Tubing vs. Kayaking: Faceoff

If you lived in Cleveland, you would have been awoken last night to the first freakish storm of the summer season. Said storm woke me up at 1 AM, and I kid you not, the lightening was so out of control that I wondered if fireworks were going off in my front yard. Or even in my bedroom. One cannot fathom the concept of literally constant lightening until living in the midwest. It's like FLASHFLASHFLASHFLASHFLASH, nonstop. I wasn't entirely unconvinced that I would be killed by a stray bolt right there in my bed.

Thus, when I woke up to a very rainy morning, I was skeptical about the day's planned event...tubing down the Mohican River. It's one thing to have your butt in the river when it's hot outside. It's a whole different ball game when it's cold out and the water is even colder from a night of heavy rain. Luckily the clouds burned off on the drive over, and the day was 85 degrees and flawlessly sunny. That's one for mother nature.

The thing about tubing is that the concept is so appealing. You sit in a tube and float down the current while expending absolutely no effort whatsoever. It should be the epitome of relaxation. And yet the tendency to drift is common, causing you to take steering actions quite frequently. And since one's ability to steer in a tube is somewhat limited, you actually end up expending a great deal of effort just to stay on course.

I'm not saying tubing wasn't fun, I'm just saying it was more fun when I swapped seats with someone in a kayak and spent the rest of the afternoon productively paddling. Sure, it was effort, but I was actually getting somewhere...as opposed to sitting stuck in a gully or helplessly heading straight for a bank of sharp sticks. And thanks to my SPF 10,000 sunscreen, I came out of it all with my skin still a normal human shade. (Yes, white is a normal human shade) Talk about a successful day in the sun.