Round 5: The Story (The Ole' School Days of RVA)

"We must always have old memories and young hopes."
               ~Arsene Houssaye~



When I refer to the "'ole school days", keep in mind that 2003 is the tail end of those days.  The real "ole' school days" were the 90's, and those were the days of the Double R Bar, the original Richmond BIG water paddlers, and 20+ foot runs on the Lower.  Those days were before my part of the RVA whitewater history, so D.J. can fill you in on the "real" original days of the raft shop.......................then Buzz took over, the fun ended, and the real business began.  The good ole days of absurd drunkenness in the shop, mid night runs, and not giving a fuck were over, and Richmond Raft Company became a "legit" operation.  Buzz did well with the marketing, and the whitewater of the James was alive with smiles and rainbows.  The guide crew started to form, and before long a true paddling community had been born and was now growing.
   River Guides are a rare breed.............it takes a unique person to want to guide whitewater, and with that unique character comes a strong personality.  When you add the fact that you are all young, in shape, and half naked in the sun and water all day doing bad ass shit, well, let's just say it sets things up well for off the water (and sometimes on) extra curricular activities.........and obviously it still does.  The last decade of raft shops across America have been the sites of more debauchery, drunken hooliganism, tall tales of whitewater legends, small tales of greatness on the rivah, true love, true heartbreak, true paddling, and all out fun, joyful memories of how it used to be.................and only half of those memories will ever be remembered.


“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
                                 ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise~
 In the Spring of 2003 I was working for an alternative school in Brooklyn Park, teaching middle school kids.  This place was intense.  The kids were wild as hell, and just keeping everything in check from day to day was a non stop chore.  I loved the job and was enjoying what I did, and I was doing it in a diverse community and with a well rounded team.  On the weekends I was not using my time in the most constructive of manners (aside from playing soccer every Sunday), so I decided to look into a new activity with one of my friends.  We were going to a group interview for RRC to become guides.  On the night of the interview, we walked into the shop down by the rivah, and found a small warehouse full of random people sitting around talking.  My buddy and I went to the end of a wooden picnic table in the middle of the room.  There were a couple of guys sitting on the counter top, some standing outside smoking cigarettes, a girl at the end of the table reading a book, and a few people sitting on top of another picnic table talking.  An older man was behind the counter and he was talking to individual people.  After a few minutes of observing, I could see what was going on.
   The man behind the counter was Buzz, and he was interviewing people, and while doing that, the current guides were sizing up everyone in the room.  Basically, it was like a backyard football game when it comes time to choose teams.  While sitting and waiting I noticed the girl reading the book looked familiar for some reason.  After a few minutes of talking to my buddy and being bothered by who she was, I finally just leaned over and asked her........."Do we know each other?".  Remember that I have no game, so even though it sounded like a pick up line, I actually meant "Do I know you?"  She of course responded "I don't think so", but then she did talk to me for a bit, so I guess it worked.  After my interview my buddy and I headed home, and in all honesty I didn't think about the interview all that much, but I did remember the name of the girl reading the book.....................Marcelle.
   I received a call a few days later saying that I was invited to Spring Raft Guide training, every Saturday for two months in the early spring, I believe starting the first week of March.  My buddy had not been chosen, which really sucked.  I reported on the first Saturday, bright and early ready to go...............and the girl reading the book reported too.  Sweet!


“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” 
                        ~Haruki Murakami~


   Raft guide training naturally creates a team environment among the strong, while simultaneously weeding out the soft.  It's early spring, cold as hell, the water is higher, and if you train to be a guide, you will swim.........a lot............in cold water!  If you aren't swimming, then your instructors suck.  By doing all this, a lot of people just don't come back the next weekend.  Marcelle and I kept coming back, along with a handful of others.  By late April, we had been beaten down but were ten times tougher on the rivah then we ever would have been otherwise.  Some of our original instructors, Ben, Dwayne, Sam, etc., truly did an exceptional job at training raft guides back in the day.  The class that graduated that year with Marcelle and I, as well as the graduating classes from the years before and the year after made up a group of boaters who all remain in the boating community today.................which is what makes everything that has happened so heartbreaking.  There was no Team WAV or Passages crew, or 14th Street whoring, or Fat Bastards, or anything else.  There was simply a small, good group of people, and the James was our playground.  We were all friends.  There was no back stabbing, sleeping with friends girlfriends, competition on the rivah, and there was no Fourteenth Street to fuel it all.  We were friends, and we just loved to hang out with each other.  I loved to hang out with Marcelle.
   Over the course of the summer the rivah community grew closer together.  Marcelle, Liz, myself, Danny, Allison, Rand, Ben, Hunter, Dwayne, D.J., Elyse, Mike, the little leprechaun, Matt, and a slew of other dirt bag raft guides and kayakers spent the summer pushin' rubber on the James, jumping off the Belle Isle Bridge, swimming at Pipeline at low water (which happened a lot back then), fishing custy's out of Pipeline, running evening play trips, and being young and wild.  Marcelle and I were friends for the first half of the summer, and I think that friendship is what helped our relationship grow.  The hardest part about losing her in the end is that I lost my best friend.  She always was, and without her I feel lost.
   I still remember the first time we were on the rivah together, the first time I kissed her, the first time I knew I loved her.  It didn't happen quickly, although I always knew it would.  By the end of the summer the secret was out, and no matter how much I tried to deny it, I had a girlfriend, and a damn interesting, unique, creative, and beautiful one at that.  Marcelle was quickly becoming a part of my life, and in doing so, I was quickly beginning to find myself and what I wanted in my own life.  Without her I am not sure that ever would have been possible.


“You only need one man to love you. But him to love you free like a wildfire, crazy like the moon, always like tomorrow, sudden like an inhale and overcoming like the tides. Only one man and all of this.” 
                   ~C. JoyBell C.~


  At the end of the summer the entire crew headed to the Lower Yough for a company trip.  That weekend is when I knew that Marcelle and I were going to be together for a long time.  I loved paddling the rivah with her, and I loved to watch her style rapids.  She was a hell of a good guide...........that I never doubted.  But she was also a good person.  She wanted to experience life.  Her artistic nature allowed her to see the world in a unique and beautiful way.  Her feisty spirit gave her an energy that was magnetic.  Her warmth and caring for the people she loved was unparalleled.  She drew me in, and having the opportunity to be a part of her life gave me hope, and it gave me purpose.
   Over the course of the next year Marcelle finished her senior year at VCU and she and I started spending a lot of time together.  We worked together, both on the rivah and at the Y, played together, both on the rivah and on the soccer field, and basically started living together.  I helped her with her senior art projects, she was always there for me, no matter what.  We started to fall in love.  I was still a mess in my own life, but with her by my side I felt motivated and energized to make something of myself.  I had just never thought about what I wanted to make of myself until she came along, and I think she sensed that, so she took it upon herself a lot of the time to help me find my way.  I am so grateful to her for that.  It is why I fell in love with her.  She was the only one that truly cared.
   Over the winter Marcelle and I began to kayak together with some other friends, but it was a light hearted commitment the first year.  I bought a boat and began to swim the James at low water, and Marcelle encouraged me the entire way.  In February the James rose to fifteen feet, and being young and dumb, we decided to test our stupidity by going on a high water, winter time play trip.  We put in at Huguenot flat water, just under the Huguenot bridge.  We took out at the southside of Fourteenth Street.  It took us 45 minutes to make the trip (normally a four hour trip), but a lot happened in that forty five minutes......................so stay tuned.


“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” 
                                                              ~Eleanor Roosevelt~


To find out what happened in those forty five minutes, click here...........Fifteen Foot Rookie Runs