Hello, Chicago River

Our story was that a wave caught us wrong and just capsized it because we were leaning slightly to the left. So, here's what really happened. My friend and  I were in a tandem kayak, and on mile 5, we found ourselves in the freezing water of the Chicago river. How did this happen, you may ask? Well, we certainly didn't choose to be treading water in sweats and rain boots, if that's what you mean. By the way, treading water in rain boots sucks. Never try it. Anyways, we viewed it as a kind-of karma retribution thing. See, we had been going around pulling people's kayak rudders out of the water, so they couldn't steer as easily. It didn't do any lasting damage, but until they realized it, it was funny to see them be confused as to why they could no longer use the rudder pedals to any effect. It was slightly mean, I'll admit, but it was all in good fun and nobody got hurt. Except our prides.

At the particular moment that the wake from a passing boat struck us (and yes, there really WAS a wake!) my friend was leaning out of the boat to try and pull somebody else's rudder out of the water. I did not know this at the time, and so I had no problem telling the wave story, because I thought it was true. It wasn't until later that I found out that we had tipped over in an act of failed sabotage. Talk about karma.

My first reaction was to laugh. Hers was to scream at the top of her lungs. Needless to say, we attracted a lot of attention to ourselves, very quickly. Luckily we were wearing life vests. If we hadn't, my sweatpants, sweatshirt, rain jacket, t-shirt, leggings, Under Armour, and rain boots would have dragged me straight down. All those layers had helped me stay warm while they were dry, but they proved to be a bit of a nuisance when they were all wet. She continued to scream, while I continued to laugh, we both continued to float, and the teachers and leaders began to pull our kayak out of the water, onto their kayaks. They somehow drained most of the water, then asked us to sort-of flop in the kayak. The problem was that we couldn't swim in all those layers. At all. My boots were filling with water, I was waterlogged, there were several problems. Anyways, we eventually got into the boat and we began to take off our wet layers. We both got down to our Under Armour and leggings, wrapped in towels, and put our life jackets back on. We strapped everything that was wet to the back of the kayak, and started to use this pump thing to bail out our kayak. Once we got into the sun, it was fine and we began to dry off. However, it was still obnoxious to lay out our wet clothing, tote it home, and walk around in leggings instead of pants. We had a full conversation about how much we hated wearing leggings as pants, and I still don't understand how some people do it. At all. I mean, some girls do it. And seem to be fine with it! But if I had any negative feelings about doing so, they have tripled. It's awkward, you feel exposed, it's just really bad.

So that was my day. Afterwards, we ate lots of fries. And have a great story. It was fun!