Smoke on the Water

Floating the river today led to an almost entirely unproductive day.
It was very relaxing.
The Boise river has a gazillion bridges that cross it, and floating down the water leaves one to contemplate the undersides. Kara and I began evaluating them as prospective real estate; like... as places for me to live.
Under the bridges.
Since I am about to be homeless.
The kids got into the fun with us, and soon we were seeing bridges that provided more privacy than others. Or one with a lovely view. M' found a bridge with a promising fishing hole nearby that could feed the family, and double as a bathtub.
Kara almost died floating the river. She was very excited about it, in fact. For the rest of the day she would announce to any who would listen, "I ALMOST DIED TODAY!!!!!!" And she would say it with her eyes the size of dinner plates, as though the experience were the most delicious piece of scandalous gossip since Paris went to jail.
She fell out of the boat, that's what happened. I pulled her spluttering and laughing from under the boat. She liked it, I think; it was a bit of an adrenaline rush.
Floating the river is a big deal around here. It's what you do in the summer. Everyone puts in at one park, and everyone gets out at another one. The entire process takes a couple of hours. Since everyone puts in at the same spot and takes out at the same spot, you end up floating down with a loose group of people who all got on the river at the same time that you did. They're your floating buddies for two hours.
There was one lady floating near us with two men in her boat. Every single time she laughed, she clapped. As in, "haha! haha!" (clap) "haha! haha!" (clap) She did it every time. It was so annoying after, O, the 30 millionth time. But, the men in her raft shoved her clapping bikini clad self into the water, and that did seem to stop her laughing for a while.
There were other people who were smoking cigarettes. How would you go about keeping your cigarettes dry enough to smoke while partially submerged in an inner tube? I am baffled by this. We were utterly soaked, and we were in a six man raft. I couldn't have lit a match if my life depended on it.
I couldn't have lit a match for a funeral pyre either. And that was a weird conversation, believe you me! How often do you think of floating a burning corpse down a scenic river in the center of town? No? Ah, well, we seem to discuss cremation from time to time. But, this was the first time we had really considered the economy of a do-it-yourself plan. Sort of a Kingly touch, what with the floating pyre, don't you think?
I have to go to bed. All that sun has addled my brain.
Good night, chums.