the trip

this is for the 52 week challenge. a different kind of vacation to go on, wanna go?

John was in need of a vacation. It seemed like nothing was going his way. His boss wrote him up for something he didn’t even know about, or doing, or soothing like that. He really stopped listening a long time ago to him.
John’s fiancée jumped on him for something he did do, that he completely let slip from his mind to correct it. She never just says something to him, she is like a hunting dog looking for its prey, she just doesn’t stop.
John was finding each and everyday very stressful. The only joy he got was watching his secretary, Julie, come into his office for one thing or another. She was a very attractive woman, and she knew it too. She was often showing John more than he wanted to see. John always said hher coming into the room always made a rough day brighter and more enjoyable.
A vacation trip was planned, far away from work, the secretary, even though he wanted to have her come along with him, nor his fiancée. It was planned just for him and him alone. He planned to go on a Kayak trip down a major river. It wasn’t a terribly expensive vacation, as he had most of what he needed for this trip.
As the weeks went by the plans firmed themselves up. He kept them to himself, as he knew that people would talk him right out of it, if he let them, or complain that they weren’t taking them along with him. Well, all except Julie, she wasn’t one of those girls that thought he owed him something. The only thing he showed was a grin, much like the one worn by the Cheshire cat from the famous story, and that was enough to make everybody wonder.
Day after day he went into the office with that grin wrapped around his face. He didn’t normally listen to much of what was said around the office, because mainly he wasn’t interested in any of it. But, he now listened when people thought he wasn’t listening to them.
“What is he up to?” they would ask.
“Why is he smiling so much? Does he know something we don’t?” others talked amongst themselves.
“Is he smiling because he is sleeping with the secretary, Julie?” still others would ask.
All of them were trying to figure out why he suddenly had such a big grin on his face.
As the vacation arrived he was as giddy as a school girl as he packed up his car secretly, and headed out. As he passed through town, no one seemed to notice the car passing by with a kayak tied to the roof, and a single passenger in the car, John. Soon he was out of the traffic of the city, as the car sped up he continued on his trek to his destination, the ghost river.
As the time flew by John found himself further and further out of the city and deeper into what some people call, the country. Till, according to his GPS, he turned the last turn on these old dirt roads which lead to where he wanted to go. He finally stopped the car. His eyes were wide with excitement of the adventure he was about to embark on. He walked up to the edge of the Ghost River and saw the water as it rushed by where he stood.
With the engine to his car off there was no noise to disturb the serenity of this place, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath of air fresher than any he had in many years. He just stood there, eyes closed, deep breathing, and listening to the silence around him for about five minutes.
He suddenly went to his car and began to unpack that which he needed to begin this adventure. After about ten minutes he not only had his car unpacked, he also had it packed into his kayak. He locked the doors to his vehicle, climbed into his kayak and floated down the river.
Once he was in water deep enough he produced his paddle and began paddling his way down the river at a steady and quick pace, due to the current in the river. He was amazed by the sights of the canyons this river went through. The shear beauty of nature was not only a level his mind couldn’t take it, but it was also befuddling to him that when the dawn broke this morning he was inside the landscape of the city with was very much different that this scenery was.
As the river continued, he picked up the pace to match it. He found it very relaxing and peaceful, as this river snaked its way out of the canyons through massive redwood forests, where the trees tried to reach all the way to heaven. Then through a plains area, where the animals seems to come to the side of the river, to watch him as he floated on by oblivious to them.
He was so much into the scenery, John had not been paying attention to the time, and it started to get dark. John was getting worried as he hadn’t come across any area suitable for him to set up a camp and get some rest.
But just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, and before it got completely dark out there, he rounded a corner and found exactly what he was looking for. Once close enough to the shore, John got out of the boat grounded it well. Pulled out his small anchor/ hook that came with the boat and ensured the boat wouldn’t be going anywhere till he was ready to tomorrow by driving it into the ground only after wrapping it around a rather sizable log that was on the shore.
Once he was certain the boat wasn’t going anywhere, he dug through the kayak till he found his tent, which had taken him only about five minutes to set up and get ready for him to get some sleep. After taking a last long look around, he pivoted on his feet and disappeared into the tent. He turned on a small light he had until he was situated then he would turn it out and go to sleep.
As the darkness settled in to the area he had set up in, John turned the light out, and laid there looking out the small window on the tent, at the beautiful nighttime sky displayed before him like a classic piece of art, never seen before. In fact, it was the last think John would see as he drifted off to sleep.
That nigh John slept better than he had ever slept in his whole life. A ten megaton bomb could have gone off beside him and he would not have even moved, or heard it for that matter. As he slept he dreamt of his job, and fiancée, but mainly of the shapely and very sexy Julie from his office. The dream suddenly turned to something he would not have wanted his priest to ever know about. It was involving him, Julie, Rhonda(his fiancée), and Julie’s girlfriend. The dream must have been very good, as John slept with a big ole grin on his face.
Once dawn broke, john seemed to wake up, climb out of the tent grab a small bit to eat , out of the kayak, break the camp down, and be ready to move on in record time. As the first rays of the sun struck the camp John was pushing off from the site to continue down the river towards whatever that day had in store for him.
As the day burned onwards the calm river, slowly turned into a not so calm monster, and John was starting to get nervous about it. The river tossed his kayak like a sheet in the wind. There were small pockets of whitewater forming on the very edges of the river buy the shore, which mean John had no where to go if it got much rougher, which of course it did.
Once he rounded the last bend of his trip, he caught sight of the monster water fall he was heading towards. John tried as he could to get away from it, but in the end he couldn’t resist it anymore.
“Relax,” a voice whispered in his ear,” I have you!”
John’s body obeyed the order without question, and all the fear he felt melted away like so much butter in a hot pan. John watched in peace as his small kayak went over the edge of the fall and plunged down into the mist of the fall.
John couldn’t see a thing as the mist he entered obscured everything from his view. But yet there was no fear in his heart. Suddenly he found himself in another world, one that was vastly different from the one he was in before this.
He felt confident that this is the restart he truly wanted. but that is another story!