To read Part I, go here.

Little Anthony’s t-shirt read what we were all thinking the next morning as we nursed our banged up legs and knees, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

And even though it did seem like a good idea, no one regretted the harrowing trip down the river.

I was sitting on the river bank, reading one of the hilarious essays in David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day when Rene asked if I wanted to take a trip down the river.

“Where are we going?”

“Just down that part,” he replied and pointed to the right fork in the river where it looked a little rough. “We went down in the rafts earlier.”

That was all I needed. If they had gone down earlier in the day, it couldn’t have been that bad, right?

Wrong.

The six of us — me, Rene, Lindsay, Heather, Adán and Nancy — piled into the two rafts. I got in to one raft and kneeled down.

“You should sit down,” Lindsay advised. “Those rocks will bust up your knees, but your butt can take the bumps better.”

I followed her advice and sat down. Lindsay pulled the grey raft closer to her and jumped in jolting the raft the behind me. Rene was the last to get in and sat on the top of the raft up front.

I was nervous. I hadn’t gone rafting in a river in years… and the Kern was no friendly river. Rafting would be different than just floating down in a River Rat innertube for a few yards in the calm part.

As we started off following the yellow raft filled with Adán, Heather and Nancy, Rene gave me one last bit of advice.

“Whatever happens, don’t let go of the ropes.”

Yeah. Letting go of the ropes in a river nicknamed Killer Kern would be bad.

Danny made up the last of the group in a single yellow inner tube. He was the only one wearing any sort of protective gear, a purple and red life vest.

Rene lied. And it’s a good thing too, or else I wouldn’t have anything worth blogging about.

Our mini-rafting trip didn’t end once we made our way down the familar part of the river. The familar part of the river was a little rough, but we were all able to deal with water splashing in our faces and getting jolted by the river around boulders.

Once the two rafts and inner tube made it through the familiar part, we decided to keep going. It seemed like a good idea at the time.