We drove over to the golf course at about 10 pm and snuck the raft onto the golf course pond. It is in the middle of the city, but the pond is surrounded by trees so it feels like you are somewhere else. We brought blankets, a portable DVD player, Pirates of the Caribbean, cuddled up and watched Pirates in the raft on the pond at the golf course.
Top that for a date!
P.S. Trespassing is only a minor offense, right? Please don't tell.
