I remember a trip down the Guadalupe River that my cousin, Trevor,  and I made.  Grandad rented a 2-man raft for us.  We drove it to the river and plopped it into the swift moving ice-water.  We jumped in it and quickly we were off down the river. Right away we went under a very low bridge, so low that it was necessary to completely flatten ourselves in the raft to keep from getting knocked out. We rode smoothly for about 15 minutes. Then the current picked up and we had to struggle around countless rocks and logs protruding from the water surface.  We stopped for a swim in an especially large and deep portion of the river. We downed a Coke and a hunk of jerky each before moving on.
     Not long after we had stopped, we approached Dog Run Rapids. The guy who rented us the raft told us to beware, and steer hard to the right of the cypress tree in the middle of the river.  We tried, and failed. The current was just too strong for our weakling arms. We hit the enormous tree's buttress roots with the impact of a wrecking ball. The current was split on both sides of us.  The water flowed with such force that it started to pour into the back of the raft. Since the front was soundly lodged in the tree's roots, the boat just sank down and flattened onto the roots underwater. Trevor fell into the water and looked almost panicked. He tried to swim to the front of the raft where I was, but didn't make it. He gave up in the current and allowed himself to be swept downstream. Meanwhile, I hopped out of the submerging raft and onto the tree's roots. I watched the Cokes and jerky sink helplessly to the bottom. The two inner tubes in the raft were flushed away violently. So there I stood alone in the river with a submerged raft in rapids, contemplating the problem at hand.
     At that moment, a girl slammed into the tree riding an inner tube. She went under and her inner tube stuck to the roots. I pulled it off and when she came up 20 ft downstream, I threw it to her. I began to wonder if anyone ever got by this tree cleanly. I sat down on the edge of the root- platform and began kicking the raft. It finally broke loose after about a dozen good boots to the stern and floated, inverted, down the river. I jumped in and swam to the opposite bank.
     At the bank I was greeted by three stoner-hippy guys. One of them said, "We've seen 20 people wipe out there, but you handled it the best!" He threw out his hand and I hit it in a clean high five. I trotted down the riverbank about 100 feet where the water was calm. I saw Trevor on the other side, under a canopy of immense cypress trees. He had gathered everything out of the water except for the raft which was totally filled with the cold stuff. We bailed water out with our hands, more like splashed it out. Slowly, the water level dropped in the raft to the point where we could tip it over to drain it fully. We flipped it over again and put the inner tubes back in and then hopped in ourselves. We were on our way again.  The only other excitement was going off a medium height dam. We were both very exhausted after the 4 hour trek and we gladly greeted the balance of the day spent sleeping. What a great adventure for 8 year-olds.