2 July 2011 Tubing: the Next Generation

When I was in graduate school at UVA every fourth of July holiday friends from college would come down to Cville and we would spend a day tubing on the James River down in Scottsville. This year some number of us reprised the tradition, introducing a new generation to the joys of floating lazily down the river, yelling “bums up!” when the water is low and the rocks are high, and getting splashed or overturned by AC. Some things have changed in the past 12 years. Heck, a LOT has changed. There are kids now, for one. But some things haven’t changed. The ride on the bus to the put-in location is still bumpy & they play the same awful country music on the radio. Colorful mating dragonflies still flit about. A rock scraping one’s bottom still hurts like mad. And the river is still gorgeous, framed in green trees, topped by blue sky.

Oh and there’s one other thing that hasn’t changed in the past 12 years: AC still plays in the river like a happy puppy. You will get splashed if you are near him. Yeah, he’s still the biggest kid of all.