Ramming Speed
My deepest and most sincere apologies to Bloc Party for bastardizing their lyrics for the sake of a ridiculously horrible blog post title. I’ll show myself to the door.
Last week JC and I figured it would be a good idea to drive to Blythe to visit G Snide because any time you can make a trip to a 115 degree desert you have to lock that up. I left SB around 7pm, met JC in Glendora about two hours after that and around midnight we pulled into Paradise, aka Blythe, CA.
There is not very much to do in Blythe because most of the year the temperature is seven billion degrees but luckily for us a 5 hour Deliverance style float down the river on inflatable rafts accompanied by a cooler of beer was most definitely in play. I took these pics with my snorkel camera, which survived the trip pretty well, certainly better than Greg’s sunglasses, my sunglasses, a full bottle of Dos Equis and JC’s iPhone. So while the total trip is basically free the mighty Colorado did claim $250 worth of our goods but that probably says more about the three of us than it does the actual river itself. The river is basically a class zero rapids—a steady 5 mph current with nothing much else to speak of in the way of turbulence, unless you count the yokels who are always good for a JetSki drive-by splashing. However, don’t let the lazy river fool you, rafting is a lot of work. The river is a couple hundred yards wide and you easily ping-pong back and forth a few times so whenever you want to go somewhere else it’s a paddle sesh. Luckily I am essentially the world’s strongest man so it’s no big thing but if you’re not in shape you will have some serious arm burn by the end of the day.
Rafting might seem like a fairly straightforward endeavor (blow up raft, jump in raft, float) but there’s a little bit of strategy that goes into it–first 
of all you have to make sure there are no major sporting events going on that day that might interfere with being away from a keyboard or a TV for hours. Secondly, you need two cars, one that you leave at the bottom of the run and then another at the top where you launch. You may be tempted at some point to leave the keys to car #1 inside car #2. It’s best to resist this urge. You’ll also want a waterproof case to keep your keys dry because wet car keys don’t work. Ideally this waterproof case will also be large enough to hold JC’s iPhone but if it’s not you’re better off jamming the phone up your ass because (as we learned) stuffing it inside a sunglasses case that is placed inside the cooler of beer doesn’t work very well. Good thought though, JC. Well planned. Other than that it’s pretty much just steady as she goes for somewhere between 2 and 10 miles, we really had no clue how far we went, rivers are weird man.
Make a run for the border
Any good river float should be ended with a trip to Quartzsite, Arizona for a meal at Grubstake (ignore the review from William H from El Segundo, he is obviously a jackass). Grubstake is unreal and this was my second tripacross the border strictly for the amazing fish and chips (yah, in Arizona, I know I know) and freaking blue light special deals. When we walked in the owner/chef and sometimes waiter told us as long as we all ordered the same thing he would give us a free pound of you-peel shrimp. Yes, please. The owner guy is from Scotland or England or something and he is sort of badass.
And that’s how you do it, ladies and gents. Was able to catch the Laker game on the radio (they lost) and got updates from G Snide on the Dodger game (they won, extras) on the way back Sunday afternoon while we all had visions of Stephen Strasberg and the baseball draft dancing in our heads. It was a long drive. It was hot. We had no iPhone. Did I mention it was hot? It was.
LOCAL
A River Runs Through It
