Chapter 40

June 29 - August 10, 2000

Grand Canyon, 2000: Summer 2

After the usual brief break, they were off and running on the fifth trip of the season, Crystal again in charge. Except for losing Karin and Melissa and picking up Norma, the crew was the same, and they were getting to be a well-tuned group.

This trip and the next trip were usually the ones that drew the peak of the summer heat, and this was no exception. Now, except for the first brief stop or two in the morning, people were swimming at every break -- at least getting out of the raft to get wet. It helped a little; when they ran rapids of any size the boatmen tried for as wet as possible. Well, short of a flip, anyway.

It was on this trip that Duane got Scooter and Crystal off to the side as things were dying down one evening. There was a bond between the three that was a little special -- they'd come up as eastern boatmen, all three had done the AT, and Scooter had been the person who picked him out to come to the Canyon. Now, he said that he was thinking of picking up another similarity -- the Outdoor Leadership Training Academy, OLTA, where both Crystal and Scooter had graduated years before. Both had told him that OLTA had been a valuable experience for them, one that had shown its worth many times, but as a hiker and a rafter he was already past some of the things that they could teach him.

"Right," he said, "But there's some things that they can teach me. The Wilderness First Responder course for example."

"You're right on that one," Crystal told him. "In my opinion, they teach it better than anyone else, too. If I were Al, I wouldn't let any trip go out without at least one WFR on it, and I plan on griping to him about it some time. Scooter and I are both WFRs, Dave is a WFR on Team 2, but if there's one on Team 1 I don't know about it. Well, Mike is a Medical First Responder I think; it's not the same thing, but it's better than nothing. The one serious injury we've had in years, according to Al, was when Jerry fell last summer, you've heard the story. Talk about getting lucky! We had an EMT, a retired emergency room nurse, and not one but two WFRs."

"I never laid a hand on him," Scooter smiled. "I was too busy loading the boats. But yeah, a WFR card wouldn't be a bad thing to pick up, and there's some OLTA courses that are oriented a little more toward actual leadership skills than they are at picking up outdoor skills."

"Well, all of them teach leadership skills," Crystal expanded. "Some more than others. Yeah, from that viewpoint there might be something that's worth your while, and if you do it over the winter, it's not impossible that Al might be willing to pick up a piece of it, assuming you're coming back next year."

"I'm coming back as long as they'll have me," Duane nodded. "I mean, shit, this is only my fifth trip, but I'm hooked. I like the Canyon and I like the life." He took a deep breath and continued. "I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't mind picking up some stuff that might lead to my being a trip leader someday."

"Ahh, you are hooked," Crystal grinned. "Look, you realize that in the short term there's probably not going to be any trip-leader spots open at Canyon Tours, don't you? Bill is leaving this season, and Scooter is already earmarked to take over his team. Dave and Mary aren't leaving soon, and I'm not planning on leaving soon. That means that even Scooter is going to have to fall back to assistant in the spring and fall. The assistant picture is a little better. Michelle doesn't want to be an assistant; she just wants to be a boatman. When Scoot takes over a team, that means there's going to be two assistant spots open, and it wouldn't surprise me if Michelle isn't in one of them."

"Wouldn't surprise me either way," Scooter agreed. "Michelle takes special handling, and I have mixed emotions about whether I'd want her as an assistant or not. Some of the stuff she'd be impossible to beat. Other stuff she would drive you up the wall. So there could be some at least partial-season assistant openings coming up as early as next year, but at this range it's hard to say."

"That's not saying that there may not be a trip-leader spot open up sometime," Crystal added. "Al has on occasion commented that if he had enough people available he'd go to a four-team setup, at least for trip leaders, and let them have an extra week off between trips. I don't know if I like that or not. In fact, it seems loose to me. Now, if I was married to someone topside, I might think the four-team setup had points, but I don't expect to be married any time soon."

"Same here," Scooter added. "Now, given a little more Canyon experience, I think you'd make a great assistant, and probably a good trip leader some day. I was an assistant on my fourth trip, but that was special circumstances, I was OLTA and had about four times the experience in the east you did. So, it's not the same thing."

"Right, but there's OLTA again," he smiled. "I'm thinking that if it comes down to me versus someone else, that might throw the balance a little my way. But, I'll be honest, the other angle I'm thinking about is taking off early this fall and going to school at Northern Arizona to take their EMT course, or maybe next spring. EMTs can always find work off season, and it's better pay than shoving burgers; ask me, I know."

"Yeah," Crystal nodded. "That has potential. There's some stuff that a WFR knows that an EMT doesn't, mostly because they're coming at it from different directions. But there's so much that an EMT knows that a WFR doesn't that the balance falls way the other way. No promises, but there's a good chance that Al might be willing to pay a little extra to have an EMT on the crew as a full-season boatman."

"You think I should run it by him, then?"

"Can't hurt. Just looking at who I know about, there's a good chance we'll be pretty close to having enough boatmen to go around this fall without having to go for pickups outside the company. So, he might not scream too loud if you tell him you want to not run in the fall so you can bring an EMT certificate back in the spring."

"It needs some more thinking about," Duane admitted. "But I may just run it by him if he's in the office when we get in the next time."

As it turned out, and a little to their surprise, Al wasn't in the office when they got off the trip: Michelle was -- and Karin was out with him on Team 1! "If they're going to run together this summer, they about have to do it on Team 1 because I'm the only one he can switch with," she told them. "I almost don't mind being in the office when it's as hot down between the walls as it's going to be for them this trip."

"There were some days down there that I had some pretty favorable thoughts about central air conditioning," Scooter admitted. "Thoughts of ski slopes covered with nice, frozen snow were rather appealing too."

"That's not that far off, is it?" she asked. "You know, that's something we should do on this break, the three of us get together and nail down a couple things about winter. The sailboat charter is at the head of that list, of course."

"Let's try to not get things tacked down too damn tight just yet," Crystal suggested. "Mom's divorce becomes final just about the time the tripping season ends, so I'll bet there's a wedding and a honeymoon in there somewhere."

"We're probably OK on tacking down the sailboat charter," Michelle said. "I wouldn't want to guess too far beyond that at this point, though. Next question, Bahamas? Specifically, Abaco and the Phoebe Lee? I called up and asked. We still get the price break during January and early February, but there's someone got it scheduled the first week of that period, so only three weeks are available. On the other hand, they have a thirty-two-footer, the Felicity Ann, that we could have for four weeks."

"Oh, hell, I don't know," Scooter said. "I'm not as tight for money as I was last year; I suppose I could go either way, especially if they give us a decent price break on the bigger boat if we take it for an extra week."