As the late, great Meatloaf might have said (but sadly, didn’t), three out of four ain’t bad. 

To wit:

• Hitting safely three times out of four makes for a FANTASTIC baseball batting average.
• Completing three out of every four passes you throw in football is totally Mahomesian!
• Preaching three passable sermons out of every four is an excellent success rate. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
• Three days of lovely weather out of four is what I would call paradise.

HOWEVER… returning three out of four of the grandchildren you’ve been entrusted to care for is NOT even remotely OK. In fact, it qualifies as a massive FAIL.

But rest assured dear reader… strong arms, calm minds, and a heaping helping of timely Providence intervened and I narrowly averted this cataclysmic disaster. 

As we were planning activities for our grandchildren’s visit to Colorado last week, Joan and I decided our time together should be capped off by – what else? – a whitewater rafting trip on the scenic and wild Cache la Poudre River. 

She agreed to hold down the home front and look after the doggos while I braved the rapids with the grands.

Northern Colorado has seen a lot of rain recently, in addition to record levels of snowfall at the higher elevations. As a result, we wondered if the river might be too full and too fast to raft safely. “Naaah. It’sperfect!” said the rafting company person on the phone. “When the water is too low, the rocks stick out more. Right now, the water is high enough without being too high.”

And so, with that assurance, we forged ahead. 

It was a beautiful day on the river, to be sure. Temps in the low 70s with a lovely light breeze. As we prepared to shove off, we noticed our guide Tim seemed to be a little more laid back than the other guides. This despite the fact that his passengers consisted of one gray-haired 71-year-old dude, one non-binary 16-year-old, and three girls… two 15 and one 13-year-old. 

“I’m sure Tim’s got this,” I said, not really convincing myself. 

Things bounced along pretty well for the first hour or so. I was sitting in the lead spot on the left side of the raft… the bell cow as it were… setting the rowing pace the others had to match. We hit some rough patches, but Tim barked out the rowing instructions loudly and confidently and we faithfully obeyed.

For the benefit of those who have not been whitewater rafting, rapids on the river are broken down into five classes, named appropriately enough, Class I, Class II, Class III, Class IV, and Class V. These classifications are based on how rough and challenging those rapids are. Class I rapids are pretty tame. Even skilled rafters avoid Class V rapids in the interest of not dying.

Most of the water we encountered in that first hour were Class I, II, and III. 

Bouncy. Fun. Doable. 

At about the 1.5-hour mark, Tim ordered us to pull over to the side of the river. He had an uncharacteristically stern look and tone as he said to us, “OK. This next set of rapids is pretty serious stuff. The guides call it ‘CHAOS’ because that’s what it is. It is a Class IV rapid which means I need your FULL attention every second. You have to do EXACTLY as I tell you EXACTLY when I tell you to do it. Understood?”

We all assured Tim we were on board (so to speak) and locked in. 

He was right. No sooner had we set off from shore than we encountered the first pocket. The nose of our blue, rubber boat suddenly dipped down and then surged straight up. I was in the front seat, so I was first splashed with water from ice cold snow melt and then tilted up at a 90-degree angle. 

“THREE LEFT!” Tim shouted, barely audible above the roar of the river. This command meant that the paddlers on the left side of the raft were to take three deep, decisive strokes. And then STOP. 

The boat spun sideways, propelled by the current. We seemed to be headed straight for a massive boulder when Tim screamed, “FIVE RIGHT!”

As the right-side folks dug their paddles into the water and pulled, I was not sure we were going to make it. But lo and behold, Tim knew what he was doing. The raft corrected course and cleared the boulder by inches.

There was a sudden whirlpool of water on the other side of the boulder, and that’s when it happened. In a flash, our raft went from a nose-first trajectory to sliding down the Poudre backwards. In the next moment, I felt us come to a complete stop with water rushing past us on both sides. 

We were stuck on top of a rock in the middle of the river. Tim yelled to us, with a noticeable edge of concern in his voice, “EVERYONE! PADDLE BACKWARD UNTIL I TELL YOU TO STOP!”

I was doing my best to comply with Tim’s rowing command when suddenly I saw it. There, right below me in the water, slid one of the blue helmets worn by every rafter. “Oh, dear God,” I frantically prayed. “Please don’t let that be what I think it is.”

But alas it was. 

It was one of my precious, irreplaceable grandchildren in the river instead of in the boat. 

One of them (I won’t say which) had not locked their feet in place on the bottom of the raft as they had been instructed to do. As a result, when we spun around and became lodged on the rock, they were flung out of the raft. 

My story, praise be to God, has a happy ending. Tim abandoned his guiding and raft steering duties and grabbed said grandchild by the shoulder straps of their life jacket. He leaned back and was pulling with all his might with very little help from the one we will call GC1… short for “grandchild 1.”

We finally persuaded GC1 to aid a bit in their own rescue and were all finally able to celebrate as they came flopping back into the raft. Somewhat in the manner of a large marlin or sailfish I thought to myself.

As I sat back, clutching my chest, wondering if my heart had successfully restarted, the other GCs burst into gales of laughter. Mind you, we were still in our immediate pickle, stuck on the rock with another 30 minutes of rafting fun ahead of us. 

With the eternal optimism of youth, none of that seemed to matter to them. They had all participated in a grand adventure that, in the end, had turned out well.

I returned home tired, relieved, grateful, and asking myself this burning question; “Am I getting too old for this **** (stuff)??”

Let’s wait until next year to answer that, shall we?

Abundant blessings;

P.S. My apologies for the length of this post. I’ll try not to let it happen too many more times.