Wow. I just came back from the Poconos weekend trip that my friends and I went on. My body is so sore right now, but I haven't so much in a long long time. So here is what happened on my first all-outdoor related weekend in 2006.
Pre-trip (Saturday)
I got a wake up call from my friend John 6 in the morning. He told me that he was gonna pick me up at 7. I was fine w/ that. But I already asked Lynn to pick me up at 6:30am that day before. So I had to call Nelson to let him know that Lynn don't have to pick me up. He didn't pick up so I left him v/m. Then around 6:30AM, John called me and said he just spoke to Lynn and he found out that she was gonna pick me up, so he don't have to. I was fine w/ that. But about 10 minutes later, Nelson sent me a text message saying that he will see me in chinatown, assuming that John was gonna pick me up. Sounds like everyone is confused on how's gonna pick me up. I called John to find out, and he's not too sure. So I conferenced in Nelson to double check. Good thing, cuz they were about to leave too. It finally was decide I would hop a ride on Lynn's car. Whew, I almost had to a) drive myself to manhattan or b) take the train to meet up w/ them in Manhattan.
White Water Rafting (Saturday)
I never been to white water rafting before. Nelson, Nelson's sister Melissa, and John went white water rafting before. But It's the first time for Lynn, Shirley and Hilda. I didn't know what to expect except for the fact that there's a chance that you can lose your lunch. Let me clarify. The last time John went white water rafting, he losted the water sealed bucket that carried his lunch down the river. He had starve til the end of the rafting trip. That's not a lot of fun, I'm sure.
After changing into the wetsuits, and getting a quick lesson about water rafting, we rode on a school bus to the Lehigh river gorge. After the bus ride, we still have to hike 15 minutes in our wesuits to get to our rafts. Since the booties (the wetsuit shoes) don't offer much cushioning, it made the hike much more difficult than it would have been in hiking shoes. But that would be the easy part compare to the rafting itself.
After lifting our raft about 40 feet to get to the actual river, we begin rafting. Being that I am a total newbie at this, I was surprise I ended up in the front of the raft. We have a total of 7 people. I was sitting in the front right seat for 95% of the raftinng. Sitting in the front has its advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is that you get the most exciting view (think sitting in the first row in a rollercoaster) and the most water splashes from the river. The bad thing is, you have to do a lot of paddling because you set the rhythm for the people behind you. That is the main reason why I am still so sore as I am typing this up. There's also another bad thing about sitting up front. There's a small bucket that we use to scoop out water that gets into the raft. You can always use that bucket to start a good water fight. I didn't get to do that either because I was in the front. Oh well, there's always a next time.
To show how un-coordinated and how unexperienced we are, let's just say we didn't figure out how to turn until after the lunch break. It's really simple. Since I was in the front right seat, Whenever I paddle forward stronger than the left side (that includes when the person on the left side is not paddling), The boat would turn left. So that means, even though I was sitting on the right side, I can ONLY control the left side steering on the raft. Let just say not everyone got the gist of that for a good part of rafting. Technically, I can steer to the right if I paddle backwards. But that's only if the left side isn't counteracting by also paddling backwards. Also, my paddling backwards is not even 50% as efficient as the left side paddling forward to steer us to the right side.
So in the first part (pre lunch). we manage to get stuck on the rocks many times. These same rocks that we get stuck on would probably be really nice rapids if there was more water in the river. But overall, the first part of the rafting trip was kind of boring w/ a lot of strenous paddling. We got stuck in the rocks so many times that at one point, we were the last one to reach a check point, arriving at least 20 minutes after everyone else. How sad.
Since we didn't want to be last anymore, we tried to go faster. That also means we were a bit more careless. We were going pretty steady and the water wasn't fast enough so I never thought the raft would flip. But on one of the rapids, we saw another raft in front of us getting stuck on a huge boulder. Like I mentioned before, we haven't figured out the steering at that point yet. So there wasn't much we could do to avoid them. The water also was going faster than I expected. We ended up hitting the other raft pretty hard w/ the port side of our raft. The guy on the other raft, whether it was instinct or otherwise, push up on our raft when we hit his. Since the water was pushing on the star board side, we flip over 1/2 way w/ relative ease. I was holding on okay. But Shirley dragged me down because she fell over. I hit the bottom of the river pretty quickly. The current kept me under for a good couple of seconds before I got spun out. Once I got spun out, I floated back up pretty quickly thx to the life jacket. But it was still pretty hard to keep my head above water w/ my feet down. I quickly brought my feet parallel to the water and started floating in no time. Another 5 seconds, later, I was rescued by one of the guides in a nearby raft. I was really surprised that I was able to hold on to my paddle the whole time. LOL. Anyway, after I got rescued, I saw the rest of my friends too. It turns out Hilda, Shirley, John, and Melissa all fell out too. Lynn and Nelson got lucky. Being on the port side of the raft, they were able to hold to the raft as it also flipped over entirely. But from what I heard from them, they needed to be rescued too because they lost all but one paddle, and they eventually had to have a guide board the raft to help them get to the next check point.
Since I was only in the cold water for less than a minute, it wasn't all that bad for me. But Shirley, Hilda, and Melissa were completely freaked out by the experience. I thought it was kinda fun. I know it was pretty dangerous, I coulda hit my head on a rock when I fell out, but I am glad I didn't. If I knew how to swim, it probably wouldn'te be as risky. But I don't, so I must be crazy to think that was fun.
Anyway, since most of the contents was sent overboard when the boat flipped, I thought we would be starving during lunchtime because we lost our lunch, just like what happened to John last time. But after gathering my senses on the rescue boat, I heard the rescuers mentioned they were able to save someone's lunch bucket before they picked us up. I stared a little closer at the bucket that they were talking about. I noticed the bag Lay's BBQ potato chips thru the translucent plastic of the basket. I knew we put a a bag of Lay's BBQ potato chips in our bucket. Whew, relief! We are dripping wet and shivering cold, but at least we won't be starving after all. The rescuers managed to save us in addition to our lunches.
After lunch (w/o drinks, since we couldn't fit any of the Gatorade bottles into the bucket), we hesitantly went back on the raft for the 2nd round. The wet suit was making me cold instead of keeping me warm because of all the water in it. Whether it was the fact that we don't want to flip over again, or just that we got better at rafting as a team, we were much faster and almost never got stuck on any of the rocks in the 2nd half of the river. There were some more rapids and bigger boulders too. We were able to manuever through all of them w/o problems. We even get to take in the awesome scenary that the Poconos had to over. The varying colors of the pine trees on the mountain side is definitely refreshing compare to the monotonous color of the city's skyscrapers.
Near the end of the rafting session, the river guide Ed mentioned that there is a huge boulder called the "Battleship" because it sinks (flips) a lot of rafts. But we were so good at avoiding rocks we didn't even know when we passed by it. We were really hoping to see a huge boulder somewhere near the end. Oh well, not too disappointed, because I don't think we were looking to run into it anyways.
Sunset Hill Shooting Range (Sunday)
After our morning ritual of pillow fighting (well, I was really just watching, since I was still really sore from paddling the day before), We checked out of the motel and head for the shooting range. It's really close by. Took about 20 minutes drive to get their from the motel. The last part of the road, the one that leads from the highway and towards the shooting range, was extremely highly and had a lot of curves. It was really fun because it felt like we were on a rollercoaster ride.
Anyway, when we pulled up to the shooting range, we heard loud gun shots, one after another. Wow! We can't believer they have houses nearby too. My guess is the people that works in the shooting range must live in those houses. Who else can stand the ruckus that the shooting range makes on a daily basis? So we walked into the range, and it was a lot smaller than I imagine. I thought you would be firing off shots into a deep forest so you won't hit anybody. They would also cordoned off most of the forest with fence so ppl won't get in. LOL! I was way off. All they did was made a couple of man made hills about 20 - 30 ft high w/ bulldozers. They then build wooden porches where you aim an fire at the man made hills. Well, in front of theses hills, they built frames where they hang stuff animals and bowling pins on. These are the targets you shoot at. The first thing I thought about was shooting the strings so the targets would fall right off of the frame. But that's nearly impossible. Well, at least I never did it.
We had 2 instructors for the 7 of us. I know one guy's name is Bill. I didn't get the name of the other guy. Both instructors were w/ us at all times, locking and unlocking each gun that is locked into specific shooting porches. They also loaded and unloaded each gun for us so we didn't have to worry about that either. Bill was more informative of the two. He usually let you get a feel of the gun before he loads it up w/ a round of bullets. The other guy just loads up the gun and let you shoot. That's not bad too, except you can fill out the card pretty quickly. The card? Oh yeah, they hand you a card when you sign in and give them your ID. The card has all the guns they have that you can try, and next to is how many rounds you shot from that gun.
Since we are all newbies (well, John went w/ his sister b4, but that was a while back), Bill suggested that we tried the rifles first. You would think that a rifle has more kickback than a pistol. But that's not true. The first rifle we tried was a modified AR-15 (civilian version of the M-16) that shoots 9MM rounds. The rifle had also no kickback to it. It was really easy to fire, and it almost didn't feel like you were firing a real gun.
Then we went on to try the pistols. Bill was right. These things are whole lot harder to fire than the rifles. My friends all lined up for the glock. So I ended up trying the berretta first. The berretta didn't had too much of a kick back, but my first couple of shots resulted in the empty cartridge jamming the chamber because I didn't hold the pistol properly. If you try to hold any of these pistols John Woo style (a gun in each hand), you will miss your targets really badly because you really need 2 hands to hold and stabilize the gun. The basic idea is to have your right arm about 80% extended out while holding the gun. Your left hand is going to be on top of the right hand, holding your right arm down and trying to balance the pressure from your right arm (pushing outwards) and your left arm (pulling inwards). All that just to minimize the kick back and keeping your gun pointed at the target. It's much more difficult than a rifle.
After I tried the berretta, I immediately wanted to try the glock to compare the difference. Guess what, I couldn't hit squat w/ the glock. It had so much more kick back than the beretta my hand was getting tired trying to hold it straight. But as bad as I was, if I was a cop, I would probably choose the glock over the berretta, only because the glock never jammed no matter how badly I was holding it. There was one time when it ejected the cartridge and the cartridge grazed my hair. Nelson actually had one that hit his forward. He said it hurt a little, but at least it didn't leave a mark. Also, w/ the glock, as Bill mentioned, if you don't hold the gun properly, you can cut your dumb pretty badly w/ the slider that ejects out the bullet. Pretty scary, but I still choose the glock over the berretta, if I had the proper training to use it.
I then went back to the rifle and tried the Uzi and the AK-47. The Uzi isn't really worth it because you are only firing at semi-auto mode. It would be really cool if they let you empty a clip in full auto mode. The same can be said for the AK-47, but at least I get to find out why its so easy to use that a child can use (a la the movie Lord of War; Oh, did I mentin the floor of the shooting range is littered w/ empty cartridges just like the opening sequence of Lord of War?). The rifle was awfully easy to use, and even though it had more kick back than the modified AR-15, but it was firing a more powerful bullet.
I then tried the sniper rifle. That's basically a M16 w/a huge telescoping lens. This was the gun that I had the best chance of cutting the stuff animals down because I can see the string so clearly. But after a couple of shots I gave up. I think a lot of ppl has tried and failed because the string had enough slack that when it was shot at, it probably deflected most of the energy from the bullet so that the most I can do is spin whatever object the string is tied to. After a couple of shots, I gave up. Instead, I thought of something else. There are tons of movies where you see a sniper shoot out multiple shots that ended up at the exact same location (usually to breaked tempered bullet proof glass). I tried that too. I don't think I was that good. Although it almost sounded like I was shooting the sniper rifle like an automatic because I fired off 6 or 7 shots in a couple of seconds.
After the sniper rifle, I tried the Desert Eagle. They didn't have the .50 caliber ammo that the Desert Eagle is famous for. So we use the .44 that's uses in bigger handguns like the Magnum. First off, the gun is probably one of the heavest that I have ever picked up. It easily weighs 8 pounds unloaded. Loaded, It's probably 10 pounds, if not more. If the kickback wasn't too bad, it would have been okay. But the kickback is crazy. Well, some of my friends say the kickback wasn't too bad, but they say that cuz the gun is so heavy. I was tired holding the gun that I didn't even bother to really aim the gun anymore.
Wow, this is getting to be the longest post of all time. Too bad I don't have a stat for that. Anyway, I will finish writing about the shooting range tomorrow. I still had to cover the most powerful rifle that I tried, the M1-Garand. And then I got to write about the best part of shooting range experience: Trap Shooting.
