We steadily learned about each of the crew members by riding with them. Typically, you chose a boat to ride on in the morning, and stowed your personal ammo can on it (which could be accessed between stretches of whitewater). If you were on the paddle boat, however, you brought along a water bottle, at most. Since there were 6 guides, and the trip was 6 days and 5 nights, you could theoretically ride with each of the guides. But by the time we realized this, it was too late, and we ended up missing Lynn and Nicki.

The trip leader, Lynn, I've already mentioned. She was like a nun, married to the river. Her passion and grace emerged from her stoic protective shell on the final night, as she spoke and then sang about the river. Nicki was a cute, slender woman who attracted most of the single men to her raft the very first day, for some strange reason. She was quiet, though, and we never really had a chance to talk. John was also pretty quiet, and even though we rode with him the final morning, it was only for an hour or so, and we were too preoccupied with the final morning's preparations to be really social.

We rode with Caden one day. He was an interesting guy who knew the most about the natural history of the canyon. Hailing from San Francisco, he'd worked as a bike messenger, until he got hit by a car. Because of the treatment he got by the EMT personnel (or so the rumor went), he decided to become one himself. So now he works as an EMT and takes the summer off each year to work as a river guide. Pretty cool, no? More on him later.

Sam was a local from Flagstaff, who was alot of fun. Even though he was pretty quiet as well, he also had a sly sense of humor. We ended up riding on his boat twice, and coincidentally, his was the boat that picked me up that one disastrous morning when the paddle boat flipped. With a mischievous smile, he took me back to inspect the hole that had sucked me down, down. He was also the one who gave me the shirt off his back, literally, when I started shivering from a delayed reaction to the dunk in the Colorado.

Martha was a relentlessly upbeat person with a sunny disposition, except in one case. In response to a question that fateful morning on the beach, she responded that no boat of hers had ever flipped. Not 20 minutes after this pronouncement, the paddle boat had flipped. Um, can anyone say jinx? Later, as we slammed through a series of rapids appropriately called the Roaring 20's, half the people on the raft got swept out by one broadside, including Martha. Get me out, she angrily yelled floating next to the raft, get me out!