Whitewater and Gulf Games

Next up was the week spent with my gaming family at Gulf Games. This year's summer extravaganza was in Charlotte. Tuesday was spent at a man-made whitewater facility that had an artificial river with Class I through IV rapids, climbing walls, zip lines and more. It's a pretty good deal - $50 and you get to do everything in the park as much as you want. I ended up gonig rafting twice.First on the big, blue 8-person boats, which involved being unceremonious dumped in as we went over Big Drop:
and later on small 5-person boats. These are a lot more unstable and guide is willing to do more agressive moves, including "surfing" where you see how long you can hang in the heart of a rapid. We started with 4 of us plus the guide, but by the time we'd been through the "easy" parts a couple of times we'd lost 2. Of course easy is relative, as in one spill I felt Paul land on my head and my head hit the bottom. Thank goodness for good helmets! John and I were the die-hards (read: crazy ones) who went through the harder section, which was a blast. I caught serious air several times at the front of the boat. We spilled a couple of times too, but no pictures of that. But I like this one (on right)because it makes us look like we actually knew what we were doing.

Then came 4 days of gaming, including lots of Tichu, some Masters of Venice, a few games of Valdora, which I like more each time I play it (with less than 5 anyway) and a fun prize table where I scored some muscadine jelly. As always, Gulf Games are the highlights of my year and it was awesome to get to see everyone again.