This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
by Karen Serjeantson It’s Friday night and off we go for our rafting trip, half of us in Mike Pratt’s Ford family wagon (he likes to think fondly of it as "the chick magnet") and the other half in Paul Critchley’s black beasty. In the M.P. mobile, we had the tunes blasting and managed to squeeze in a pub stop (0.d. for the driver, of course), as well as the usual fish and chips. Upon occasion, the weary driver could be heard screeching, like a crotchety old man: "... you can get out and walk!i". The P.C. mobile trip score was - Possums 0, Paul 5; Rabbits 0, Paul 1. Don’t let the scores lead you totally astray, Paul did indicate some humanitarian tendencies when he rescued a fallen lamb at the base of a cliff. It’s Saturday morning, almost afternoon by the time the rafts are to the river (30 feet from the camp site) and ready to be launched. We’ve all drawn straws for our partners and the losers accept their fate. There doesn’t seem to be many rules to rafting, except for - Rule 1. If you have to pee, no need to stop talking, but be polite and place one leg outside of the boat, so it doesn’t run into the raft. Rule 2. If you have a casual partner at the helm, forget paddling and just hold onto the raft (at least then you both go in the water). Rule 3. If your partner goes overboard, save their hat, then the person. There we were bouncing like Tigger (from Winnie the Pooh) down the Maunganui A-Te-Ao, a tributary of the Wanganui ... or something like that, in our two-person rafts. One group brought so much gear that they needed three people to paddle it! Saturday was an absolute Blast!! But of course, I didn’t have to share the raft with Paul who could be heard commanding "Dig it in, Boy! Dig it in!".
Wonderful working relationships were forged by each team, which I’m sure will last a lifetime. It is still uncertain though whether several team members actually fell overboard, or were thrown by their partners. Here is a typical conversation from our raft - Mike: "Go left of the rock" Karen: "Ok, Let’s go left, but of which rock?" Mike: "The one over there" The big question: Which rock ... there’s so many of then. Consequently, in every rapid we would land on one of the big rocks and have to. tip the raft at an 89 degree angle down river to dislodge ourselves before the current sank us. We survived and we‘re even still friends (well, "still" might be too strong a word, but then so might be "friends". Words of wisdom in other rafts included "a bit more to the left!", “watch that hole!" and similar useless phrases. Saturday night, Paul lit the cooking fire with gas, creating quite a hot one ... but we won’t talk about that, will we Paul? The meal was great. It seems the Tongue ‘n’ Meats haven’t yet learned that since Mike P. joined the club, we must all lower our portion expectations or increase our bowl sizes! Sunday was a meander down the rather brown Wanganui to the town of Pipiriki. Here we spent four hours touring the historical town and munching down any last morsels of food while the drivers raced off to pick up their vehicles. Driving home was an experience. 1/11 leave out a few details here, however, on the road we saw twenty pesky possums, two handsome horses, a dozen carefree cows and numerous slumbering sheep. If it wasn’t for the two cars we saw, we would have been entirely convinced we were on the wrong side of the fence. On a closing note, if anyone has photos of the trip, please send copies to Graeme. It appears he was not wearing any contact lenses and missed most of the trip (that explains the flipped raft!). Recommendation: An experience to experience. Many thanks to Fred and John Booth for sharing their rafts, wisdom and bailing buckets (contents and all). Hugs and kisses to Paul from all, for organizing a V.Q.E. trip and for all the sweets he threw to us, most of which are still at the bottom of the river. The Wellington Crew members were - Paul Critchley, Mathew Granger, Mike Pratt, Andrew McLellan, Jo McKenzie, Kip Marks, Graeme Powell, Gavin Hughes, Stephanie Jobson and myself. And from Taihape - John Booth, Alister (Alias Fred) Booth and Anne Mould. Editor’s Note: During a chat with Paul Cc. about this trip it became apparent that Karen had ommitted what surely must have been one of the more memorable events of the trip for her ~ an unintended swim early
Sunday morning. One that, according to Paul, left her with blue cheeks and a purple nose. While Paul expressed sympathy about how cold that swim must have been for Karen, he did seem to recall that it was "nice to hear the silence".