nostalgia

For years, every summer my family made a point to go tubing down the Chattahoochee River in Helen, GA. Helen's a quirky little in-the-middle-of-nowhere-north-georgia town that is alpine-themed and just doesn't belong. The river flows through the middle of it and for a few bucks you can have a great time with a bunch of other strangers floating down it. Depending on the water level, you can spend half of the 2 hours bailing yourself off of rocks or you can float down it in half the time because no rocks are exposed. It can be quite entertaining to watch the families seemingly 15 strong all strung together get stuck and block the river, causing a 30 tube build-up. It can also be hilarious to watch your mom fall out of her tube, scream frantically for your dad to help her, and the lady floating past freak out yelling "someone help this woman" because she thinks by the way your mom is acting she certainly doesn't know how to swim. My family always stopped at Dairy Queen on our way home for blizzards. Good times.

I was feeling inspired to make this trip happen at some point this summer. It didn't happen with my family, but I got a group of friends together to go today. There was quite a bit of anticipation because we weren't sure if the weather would cooperate and many of us hadn't tubed before. It also took us a little while to get there because I didn't go the tried and true way, so suffice it to say we took a little detour that brought us almost to South Carolina (not that far out of the way, but out of the way nonetheless). I love bringing together my friends from all parts of my life- it's always great to see the things they have in common come out. And no one had been to Helen before, so I got to share the quirkiness with the new-comers and watch their reactions. We even stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home. Besides the water level today being the lowest I've ever experienced, meaning that we had to fight getting stuck every second of the way down the river, it was really a good time.

My plan is to continue to resurrect the traditions and start some new ones. I'm on a mission to figure out what ATL has going for it and rally my friends to experience it with me. Here goes nothing...