I went tubing down the James River this past weekend with my two roommates. Lying in an inner tube as it floats down the somewhat brackish James, while mildly appealing in its own right, is also on the list of 110 Things To Do Before You Graduate - and my roommates and I are on a mission to check off every single thing on that list by the end of this, our fourth and final year at the University.\nAlthough I originally balked at the $20 charged by the rafting company to rent us a tube and drive us to the launching spot, I remembered that the company's Web site promised a two- to four-hour float down the river that would "relax us completely." The chance for total relaxation was, ultimately, too tempting to pass up, and we grudgingly agreed to give up a bit more of our rapidly dwindling summer cash.\nAlthough we had been promised complete relaxation, the day's journey turned out to be anything but relaxing. First, the rain - when we woke up to a steady drizzle Saturday morning, we briefly considered canceling our river adventure but decided to press on with our plans. We'd already paid up front to reserve our spaces and the reservation fee was non-refundable.\nA bit more money was spent filling up the car with enough gas to get us to Scottsville, and 30 wet minutes later, we arrived.\nDespite ominous-looking clouds, we signed the waivers releasing the rafting company from any responsibility should we be foolish enough to drown or otherwise maim, injure or kill ourselves while on the river. We piled into an old, rickety yellow school bus that eventually dropped us off at the muddy banks of the James River with our large, inflatable tubes.\nThe river's temperature was about 81 degrees, so we were pleasantly surprised to find - as we awkwardly clambered into our tubes - that we wouldn't be submerged in frigid water for the whole trip. The drizzling rain also let up as we started our float, giving my roommates and I hope that this would be a delightful little adventure after all. Five minutes into the trip, however, we realized this hope was in vain.\nOne of my roommates, it turned out, is extremely afraid of aquatic life. No sooner had our tubes begun to move than she begun to wonder, loudly, about the fish and other creatures that might be swimming beneath us. "Did you watch Shark Week?" she demanded of my other roommate and me. "You know that a shark got trapped in a river somewhere in Rhode Island and killed two children, right?"\nDespite our assurances that there were absolutely no sharks in the 3 feet of water flowing through the James, my roommate remained tense and jumpy the entire time. Each fish that we saw jump or tentacled plant that we floated over was enough to set her screaming. So much for the relaxing sounds of nature...\nRoommate fears, however, were not the only thing that sunk the relaxation ship. The lowness of the river, while strengthening my argument against sharks in the vicinity, also meant that the water moved very slowly. The 4-mile trip did indeed take nearly four hours. Four hours floating down a river is just too long. After about two hours, our stomachs began to growl audibly. Not having thought the entire plan through, and having left our apartment at 9 a.m., no one had packed any sort of lunch. And, not being the types to drink at 10 a.m., neither did we have the distraction of alcohol that many other tubers seemed to be enjoying.\nAdditionally, the sun had come out. At first delighted with the warm rays upon our skin, after a few hours we quickly realized that the failure to put on sunscreen was going to result in some rather severe consequences. As I watched my skin turn from white to pink to red before my eyes, I attempted to drape my soaking wet T-shirt over the exposed areas that seemed to be the most burnt. Unfortunately, one small T-shirt cannot protect one's entire stomach, arms, neck, legs and face, and I was reduced to moving the shirt frequently to new, burning spots in a failed attempt to beat the sun's rays.\nThree hours into the allegedly blissful trip, I'd had enough. I began paddling furiously with my arms towards the tiny speck on the horizon where the landing point was located - a vigorous upper-arm workout from which I have yet to recover.\nEventually, we made it out of the river and into the car. The drive back to Charlottesville found my roommates and I stinking of dirty river water, sunburned to crisps, exhausted from paddling the last quarter-mile, completely famished and unable to stop laughing. We giggled as we pulled weeds out of our bathing suits, laughed as we recalled our roommate's sincere belief in the possibility of a shark attack and eventually ended up in hysterics when the palest of us discovered that her formerly white skin was now neon pink. The float down the James River may not have been the relaxing morning we'd expected, but it was certainly not one that we were going to forget.\nUltimately, isn't that what the List of 110 Things To Do - and our time at the University - is all about? Not necessarily experiencing what you had originally expected, but creating memories with good friends that are going to last after our time here has ended? Fourth year, for my roommates and me, is going to be about experiencing everything Charlottesville has to offer together, regardless of where those experiences lead.\nStill, I hope they don't lead us back to CVS, frantically searching the aisles for aloe vera to slather on our sunburns.\nKeely is co-editor of the Life section. She can be reached at k.latcham@cavalierdaily.com.
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