This time last year..

...I was leavin on a jet plane headin for Montana. I couldn't wait to get there and spend a good solid week with my friend Summer and back in the Bitterroot Valley where my heart belongs. I got in really late about 11pm and she lives a good hour from the airport. As girls usually do, we talked and talked the whole way home and in no time we pulled up to the house to find... a tent OUTSIDE with a "Welcome Trudy" sign from her husband pointing in it as if I was sleeping there. Now you have to know a little about Clifton...he's like that brother you always AND never wanted. The kind who picks on you, beats you up, can't turn your back on em, and terrorizes you when you do nothing wrong....ever? That's my Cliffy! Always trying to "one up" the other and this time..he got me good. We laughed for about 30 minutes over that tent.
Moving on...we had this river rafting trip planned and I was beside myself excited. There were about 5 boats and they were all friends or family that have been doing this run for years. No guides, just the real pros...I think.
It was 100+ degrees out and floating down that river was the most removed from everything that I could possibly be. In the middle of the mountains, a slight breeze, sound of a river and maybe some birds chirping..I felt like Mary Poppins. Aside from looking like a giant blowfish in my lifejacket...life couldn't have been better than in that moment....until I hear this dull roaring noise that sounds like a Transformer up ahead. That's when Summer's brother Luke (another brother you wish you never had) turns around and gives the evil grin to me and says "That's the rapids up ahead..muhahhahahahah!" If I ever thought about holding someone's head under water until they stopped breathing..it was that moment. But, he was our driver and the experienced one so drowning would have to wait till the end of the trip.
True to the sheer terror you see on people's faces in the pictures of white water rafting, I'm pretty sure I could have made a commercial. I screamed like a girl and laughed like a nervous idiot once we were through.
We camped overnight on an island in the middle of the river and did it all over again the next day. By the end of the trip I was already planning the trip for 2009 and couldn't wait.






Well, the trip for 2009 is here...but incomplete. You see, I can't go. I can't fully express my sadness in words so I have included a picture that I think captures it best.
Have fun my friends..and Clifton...don't forget your pills this time, you know how bad that rash can get.