No photos, but I'm totally blaming it on T-Bird...

We were crossing in a spot that has a little more than waist deep water, and it's fast...and I'm not kidding, waist deep and fast...the kind of chit that can knock almost anyone down if they aren't firmly grounded.

I'm 6'3" and 200 pounds and on the way upstream I found that I was right at my limit of being floated away on that cross. T-Bird, of course, is like a one man coffer dam, so the river just runs around him in stuff like that.

On the way back down Tommy was in front of me about six feet while we were doing the cross, and all of a sudden he stumbled and was pirouetting and looked like he was about to go down...and it gets much deeper right downstream from us.

I took six running/swimming steps towards him to see if I could help him get his balance before he went down, and caught my right toe on the same rock that tripped him up...when I went to step over it with my left foot to re-gain my balance, the rock caught that one, too...

Just about the time T-Bird re-gained his balance all by himself I was pretty much swan diving down the river right at him. I bumped into him, which was like running into a tree trunk while doing the 40 yard dash in the woods at night, and I stood right back up...but not before shipping about half a gallon down the collar of my jacket.

Not enough to make it to my toes, just enough to soak my chest, stomach, and pour a couple cups of freezing water on my junk.

I'm glad we were on the way out!

Just goes to show ya, no good deed goes unpunished in this cruel, cruel world.

Fish on...

Todd