Hop, Skip and Go Naked
(but for god’s sake don’t talk to anyone)
by dustin sturges
The other day I was working late in the office and I’d told a friend that I’d meet him at the hole at Taggart on the Weber River to go kayaking. I got out of the office at 4:30 (yes that’s late for me) and had just enough time to high tail it over to my house to pick up my stuff and haul some ass out to the “Mighty Webe.” I picked up my dry top, skirt, booties and helmet, stuffed them into my bag and jumped into the truck. I proceeded at high speed down I-80 towards Echo. Just as I was passing Coalville I got that horrible feeling that I’d forgotten something. I went through my mental catalog of all my boating paraphernalia. Skirt: check; helmet: check; drytop, paddle, booties and boat: check. It was just about then that I looked down and noticed my wardrobe. I was wearing my Park City casual business suit. I thought about what that meant, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t have any shorts. Now if I had thought to wear (or even own for that matter) underwear, this wouldn’t be a problem; but as it was, I was on the horns of a dilemma.
When I got to the hole, I found that I had been flaked-on by my friends and therefore would be receiving no outside assistance. There were however, four complete strangers playing in the hole. I was thinking there were three things that would pose difficulties in this venture: Getting in, getting out and the possibility that I would have to swim. I have been boating for a while now and I am pretty confident in my ability to roll back up when I tip over in the boat—but I was still having second thoughts. What better time to have a lapse of skill than when I would have to swim my boat to shore bare-assed, and dump the water out of it while staring all these strangers in the face with the good, old brown eye. I figured I’d risk it and decided the only way I’d get out of my boat in the river was when the rescue team pried my cold, dead ass from it somewhere around Morgan.
I had had a few spins in the hole—everything was going great—when sure enough, I finally tipped over. Now you’ve got to realize that when play-boating, water inevitably leaks into your boat and the combination of the water on the foam seat and my bare ass made the whole rig a little slick, making setting up for a roll more difficult. I missed my first three rolls and was pretty much convinced that I was going to have to do the “swim of shame.” It gets very shallow just a little bit down river and having your head dragging behind your boat makes it just about impossible to do anything but pull your skirt. I hit the fourth roll and saved myself from certain disgrace.
While I was having my personal little epic, two of the boaters took off leaving me and one other guy that I didn’t know at the hole. We finished off the evening playing in the hole and didn’t say a word to each other. I think that I was so shaken by my near miss and feeling so self conscious about not having anything on under my boat that he could sense the awkwardness of my situation without quite knowing what my situation was. Anyway, we ended up having to leave at the same time and after I had gotten to my truck, sneaking low through the weeds, and got some pants on, we finally introduced ourselves and shot the shit for a while. This poor guy was probably getting a very weird vibe from me while we were boating and now thinks that I’m just extremely bi-polar. Oh well. My advice to you readers if you end up in a similar situation is not to pretend everyone else is naked (that could get really weird). Use your imagination and convince yourself that you are not, while remembering enough not to flash everyone at the take-out. Or better yet, remember your shorts.
