The kayak flipped over and I hit my head on the bottom of the river. After a few lengthy seconds of flopping around as if I were a wet bird, I resurfaced only to discover my helmet was covered in a thick layer of mud. Not your average I-stepped-in-a-puddle-mud. I’m talking about the kind of mud you find beneath the garbage cans around the side of the garage that have been laying on their face in the ditch full of mucky waste.
So what do I do besides try to flip the kayak again and get my head wet to rinse off the river grime? I rocked to the left. Rocked to the right. Then finally after a few sways in both directions, the kayak flipped over. This time I fell face first splashing my helmet into the fresh water. I felt the mud rinse free of my hairline. I felt it spread out and disperse away from the tough yellow shell of the helmet. It was beautiful.
But as I climbed back to the surface, I felt something slap my nose. Then again it slapped my forehead. All of a sudden I found myself paddling upstream, white caps over the flowing water. Salmon were giving me a beating.
Just then a bear splashed through the river’s edge grabbing one unlucky scaly son of a bitch, ripping into its flesh. I tried turning around but the water’s power was too strong. So strong the kayak ended up flipping over and I fell into the shallow water, cracking the helmet straight through to my head on the rocks below.
I woke up in the ambulance with dry clothes and red gauze wrapped around my skull.
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