Don't rock the boat, baby

Yesterday was my annual canoeing trip with Danger. We planned to do our usual 14 mile trip, but when I called last week to make sure they were running it, the person I talked to neglected to tell me that they close that trip at 12 on the dot. Due to some Nico-related delays, we didn't get to the canoe station until 12:14 and they wouldn't budge even though there was no way it was going to take us six hours to complete the trip and we easily would've made it to the end before the last pickup. We ended up going on a very crowded 7 mile trip, but since all the people who went into the water before us literally pulled their canoes over to the banks within twenty feet of the launch to start drinking beer, we easily left the entire group behind. The weather was stunningly perfect, and the whole trip was fantastic and relaxing even though we ran into an exhibitionist.

No lie, total flasher. There's no way the dude was just taking a pee break on what he thought was a deserted bend of the river, either, because I didn't even see him up on the bank until he made it a point to yell hello at us. So I turn to say hi back, and there's a flabby pasty white dude with his swimtrunks around his ankles and his (really unimpressive) junk hanging out in the breeze.

One summer we had a flasher who was targeting the local chain of ice cream stores that I worked for in high school, presumably because they were staffed entirely by teenage girls and were open late-ish. We'd all been warned that he was, well, on the loose, and so I spent a few weeks concocting elaborate revenge fantasies involving the hot water from the coffee machine and a moment of precision aim or of calling all the other girls together to point and laugh. But the one night he showed up at the store when I was there, I decided to just deny him the thing he wanted the most. When he knocked on the drive-through window and then dropped his pants, I rolled my eyes and kept on walking. I didn't even tell anyone else he'd showed up.

I figured that approach would work for the river flasher, too, so I just said hello, kept on paddling, and didn't turn back around when he tried to start a conversation about whether we'd been swimming in the river yet. I sincerely hope he and his rather small penis were disappointed. Seriously, though, why do hot buff dudes never feel the need to strip in public? It's always, always the pudgy pasty ones. Such a waste.

Oh, and there was one more bit of weirdness. When we got to the take-out ramp, Danger ran the canoe up into the gravel and got out to pull it ashore so I could get out. As she was doing that, this high school looking dude came over and said he'd get the boat. He didn't ask me to get out or tell me to sit tight, so I figured he was going to pull the boat up a little bit so I could get out, which is what the ramp guys have always done in the past. Now, I didn't ask or expect him to haul my heavy ass along in the boat, I would have been glad to get out, but he didn't give me any chance to before he grabbed the canoe and yanked on it, throwing me into the side of the metal boat and nearly dumping me into the river. What the hell, man? I said, "You know what, I'm happy to get out," and waded ashore. I get that being the guy that drags the giant metal canoes up the ramp is kind of a crappy job, but at least be decent to people, you know? Me and my bruised ass and knee would appreciate it.