The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today Girlfriend and I went kayaking for the first time. The only time I'd done kayaking was when I played Namco's arcade game Rapid River at Butlin's. That was just a screen though. This would be real.

First we went to a kayak hire place. They fitted us out with lifevests. Then they drove us to the lake where we would start our kayaking adventure.

It was a perfect day. Blue sky, green trees. The water was calm. The sun was shining down on my bald head.

Neither Girlfriend nor I had been kayaking before but weren't worried. How hard could kayaking be?

"The start's a little rough," said one of the organisers. "But once you get past that, it's smooth from there on."

"A little rough?" I said. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, it's nothing to worry about."

"Oh okay."

The kayaks were big, yellow and plastic. The first task was to take the kayak down to the lake. With Girlfriend holding one end of the kayak and I holding the other end, we carried the kayak between us, like the Chuckle Brothers.

Then you have to put the kayak into the lake. To do this, you have to walk into the water, dragging your kayak with you. Your feet and legs get wet. The water was cold. Brrrr. I wasn't going swimming today, that's for sure.

Finally you have to climb into the kayak. This was a bit tricky because you have to do so without the kayak tipping over. Plus we had bulky lifejackets. But we did it!

So far, so good.

"We forgot the paddles"

Okay, we forgot the paddles. No matter. I climbed back out of the kayak and back into the freezing water. I got the paddles from the shore. I passed them to Girlfriend. Then I climbed back in.

"And the bag"

Shit, we forgot the bag too. Once again I climbed out of the kayak and into the freezing water. I got the bag from the shore. I passed it to Girlfriend. Then I climbed back in.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Nope, that's it"

We were off.

It was okay at first. We were floating on a serene lake. I could imagine Tom Saywer, or the Canadian version of Tom Sawyer, lying under a tree while chewing on an ear of corn. Canadian Tom Sawyer would say, "It's nice to be oot, ay?" and give me a cheery wave.

But the other kayaks were heading to a river. The guy had told us to head to the river. "Head to the river," he'd said.

So Girlfriend and I headed to the river. With our paddles.

You know that feeling you get when you've made a mistake but it's too late to do anything about it? That was the feeling I got when I saw the river.

Because this was no ordinary river. This was Devil's River. Devil's River: that was its name. I'm not joking.

At the time, I didn't know we'd be kayaking on a river called Devil's River. No one told us. But if they had told us, maybe I would have had second thoughts before going on it.

The first thing about Devil's River is that the water is fast. We had been spoiled by the calm and placid lake earlier, where the waters were still. Now the water was angry. And hungry. Hungry for blood. Our blood.

The second thing were the rocks. Big rocks were scattered about throughout the river. I don't know who put them there. Maybe the devil himself put them here. Whoever put them there, it didn't matter. What mattered is that there was a good chance of our kayak hitting one of them.

Suddenly our kayak seemed to gain a life of its own, and its life's mission was to race down the river, whether we wanted to come or not. With the speed of our boat and the rocks, our pleasant Sunday cruise suddenly became a matter of life and death.

No one else seemed to be having a problem. They'd probably been kayaking a hundred times before. But not only had Girlfriend and I never been kayaking before, neither of us had a clue what we were doing. We were both inept city slickers. We worked on computers for a living. We rarely left the comfort of the city. We didn't know how to kayak.

It was then my training from Namco's Rapid River arcade game kicked in. All those times I'd played that arcade game at Butlins - it all came back to me. Just like how Jason Bourne knows how to fight when he needs to, I too know how to navigate a kayak through a rock-filled river when the time comes to it. Or at least I thought I did.

"Left!" I shouted.

Girlfriend and I jammed our oars into the river. The kayak turned left, narrowly avoiding a rock.

"Right!" I shouted.

We pulled our oars out of the river and pushed them into the water on the other side of the kayak. We turned right, missing another rock.

Foam and water were spraying up in our faces. Fuck you, Satan! I'm not dying today!

I'm sure I could hear Satan laughing as we headed right towards a big rock. The biggest of all the rocks.

"Turn!" I shouted. But it was too late. In the few moments before the collision, I only managed to make things worse by sticking my oar in the water and turning the kayak to the side. This made the kayak hit the rock side-on, with as much of the kayak as possible.

Suddenly I was underwater. Sounds were muffled. I couldn't see. Darkness, bubbles and foam.

I saw daylight above me.

I stood up. The water was only waist-deep. So much for drowning then.

Girlfriend was okay too. We were both drenched though. Our clothes stuck to our bodies.

I saw our bag floating in the water so I grabbed it and threw it to the safety of the river bank. There were $600 worth of electronics in that bag - two iPhones and an SLR camera - and the rucksack they were in was soaking wet.

Our kayak and oars were floating on without us. The kayak didn't care that we weren't in it anymore. If anything, the kayak was lighter without us in it.

But luckily another couple stopped our kayak and oars and brought them back for us.

We got back in the kayak - without tipping it over - and, with gritted teeth, we carried on.

But right after that rock, the water became calm and still again. Poseidon had gone back to sleep. Satan had had his chuckles for the day and had gone back to hell to torture someone else. So I don't know why we couldn't have just started at that point and skipped the rapids part altogether. Then again, I don't own a kayak rental company.

Girlfriend wasn't talking to me. She was pissed off because she was wet and her iPhone no longer worked. I don't know what she hated more: that she was soaking wet or that she wouldn't be able to play Candy Crush for the rest of the trip.

It was a shame because the rest of the kayak trip was fine. Great, even. The river curved around like the Devil's tail, except unlike the Devil's tail, it was beautiful. The river was a black mirror. Boreal forest on either side, spruces and pines that were wholesome and pure shades of green. The air tasted so fresh you could clean your teeth with it. There was no sound at all except for the soft thunk-swish of my oar in the water. Thunk-swish. Thunk-swish. (Girlfriend had stopped rowing at this point so she could have two hands free to sulk better.) Overhead the sky was blue. It was just what I had imagined Canada to be. Now I could imagine I was a Canadian Mountie, patrolling the river for signs of maple syrup smugglers.

Also, what makes the forests grow so green and healthy in Canada? Is it the lack of car pollution? I don't know.

Then my iPhone vibrated. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was working!

The same couldn't be said about Girlfriend's phone, however. Hers was well and truly dead.