Petiter the Protector

Day 81

Today was a day of relaxation in the blistering sun attending the Sawtooth Music Festival near Stanley. Aside from the decent music (none of which blew me away) this music festival, more than any of the other maybe 3 music festivals I’ve ever been to, had the most gorgeous backdrop of any event I’ve been to. The stage was set so that while you watch the various performers you get to look at the Sawtooth Mountains, their jagged spires creating an amazing horizon. Stacey did some dancing during the event, but mostly we sat in the sun, drinking Fat Tire from cans (no glass allowed!) and eating the food we brought with us. It did pour for roughly half an hour, at which point the stage was cleared for fear of lightning strikes, and Stacey and I sent Mike to go fetch an umbrella from the car. By the time he got back he was soaked and Stacey and I were hiding underneath someone else’s canopy. When the rain stopped and the sun came back out I’d wished that I hadn’t hid from the rain since a soaking wet shirt would have been nice after the fact.

And since I’ve been in Idaho now for a few weeks I saw a bunch of people that I know and got to say hello to. It was strange. I don’t feel like I live here, but man, do other people make me believe that it’s at least a possibility.

We camped in the backyard of one of Stacey’s friends in a two person tent. There were three of us. And since we were in such close quarters, Stacey laid out some ground rules:

1) No nakedness.

2) No cuddling.

3) No hairy butts.

These rules were unfair - skewed toward the comfort of everyone except me. But I begrudgingly abided nonetheless. Three funny things happened that night after we’d called it a night: 1) At roughly 1am another group of people arrived, Stacey woke up, unzipped the door enough to peek outside, and claims that she saw a boob. I attempted to confirm the sighting, but could not. 2) At roughly 4am a party started outside the other group’s tent, and there was quite a bit of talking about vodka. 3) After being rudely awoken by a helicopter, we stepped out of our tent and found a passed out man sleeping on the lawn without a tent or a car, or (as far as we could tell) any reason to be there at all.

Day 82

I knew before even seeing the strange man passed out in the grass that today was going to be a great day. It started off with the remaining donut holes that we hadn’t finished the day before, followed by meeting up with Billy to go whitewater rafting on the Salmon River. Rafting is a personal favorite of mine, and I was fairly geared up to prove how amazing I am at paddling and being awesome at rapids. Our guide was Ben, picked because of his beard (Stacey’s request) for safety reasons (Stacey’s logic). See, if our guide has a beard he’s more likely to know what he’s doing, more likely to be good looking, and more likely to keep us safe from the beardless mongrels roaming about on the river. And, in an unlikely twist, he was the only guide with a beard, so we knew we had chosen wisely. When he came to give us life vests I asked him if they come in different sizes, to which he responded “no.” I clarified that I was petite, to which he responded “we can tighten that up for you.” And thus, on the river, on this day, I became Petiter, the smaller of the rafting participants.

But in the water I proved that being Petiter wouldn’t hold me back. At one point we were surfing this rapid - essentially pointing out raft upriver and getting kind of stuck in the wave - and this stupid kayaker comes out of nowhere headed straight for our raft. So I did what any sane person would do: I stuck out my paddle and tipped him over so that he didn’t interfere with our surfing. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts, but come on, the guy was probably going to ruin our wonderful day in the sun on the river, and I was protecting us. It was an incredibly fun day of hanging out while floating a beautiful stretch of Idaho, getting to know Ben (who (non-verbally) picked me as his favorite), who is from Maine and just out for the summer, and laughing at all of our silliness. The only downside to the whole day was that the rapids really weren’t that hard and we didn’t have any beer left over from the previous day to make the rapids a bit more fun. Mike miraculously managed to fall out of the raft despite the lack of rapids, but that just added to the laughing and fun having. At the end of the day I made sure that Ben ranked us in terms of rafting abilities (and maybe some intangibles). Final score: 1) Petiter, 2) Stacey, 3) Mike, 4) Billy. The only anomaly to the whole ranking thing was that Billy and I were on one side, while Stacey and Mike were on the other. Stacey created this setup to ensure equality of both sides. However, the rankings proved just the opposite of her theory that Billy was the strongest while I, Petiter, was the weakest. At one point Ben even had to tell Billy and me to stop paddling so hard so that the other side (the crap side) could match us. Despite Stacey’s insistence that she was far superior me and that Ben’s rankings couldn’t possibly have been accurate, the pictures taken of us proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was victorious in this made up game of ridiculousness. Ben was actually a cool dude though, and told me that I have a place to stay if I make it up to Maine. Could be a nice option when I get to the east coast. Rafting, even without difficult rapids, is one of the best things I can think of. I’m starting to think that I should look into being a guide one of these days. Show people what Petiter can do.

** Note: Because of the incident on the river in which I may have knocked over a seemingly innocent kayaker, I now have two potential enemies from my time here in Idaho. The other is a hobo who I nearly ran over with my rental car, and who screamed obscenities at me because he doesn't know how to follow the rules of the road. I'll be lucky to leave this state with only a chipped tooth.