Good to be back. I'll try to be on this with a little regularity, but as I don't have internet at home, it may be tough. I've been encouraged byt some to get back to writing/blogging.
Yesterday Dash, Kaed, and little brother Eric and I went down to the Cowlitz River to get out of the heat. It's safe for the boys there as long as you don't get out too far into the river (big drop-off). Well, there were 2 people swimming down river, a late 30's dad and a daughter of about 11-12. They were trying to swim back into the shallow area but the river got ahold of them and began taking them down river at a pace to quick to overcome. Daughter was scared and tired. Dad was too. Dad began yelling "HELP" which only scared daughter more.
At the first 'help', I jumped into action. I quickly ran to our stuff and grabbed Dash's little life vest and booked it into the river Hasselhoff-style (the Baywatch theme "I'll be ready!" was playing in the background of my mind - no lie ). Eric was parallelling them as deeply as he could waiting for them to be close enough to reach out and grab them. As I ran out to them, I chucked the small life vest to the daughter perfectly! It hit her right in the chest while swiftly moving with the current. Joe Montana couldn't have thrown it better. [At this time I'd like to ask a trivia question. Those that really know me will get it: Which hand did I throw that life jacket with? The answer is at the bottom of the post.] Anyway, the life vest is really small, but as soon as the daughter had it she relaxed a bit, but wasn't any closer. That's when Eric swam out to her (foolish? hero?) and swam her in. I also had grabbed a stick (which I thought was longer when I grabbed it, but ended up being pretty short - good thing I'm used to that...). When Eric was close enough to me, he grabbed the stick, the girl grabbed him, the dad grabbed her, and all were pulled in.
Dad was thankful (although he very macho-ly claimed that he was fine the whole time - whatever man) and daughter was crying. So, like it was no big deal, Eric and I went back to playing catch with Dash and Kaed. It was a pretty strange feeling really. I mean, Eric and I legitimately saved their lives (they were screwed if we didn't get them) and our heartbeats hardly raised a beat. Crazy. Kaed asked us what we were doing and we calmly said, "Just saving lives."
Answer: the left.
