We rowed our boat down stream, a feat which proved much easier than we had expected seeing as how it was a fairly fast flowing river. If not for our desire to catch up with the Fellowship we probably would have drifted instead of going to all the work of rowing. As for myself, I was enjoying the mild work and scenery very much.
"Could life get much better than this?" I asked Katy when we had been rowing for about 20 minutes.
"Yes." She replied from the front of the boat.
I stopped rowing for a moment, "Really? How?" I asked.
"We could have a motor boat and be caught up to everyone by now." Katy declared.
I laughed and resumed rowing, "Yes, a motor boat would be fun… We could zoom past them and tip over Legolas’ boat!" With this in my mind I rowed even faster. However the increase in effort put into rowing our small vessel had the adverse affect of tiring me out much faster than the much more leisurely pace we had been going.
I kept up the quickened pace for maybe ten minutes tops before I stopped again, "Katy, I’m tired." I complained.
Katy rolled her eyes, a gesture made useless as she was in front of me and I couldn’t see her face, "That’s what you get for going so fast!… Do you want to catch up with the others or not?" She asked.
I thought about the answer to this question. If I said ‘yes’ she would tell me to keep rowing, if I said ‘no’ we probably would never catch up. Thinking about this some more I finally responded. "Yes." I admitted.
Katy stopped rowing to look at me in confusion, "’Yes’ what?" She asked.
"Yes, I do want to catch up to them!" I explained, irritated she did not remember the question she had asked only a few moments before.
Katy thought for a while before understanding struck her, "Oh… Rachel, I asked you that over an hour ago!" Katy informed me.
I searched her face, trying to tell if she was joking or not, her face appeared serious, but I was sure she was mistaken, "No, it couldn’t have been more than five, maybe ten minutes ago." I argued.
"No, it was at least an hour. I gave up waiting for an answer after the first ten minutes." Katy argued.
"It was not an hour! I think I would know if it had been an hour, after all an hour is a very long time to just misplace!" I said, irritated.
"It was." Katy argued.
"Was not."
"Was."
"Was not!"
"Was!"
I glared at Katy but decided to be the mature one and stop arguing. We rowed in silence for a while until Katy finally turned around, clearly angry.
"Will you stop that?" She asked.
"Stop what?" I said, purposefully stopping nothing I was doing.
"Stop glaring at me! It’s annoying!" Katy exclaimed.
"It was not an hour!" I exclaimed, still glaring.
"It was too! It’s not my fault you lost track of time while you were thinking or something!" Katy argued.
I mimicked her quietly. Katy glared back at me and without warning, pulled her oar out of the water with such force much of the afore mentioned water ended up on me.
I stopped glaring and stared at her with a mixture of astonishment, anger, humor and challenge of my face, all of which making me look quite comical. "What was that for?!" I asked.
Katy ignored me and turned around in her seat so she was facing away from me again and continued rowing as if nothing had just happened. Being so, with her back to me, Katy failed to notice the smirk that crossed my lips or surely she would have realized the error of her ways before she too was dripping with cold water.
I had taken it upon myself to return the favor she had done by cooling me off. Katy turned around, stopping her rowing again, clearly trying to look as furious as possible, an effort which greatly failed at even accomplishing the desired function of covering up the look of humor on her face.
Katy’s eyes narrowed and she splashed me back, only to have more water sprayed at her by me. Soon we had a full water war commencing between the bow and stern of our little boat, neither side could say who was winning.
The inevitable soon ensued and our small vessel capsized. Katy and I surfaced spluttering and catching sight of the other drenched, laughed.
"We better rescue our stuff." I told Katy who agreed with me.
"I’ll go down and get it, you put our boat right side up again." Katy suggested.
I pushed our boat closer to shore so that I could at least touch the bottom of the river before attempting to right it. Once this had been accomplished I easily turned the light vessel back over and began the tedious task of removing the water which had managed to remain on board during the turning.
Katy swam over to me with our two packs. Luckily the current wasn’t too strong yet and we were able to keep our boat somewhat still while we loaded our things, and ourselves, back in. During this loading we came up with the brilliant idea of tying our bags to a board to prevent the from falling out if we chanced to be capsized again.
It was really quite a nice day to go for a swim. It was a little chilly, but the sun beat down on us and we were soon dry again. During this time we had remained quiet again, a feat that I was sure Aragorn wouldn’t believe if I tried to convince him of it happening.
I spoke again after a while, "Katy, I thought elvish boats weren’t supposed to be able to tip over." I said.
Katy thought over my statement, "You know, that’s what I thought too." She agreed.
"That’s ridiculous. We’re not that bad boaters, are we?" I asked.
Katy shrugged.
Suddenly an idea hit me, "I’ll bet that elf who built our ship lives a long time." I said.
"What makes you think that?" Katy asked.
"Well, elvish vessels aren’t supposed to sink and they’re supposed to be nearly impossible to over turn… So I think ours must have been engineered by the same person who made the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic." I declared.
Katy laughed, "Well, that’s a relief. It wasn’t our fault that we capsized then!"
I nodded, as if she could actually see me behind her, "Yup. It’s always good to have someone to blame… How long until we catch up to the others, do you think?" I asked.
"I don’t know. Are they rowing right now or drifting?" Katy asked trying to remember the books.
"In the movie they seem to be rowing the whole time…" I told her, "But I’m pretty sure that in the books they take it easy and drift for most of their boat trip." I said.
"Then we’ll probably catch up to them, keep rowing."
I rolled my eyes, "That wasn’t my question." I said. Katy ignored me, perfectly happy with her answer and not wanting to risk amending it.
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