Experiences on an Inner Tube

“Should we go tubing?” Dora asked the other day. A rare day when the sun was shining beautifully, and we were both at home. “Or do you think it would be wrong, when we have so much work to do?”

“Of course it would be wrong.” I laughed evilly. “Let’s go.”

After more debate, meant to ease our guilty consciences, I went out to find Elizabeth and to pump up inner tubes. Not for us those colorful plastic tubes with handles you can buy at a retail store. Ours are the real black rubber deal, patched in places, discarded from an auto mechanic shop.

After pumping three successfully–one I pumped too full and, with a dull quick “boom,” it deflated in the grass–I stuffed them as best I could into my tiny Toyota Yaris. There would be no seat belts today. With inner tubes inflating the back and the fronts seats crammed close to the dashboard, such a nicety was impractical. We would drop off Dora’s car at our planned destination point on the river, and then, since the back was jam full, Dora and Elizabeth would have to share the passenger’s seat until we reached our starting point. But hey, the tubes were in the car, weren’t they? With difficulty, they could be taken out again. What else mattered?

The water was beautiful, the trees green, the sky blue. No words can describe the joy of floating down the river on an inner tube. I joined this yearly tradition with my sisters when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I haven’t missed a year since. We go with each other; we go with friends. With friends, we float down the river talking about funny events or dating couples or annoying people. With each other, we say little, speaking only enough to comment on the beauty of our surroundings, the warmth of the sun, a dragonfly. We are aware that the river water is brown and smells peculiar, aware that it is inhabited by bugs and slimy water creatures, aware that it has been peed in multiple times by fish, animals, and people, but we don’t care. It is all part of the atmosphere.

We paddle over slow spots, we brace ourselves for rapids, splash water over sun-baked rubber tube to cool it, lift our faces toward sun. Those of us who have life jackets tie them to our inner tubes and use them for feet rest as we float peacefully down the current. Once, a couple of us roped our tubes together. It was great–until we caught on a rock and upended. We didn’t try that again.

Sometimes one or two of us will turn awkwardly onto our stomachs, to tan our backs. The tan is laughable. Anxious to get as much tan as possible as quickly as possible, we often forego sunscreen, forgetting from last year just how exposed one is on the water and just how painful exposure can be. We come home joyful and proud of our tans, and by evening, we have become hobbling lobsters–painfully, burningly red. We wince around for a couple days, and peel off pieces of skin that look like dried Elmer’s glue from our arms. Then the pain subsides, and we are dark, and striped in places, and happy. We are guiltily aware that we are making ourselves prime candidates for skin cancer–but this is our vice. We are as proud of our spotty, uneven tans as if they made us look beautiful, and not just lopsided.

But those are the good years, the years when we are lucky enough to have sunshine and swift-moving water. Often, when the sun sees us coming, it forgets its early morning promise and disappears. One year, we scraped along over rocks in shallow water beneath a cloudy cold sky. We pushed ourselves with our feet, propelled ourselves with our arms, and in the spots where even those efforts wouldn’t float us, had to resort to walking. The air was frigid. We ended cold and tired and, somehow, more sunburnt than we’d ever been before.

Another year, we started in sun and warmth, but as we progressed down the river, the air grew colder and colder. Clouds came out; icy drops fell–sprinkles at first, than torrents. I had a leaking tube that year, and as I paddled frantically, trying to keep up with everyone else, my tube got flatter and flatter. To keep myself cheerful, I imagined I were a polar bear paddling through the water, a wild survivor of cold. Or a refugee, escaping some unknown danger to some unknown destination. I felt myself a part of the slow cold water, one with the hungry and primitive masses beneath the cold iron sky.

When I finally stumbled onto shore, half crying, my teeth chattering, my body too numb to move properly, my tube was a flat piece of rubber in my arms. The others were already in the van waiting. My fingers were too stiff to push the latch handle on the van door, and I had to pound on the window to ask them to open the door. I huddled on the van seat, shivering, slowly warming, anxious for the others to know how abused I had been, hoping they would realize my cold had been colder than their cold, and feel sorry for me.

Now, looking back, all I see is a great experience, the kind you remember and tell stories about. Misery is more interesting than pleasure, and cold, as well as sunburn, is easily forgotten from year to year. It’s all a part of this delightful and unpredictable experience we call tubing.