We started our tour with Sun Country in a happy & excited mood, though we were surprised that there were no disclaimers to sign, no waivers, no helmets offered, & no initial training. It seemed odd to us that the paperwork to ride a 5-person bike around town on Tuesday had taken us an hour to complete, and felt like it included a clause to offer our firstborn children. Sun Country merely took attendance and herded us over to one of three rafts. Laura was our guide, and she immediately assigned Terri to the front left, Fran behind her, Joyce to Fran's right & behind Liz, who was assigned to the front right - despite repeated requests to ride in the back of the boat. We were the only riders in our blue boat, though the two other rafts were each loaded with about 12-16 people, including children sitting in the interior without paddles. The guides positioned themselves at the very rear, toward the right

And now we are viewing the Big Eddy rapids. We had just been down the Fuzzy Bunny, which is named thus ONLY to woo the riders into thinking a soft little dip is in store. In reality, we were tossed about and bashed with Fuzzy Bunny's waves so that we all began to wonder what we were doing here anyway! At this point, Liz began to cry and offered to negotiate portage of the raft around the rapids, along a scenic horse riding & hiking trail that followed the river. Laura insisted she needed all 4 passengers to paddle, leaving Liz feeling guilty enough to resist abandoning her sisters here. The others later said, "Here was our most active member, the one who had kayacked before, crying at the prospect of doing these rapids. We knew we were in trouble. But we also knew we had to rise up to the occasion."

Here, Laura also worked her way around us, tightening our life jackets. Note that she also doesn't look particularly confident in this photo. Perhaps she is regretting manning the raft with only 4 inexperienced riders, while the other 2 craft all had plenty of passengers to aid in stabilizing the raft

Entering the class III rapids, paddling hard, showing signs of concern & fright. Terri appears frantic, probably from having been smashed directly in the face by a series of swamping waves. Fran working it hard, leaning way over to get her paddle in the water. Here she began her shouted chant of "Row! Row!" and didn't cease the rest of the quarter-mile ride through Big Eddy. Joyce looking worried, though we all found out later that she had actually been down this stretch of the Deschutes before. "I don't remember it being like this," she later recounted. Liz has yet to get her paddle in the water. She said, "I felt like I would have to lean too far over to reach the river, and I'd fall out!"

Well, Liz finally has her oar in the water. Fran's is out, Terri is drenched, and Joyce still looks quite worried.

After that, only Laura is clearly visible as we all endure a massive dunking. Is she smiling or wincing??

We emerge from the dunk! Joyce is definitely feeling something, Terri is still squeezing her eyes shut. Are there ANY paddles in the water??

Heading to another chute. (After all, Des Chutes in French means "many waterfalls.")

Liz does NOT want to be here, Terri doesn't like the taste of the water, Fran & Laura are still concentrating on rowing, and Joyce....well Joyce is beginning to feel the slide!

This also appears to be the spot where Terri began to hear Liz's almost constant moan: "No!" which in Whitewater Rafting Speak means "why can't this be over?"

Is Laura still aboard?? Terri said that she had seen Laura clamping herself to the raft before we headed into Big Eddy. This is, of course, a great safety idea, since what would we have done if our guide had gone overboard? But it left Liz wondering why ALL of us couldn't have been similarly attached to the vessel. Weeks later, Terri read about other, less fortunate excursions down Big Eddy, including one where the raft flipped over and its occupants scraped against the volcanic rock underneath as they struggled to make the surface. Being clamped to a rollicking raft as it's tossed about amongst the rocks and waves would probably NOT be a safe idea!

Recovering from the last chute, only Laura is paddling. Fran is still calling the row rhythm like she's on a slave ship. And can't you just hear Joyce saying "Ahhhhh!"

Just missed the wall of rock on the bank, and Laura might be fending off. Joyce is on her way!

And Joyce has landed!

Fran trying to maintain some rowing motion -- someone's gotta do it! Terri is realizing she has the seat with the constant deluge in the face. (Afterwards she would refer to this as a boxing match, with one blow to the face after another.)

Laura and Fran trying to maintain control as first the others submerge, and then the entire raft succumbs.

Remember -- Joyce is face up on her back with waves washing over her. She appeared to be gasping & drowning as the others felt desperate as to what to do.

And here is where the terrible & wonderful misunderstanding was born:
Here, Liz shouted: "Pull her up!"

.....And here, Terri heard: "Pull over!"

Now, let's take a moment away from the photos to really get an idea of what has been happening:
Laura had warned us upon setting out that it would be deafeningly loud in the rapids, but she needed us to heed her instructions. She wanted us to shout the instructions out, so everyone in the boat would hear. Terri further gave instructions for everyone to call out the orders twice (if not more) and VERY loudly, since Terri had been having trouble with hearing things clearly the whole trip, and indeed her whole life. (I wish I could recall an example of something Terri heard wrong. It happened a lot in the car, as she was in the back seat each time. Anyone?)

Anyway -- envision the roaring river, the furious sound of the rushing water, the raft hoisting upwards and slamming downwards, submerging upon impact, the four of us concentrating on 5 things at once: 1) keeping one cheek on the slippery edge of the raft while leaning over to reach the water; 2) rowing at the exact moments we are ordered to; 3) calling out the shouted instructions to be heard over the crashing river; 4) staying in the boat to avoid the necessity of enacting the "man overboard" instructions Laura gave us just moments before entering the rapids (and which are recounted at the end of this page); and 5) looking out for the interests of our sisters, whether that included sticking it out and not abandoning them, making sure they were breathing & not drowning, or just plain making sure they knew what to be doing amidst all the chaos.

Now that the scene has been set, recall that Joyce slid back and couldn't sit up. A general alarm had been raised, so that Terri and Liz heard something about "She's down!" In between the rise and fall of the raft, Liz had stolen a glance backwards and saw -- to her horror -- Joyce in the throes of an apparent cardiac arrest. Her eyes were closed (because water was flooding over them), her mouth was open and her breathing was in gasps (because water was flooding into her opened mouth). It seemed like a natural reaction to demand that we "Pull her up!" In fact, Liz turned halfway in her perch and stretched her hand out towards Joyce to assist in raising her.

Because the raft was at a critical juncture (heading towards another rockface), Laura shouted: "Liz, I need you to row!" Here, Terri quite accurately reported that Liz's head snapped around so fast that a distinct "WHOOSH" could be heard above the roar of the eddy, as she threw Laura an angry look. But she paddled furiously, though it often felt as though the river was up above the sides of the raft, making the rowing seem futile.

We'll return to the photos now, before completing the tale of the infamous "Pull Over!"

On the way into one last chute, as Joyce is still down but it had become obvious to us that she wasn't in cardiac arrest

Early on in the trip, two thematic threads emerged and recurred: 1) we were all "getting outside our box" or trying something different; and 2) a "Thelma & Louise" theme arose when Terri and Liz were in the backseat of Joyce's Soul and overheard Joyce and Fran in the front seat speaking about the movie where two women meet a cowboy (Brad Pitt) and go on a country-wide crime spree, tragically ending over a cliff. Terri and Liz made a pact that if they ever saw Joyce and Fran clasp hands there in the front, the two backseat occupants would jettison themselves from the car pronto. (We never did find out why the front seat occupants were talking about that particular movie, but it was frightening and it came up too many times for comfort during the week. At one point it was exclaimed that we should save Joyce's Soul!)

And so this photo embodies those two themes: though whitewater rafting was not anything Liz ever wanted to attempt, she "got outside her box" and went (though not without tears). Fran & Terri likewise were outside their comfort zones, but game for trying. And though they don't remember doing it, it appears in this photo that Terri & Liz have clasped hands `a la "Thelma & Louise."

We tried to purchase photos of the two rafts that went down Big Eddy just ahead of us, in an attempt to show the extreme contrast between their rides and ours. We weren't permitted to do so -- too creepy, I guess. This photo is from Sun Country's website. And even though the blonde with the pixie 'do is somewhat wet on her arms, and the girl in the green T-shirt has one noticeable wet droplet spot on her arm, this photo is STILL far more wet and drenched-looking than the other two rafts were when we caught up to them.

We were drifting through the flats for the last leg of the ride before disembarking, and our raft got real close to the red one in front of us. Terri noticed first. She said, "Look at that girl with her hair in a perfect bun!" A dry bun. Then we saw that all the women had sunglasses perkily perched atop their heads, and one older woman was wearing eyeglasses. Reading glasses. DRY reading glasses! The children were relatively dry too, but then we figured they had ridden in the center of the vessel, sitting on the bottom. And then we heard a young girl say she was hot and wanted to jump in for a quick cooling off. An adult said she'd go with her. And they did -- they jumped in for a swim! To GET WET!

Terri was especially incredulous. "What river did they just go down??!"

Pull Over! goes viral
As we disembarked the raft (just 35ft before the class V rapids that we could hear roaring over a chute) Liz could hear Terri laughing with Laura, about how Liz said to "Pull over!" Laura said she didn't realize Liz had said that. Liz was just about to correct the mistake, when everyone began to laugh and recount the whole incident, from Joyce sliding back, to Liz wanting to get off at the next exit ramp, to the dry passengers of the other rafts, and so on. It didn't seem to be the right time. But by the time we were eating dinner that evening, the story had gone viral among us, and had even been shared (by phone and text) with others. So Liz let it go, and let it become a legend. Until now.

But this just in: apparently Fran's slave ship chanting of "Row Row" didn't block her super-hearing powers. Because she distinctly recalls hearing Liz say, "Pull her up!" but she responded with "I can't!" This resulted in Liz's shouting, "Well then pull over right now!" So Terri's hearing has been vindicated (in this instance anyway) and the viral legend lives on.

Watching the slideshow
Back in Sun Country's shop, they told us to wait a few minutes for the photos to come up on a large overhead screen. The first blue raft, with its 10-12 passengers, came up on the screen. All smiles, practically posing for the photographer, looking composed, and -- again -- dry as anything. Those folks could have been models doing a photo shoot for Sun Country's advertising. Then the red raft came up, with about 13-16 passengers, some of them young children. There was the smiling young lady with the dry bun and sunglasses, the older woman with the reading glasses, and the children waving and smiling, the adults rowing and paddling happily with composed faces. Then our photos were next. You've seen them, but believe it when it is claimed that a large screen over everyone's heads adds a certain amount of drama and interest. All the folks from the other two rafts stayed to watch our slideshow, and laughed heartily along with us. Except our laughs were punctured with mortification. What a contrast!

Do you know the story of the cans on the bottom shelf? Terri has developed a technique to postpone or halt the syndrome known as "Laugh-So-Hard-You-Pee-Your-Pants." Whenever symptoms of this syndrome would attack in -- let's say -- a grocery store, Terri would immediately drop into a squatting position to (cough) read the labels on the cans. Meanwhile, with one foot tucked neatly into the proper location, it is more effective at "holding it in" than it would be to shove one's hands between one's legs and dance around like a toilet-training toddler. And more socially acceptable. What has never been explained, and this is kinda important, is: WHAT IS SO FUNNY IN A GROCERY STORE THAT THIS TECHNIQUE WOULD BECOME NECESSARY?! Anyway...

There we all are, looking up at the overhead screen, amused by the pictures of our river ride. (Though "amused" isn't exactly accurate, since we are STILL drenched, even after the 15-minute bus ride back to the shop, and the 5 to 8 minutes of waiting for the photos, and our hair is anything but bun-like and certainly worse than bed-head, and we are also STILL shaky from the ordeal, rendering our emotion more akin to the feeling the Titanic survivors must have had when they were picked up off the lifeboats.) Most of us were not aware, at this point, that Fran was also struggling from T-Rex Syndrome -- but more on that in a moment. Suddenly, Terri engages her technique. Yes, in this crowd of 26-30 people, Terri drops and attempts to read the.....uh....there really is no bottom shelf, but there were a few souvenir sippy cups in a display case that Terri apparently really needed to observe more closely.

Now, the Laugh-So-Hard-You-Pee-Your-Pants Syndrome can be contagious, but once the halting technique is invoked, the syndrome becomes viral. In the Wildner family anyway. So we are laughing in that way that says "Oh no" quite clearly; you know that laugh, admit it. And glancing around at the other raft riders, as well as the clerk behind the counter, we became aware that we were not alone.

The whole time, Fran's T-Rex Syndrome was attacking. Had we all become aware of this in the moment, there probably would have been no successful technique to halt the Laugh-So-Hard-You-Pee-Your-Pants Syndrome. What is the T-Rex Syndrome? Well, as you can be reminded in this clipart of the T-Rex dino, the front arms are short, and kind of hang there, almost useless. Fran, in her Titanic-survivor state of mind, had slipped her shirt on over her purse upon our return to the bus and the shop, rendering her arms stuck in a Rex-like position. She was immobile, unfashionable, and feeling ridiculous with her hands all limp in front of her chin, but thankful that the crowd was too thoroughly engaged with the slideshow to notice. Yet, as we discovered in the "Pull Over!" incident, short & restricted arms lend to their owners a super-hearing ability.