A Series of Tubes

(For help with the title's pun, see here and here.)

Studious people at college can easily get so wrapped up in the intellectual euphoria of class that they forget they have bodies. Freshman year around Thanksgiving I talked to this girl who, in a rare moment of insight, pointed out that in college we practically never have physical contact with each other. I had to admit that she was right. In class you don't hang on people. Eating out you don't ever touch people. Idly looking at all your friends' recently updated profiles on Facebook certainly doesn't involve real bodies. If you accidentally come into contact with someone walking, you apologize for getting in their way. If you meet someone knew, your reward is a handshake. But when you're focused on class or haven't made a lot of friends, I could easily imagine people going a whole week without touching someone. (Then the girl and I dated and broke up partially because I wasn't as touchy-feely as she thought I should be.)

The less bookish students are aware of this problem. That's why they go clubbing. That's why they hook up freely. That's why they get drunk. You don't forget people have feelings and needs when you need to prop up your friend who's totally wasted and get him to a couch because he can't control his body well enough to do it himself. Me being the intellectual type, I just imagine descriptive metaphors and painful situations instead of doing it myself.

But I have a solution: tubing down the Ichetucknee river. The Ichetucknee river (colloquially pronounced "Ichnetuckee") is about 45 minutes from campus and is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy a Saturday in which Florida is not slaughtering another football team. I went with RUF, a Christian group that I've begun to get involved with, comprising about 40 people.

Tubing is fun for about 3 minutes. Then you need to find a way to make floating more fun. Guys tip the boats, girls shriek and complain. It's a great time. But what's most fun is trying to stand up on your tube. Once one person wobbles up for a few seconds, it becomes a challenge and everyone who's fun wants to try.

The thing about standing on your tube is that it's easier when you do it with others. You can get on your knees and get one foot up, and get the second up, and flail about wildly by yourself, but if you have a friend next to you doing it then when you start to fall one way, they can help you, and when they start to fall, you can brace them. All it takes is a little hand holding.

Andrew (who in the real world insists on "Smitty") and I did the brotherly duo raft. We linked together with Dan and showed RUF that mastering the inner tube is possible. Then we added people, got a square, eventually worked out a hexagon. Others were feebly trying but we absorbed their efforts and taught them how to do it right. If I hadn't been having so much fun, I think seeing a group of college students tottering on blown-up pieces of plastic and all collapsing into the water together would have looked ridiculous. But it was a totally acceptable way to get touch into life's equation.

At the end, once we had gotten about ten people all standing for a brief moment in a kinda circular shape, the challenge became getting as many people as possible onto one raft. Similar to this, but in the water:


And we used Andrew and my double tube for added stability and size. We managed four, and then tried to get five. I was in the middle straddling the two holes where people usually sit, and then people were crouched ready to stand on each side. There isn't much room for imbalance when there's so little room, and we never got it. But in the process the five of us were so close that we were practically piled on each other. And it was a great time.

So save the world, float the Ichnetuckee.