On the Apalachee River between Price Mill Bridge and the US 441 bridge, there’s a little shoal where some big boulders push all the water in the river toward the right bank.
It’s a pretty little spot, and we call it Lunch Rock Shoals because that’s where we usually stop for lunch when we’re paddling the Apalachee. The area to the right of the rocks, where the river flows, is a fun little drop to paddle through. As the water rushes between our big lunch boulder and the bank, there are some rocks under the surface of the water that you have to watch out for, but if you hit the channel right (and the water level is high enough) it’s a fun little rapid to run down.
Saturday, Rodney and I were paddling the Apalachee.
We came through Lunch Rock Shoals, did our eddy turns to get out of the current and paddled back up to the boulder for lunch.
“You want to try my boat?” Rodney asked. “We can lift it over the rocks, you can paddle back up stream a ways and then turn around and run the shoal in it.”
The Blue Iguana – Rodney’s canoe – is a whitewater canoe with a rounded hull and deep rocker. It’s basically shaped like a banana. My canoe has a flat bottom and is better for lakes and flat rivers.
My canoe – I call her Big Turtle – has a foot rest and a La-Z Boy recliner, and in Rodney’s canoe, you sit in a saddle with your knees on the floor of the boat.
I’ve never paddled a whitewater canoe before. Since Rodney got the Blue Iguana a few months ago, I’ve been surfing the internet and watching videos, trying to pick out the whitewater canoe I want to buy one day. The Blue Iguana is like a sports car, and Big Turtle is like a Greyhound bus. I want a sports car, too.
I’ve wanted to try Rodney’s boat, but I want to try it out on flat water when the water is warm and I don’t mind going for a swim. Saturday we were not on flat water and the Apalachee was not warm.
But when two grown men are paddling down the river and one of them is in a sports car and the other one is in a Greyhound bus, you don’t turn down the chance to drive the sports car.
So before I’d really thought it through, I was helping Rodney get his cooler and fishing pole and other stuff out of his canoe. I realized, of course, that we were emptying his canoe because of the high probability that my first time in a whitewater boat I was going to roll it, but that fact had not clearly established itself in my mind until I was stepping into the boat.
For some reason, the theme song to the 1970s commercial was running through my head: “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”
I tried to get accustomed to the movement of the boat as I paddled back up stream. It was very tippy, and when I leaned one way or another, the boat leaned right along with me. Big Turtle is so flat bottomed I could almost do handstands on the gunwales without tipping it over.
But in the Blue Iguana, when the breeze blew the hair on my arm a little to the left, the boat leaned heavily with the redistribution of weight.
I paddled out into the current and started downstream for the drop at Lunch Rock Shoals. Rodney set up with his camera to get shots of me paddling his boat through the rapid.
My only desire was to get to the bottom of the shoal without going for a swim or smashing my face against a rock.
The rocks and the tongue of water were getting closer.
“If you go into the river, grab hold of my boat and paddle and don’t let them get away!” Rodney shouted. That did nothing to help my confidence.
“Weebles wobble,” I thought to myself.
The Blue Iguana zipped over that tongue of water like a boss. I nearly shouted with glee as I ran that rapid, but I was afraid the sound waves would roll the tippy canoe. My confidence was raised, suddenly I felt secure in my abilities as if I’d been riding around in whitewater canoes since I was just a kid.
To impress Rodney, I thought I would do a big sweeping eddy turn toward the right bank and then cross back over the current to the left bank where Rodney, Big Turtle and the rest of my lunch were waiting for the return of the triumphant paddler.
But I reached too far with the paddle when I tried to do my eddy turn. I was suddenly proving that Weebles do fall down. In a second, I was drinking in great gulps of the Apalachee River and wondering how fast a man can freeze to death in a river in March.
I brushed past a big rock under water, and that made me remember that I needed to do something other than just freeze or drown, so I righted myself and got my head out of the water. I grabbed the canoe and was pleased to realize I still had the paddle in my hand.
Now that I was breathing again, I got acclimated to the cold water. My thought was to just stand up and walk Rodney’s canoe to the bank, but when I went to put my feet on the bottom I discovered that the shallow little Apalachee turns very deep at the bottom of Lunch Rock Shoals. I couldn’t touch the bottom.
So there was nothing for it but to swim Rodney’s boat and paddle to the bank. As I got closer to the bank, I kept trying to find the bottom with my feet, but I was in the deep channel. Finally, I reached a tree that was stable enough for me to get the Blue Iguana turned up right, and about that time Rodney paddled up in my boat.
“You were doing fine. Why’d you turn over?” he asked, as if I’d done it on purpose.
Even going for a swim in the chilly Apalachee, I can still say I’ve never had a bad day in a canoe on a river. But when I got home from the Apalachee Saturday, I altered my internet searching. I thought maybe just a solo boat with a shallow rocker and an arched hull might be more to my liking.
Rob Peecher is author of “Four Things My Wife Hates About Mornings,” available at amazon.com.