Chapter 49

April 5-26, 2001
2001 Grand Canyon Season Opener

If it had been a normal trip they would have had an extra couple days to get around, but this wasn't a normal trip, and there was plenty to do. It was late enough when they got back from the Park Service trip that they just headed to the house and tried to share out the shower as best they could. The next morning they were out at the office, to find out where they were and what had changed. "Boy, I don't know where to start," Al told them. "We got Dave and Mary out of here on schedule, but I had a couple different pickup boatmen bomb out on me, and a lot of the motor rig guys I could call on are still out of town, so I had to send Jerry, Dan, and Fred from GCR. I could have sent Michelle or gone myself, but there's a lot to be done yet."

"Are we going to have enough boatmen Sunday?" Crystal asked.

"Somehow," Al told her. "The two of you and Michelle. I've got one pickup boatman I tacked down last night, and I'm still trying for another one, so I guess I'll go if I have to. The next trip, no problem; it'll depend on which kids have completed finals as to who actually goes to Lee's, but we're going to have all we need."

Crystal frowned and suggested, "Could we make do with four rafts in a pinch?"

"No way, you've got twenty-two customers now, and Karin was talking with a couple this morning, that are thinking about it real hard since we offered a last-minute discount. If I have to go, there's a good chance Charlie will be in town in time to meet us at Phantom. Let's see, what else? The big thing is the turnaround at the end of your trip. Rather than dink around like we do on the last day, Jeff and I worked out that you'll run down to Diamond Creek the night before and camp there. Jeff and Jimmie will leave way early and try to get there maybe an hour or two after dawn, so that'll buy a few hours. Then Karin suggested that it's a hell of a pain to try to clean all the gear from this trip to take it right out again when we'll have an extra set of gear sitting here. So, what's going to happen now is that when you get in, it's going to be a pit stop, just unload the stuff that has to be inspected or cleaned or whatever and leave it in a pile, load the other stuff and go. Jeff and Jimmie and Karin will have the groceries done and loaded, so it'll be about like a normal Sunday morning, then we'll head right on up to Lee's and get started on the rigging before it gets dark. Don't plan on getting much in town if you can avoid it. I know that's going to be hardest on you two, but it's only this once."

"Not to worry, we know it's special," Scooter smiled. "Maybe if there's something special needed we could call in from Peach Springs and have Karin pick it up while we're on the way here. But how does the stuff that's left behind here get cleaned up so it'll be ready to go when I have to start Team 3?"

"The kids that we don't take with us will be finishing finals in the next couple days. Michelle is going to set up a workbee with them along in there somewhere and get the inspection and cleanup done, probably the day before they hike down to Phantom. You'll still have to get groceries, but it'll at least give you back an evening to make up for some of the time you're losing on this burnaround."

There was still a lot to do in getting both the Team 2 and Team 3 trips ready, but quite a bit had been done while they were gone, mostly done by Jeff and Jimmie and Karin. They were going to be busy, if not frantically busy, and they spent the day messing with it. When they knocked off, they headed back over to the house, with Scooter wondering how she was going to lose Crystal so she could go have a sort of date with Jim at the Burro. Fortunately, Karin gave her an opening. "Girls," she said, "While you're gone I'm going to move my stuff over to Al's, and just live out of a suitcase here for the last few days, but there's a couple things I need an extra set of hands to set up over there. Could one of you help me?"

"Sure, Mom," Crystal said.

"Can I beg off and borrow the Dodge?" Scooter asked. "I've got some running I really need to do. It could take two or three hours."

"I'd hoped we could get in a couple hours with our laundry tonight," Crystal said. "Any chance you could deal with it?"

"Throw it in the car, I'll add it to my list," Scooter agreed with what she hoped was concealed relief. It was hard to say if she was thinking about taking a run at Jim, or had even thought about it, but with Crystal and Scooter together virtually all the time, it was damn difficult to pull something like that past her.

She drove over to the Burro, got a load of laundry going and headed into the bar, where Jim was just settling in. "Wow, stranger," he smiled. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Just in the neighborhood," she grinned. "Hey, I don't know if you knew, but Al is scratching around for someone to run the next trip with us."

"I knew that," he grinned. "When I got in last night, Marty gave me a message that Al wanted to talk to me, so I called him right up. I'm going to be on your trip leaving Sunday; I've got time enough before the regular season starts."

"Way cool," she smiled. On a regular trip, it might be possible to spend a little more social time than they'd managed on the Park Service trip. "The trip itself ought to be all right, but the burnaround at the end is going to be a massive pain in the ass."

"Yeah, he said you had a crazy one there," he nodded. "We do, too. I guess I'm going to be riding on back up to Lee's with you afterward, since we're going to be doing our first rig of the season at the same time, and guess who's going to be on it."

"Boy, doesn't that just beat everything in the ass?" she said. "First you sit around for months waiting to make a trip, and then they're jammed on top of each other with hardly time to shit in between."

"I guess that's the price we pay if we want to be down in the Canyon," he nodded. "You know, when I took this up, I looked on the rafting as a way to fill in the summer break between ski seasons, so a four-month season was fine. Now, I've come to like the Canyon so much that I'm looking at it the other way around, and I sure wish I could get in with you guys. Hell, I'm not even sure I want to go back to Cooper Hill next winter."

"The subject has come up with relation to something else," Scooter said, thinking hard about this revelation. "Al says there's sort of an informal agreement among the companies to not poach each other's employees."

"I've heard that too," he said. "I can see where at times it would make sense, but this is a little different. Hell, I spent more days on the river for Canyon Tours last year than I did for my own outfit. Al says he'll have me running this fall as a boatman instead of as a swamper if there's space, and he thinks there will be."

"I'll put in a good word for you if I get the chance," Scooter smiled. "I know you're pretty good with an oar boat, but hey, those S-rigs take some managing. Just ask me, and I can point to a skid mark at 60-Mile for proof. Are they going to have you scheduled pretty heavily?"

"Pretty heavy, but a little goofy, what with doing both motor and oar trips. Like I said, we launch the same day you do, but we're back the third, and I'll have two short trips, a long trip, a few days off, and then an oar trip."

"Hell, I'll be back the third," she smiled, an idea creeping into her mind. It could be done ... but wanted some thinking. "I'm only running half the trip, then coming back to launch my own. Maybe we ought to get together for an evening or something."

"I'd like that," he smiled. "Especially with you. There aren't a lot of single woman rafters about my age running around."

Jim, she thought, you keep talking like that and you're going to talk yourself real easily into someplace you're really not expecting. "I've made about the same observation about single guy rafters," she smiled.

In between bouts of laundry -- it turned out he was doing his, too -- they sat and talked about a lot of things. One thing kept coming to the front of her mind: in a month, when she came back to start her first Team 3 trip, Karin would be living with Al, and Crystal would be out on the river. She would have the house to herself. Alone. Without Crystal. All summer, too; there was talk of Barbie possibly moving in with them in the fall but it wasn't a done deal yet. As they compared notes about trip schedules, she realized that there would be three different weekends when they'd both be off the river at the same time between now and August. Just running her mind over Crystal's schedule, there would only be one day in that period when both he and Crystal would be off at the same time, and they'd each have turnaround work to do.