Georgia, 2008

Once, when I was a teenager, I was at my friends house, standing in the living room. Her grandmother walked into the room, looks at me, and says to my friend, in a deep southern accent, "When am I gonna get my Wandering Jew?". As I stood trying to think of the correct reply to that, and admitting to myself that I sort of resembled that statement, my friend says "There's a clipping for you in a glass on the kitchen sink." which made no sense what-so-ever. As i tried to decode this in my mind, I realized they were all looking above me. That's when I looked up and saw the hanging plant I was standing under. It was a Wandering Jew.

And so am I. My mother always said that there were three different money philosophies that people follow; people who spend their money on things like clothes and cars, people who spend their money on their home, and people who spend their money on travel. I am the latter, I am a wanderer.

Last summer, my cousin Ray, who lives in Florida, suggested we meet halfway between us. Halfway between us turned out to be Clayton, Georgia, which is a small town on the south side of the Great Smokey Mountains, right on the Tennessee border. Since our travel budget has been tight for the last several years, I have been favorable to car trips, and, so, agreed to her plan.

There was a part of this plan that made me more than uncomfortable. It was a nature trip, we would be staying in a cabin on the side of a creek, and going white water rafting. There would be fishing, cook outs, hiking and lots of other outdoor kind of stuff. This was going to be a boy vacation, and was dangerously close to actual camping, which is something I've always hated. After all the years struggling, why would I want to leave my air conditioned house to go sleep in the dirt? Camping is for rich people that want to experience poverty for a minute.

In spite of my misgivings, I told myself that it was time to leave my travel safety zone and go do boy stuff. We rented a car, paid extra for the GPS (don't leave home with out it), and off went the two J's and I, on a road trip.

Eight hours later, we arrived in Clayton at the little cabin by the creek. Ray and her son Bear were already there, and had coached us through the last 5 miles over the phone.

The cabin was adorable, with one bedroom on the first floor, and then a loft with two queen sized beds above. There was a deck over looking the babbling creek on the back of the house. To get down from the deck to the creek, where there was a fire pit and a small beach area, you had to go down a steep set of stairs. There was also a steep staircase that went from the living room to the loft.

Walking on steps, rocks, or unlevel ground is dangerous for me. My balance is incredibly bad since all my head surgeries, and I tend to fall alot. I'm famous for it. From the moment we got there, I was on high alert, watching every step I took. This made the white water rafting trip we went on the next day especially phobia-licious.

We woke up at some outrageous time in the morning and drove the half hour to the rafting place. They have this information session in the beginning, teaching you about life jackets, raft safety, and the more I hear the more I'm freaking out. I keep reminding myself that I'm doing this for the two J's, and did my best to hide my terror. The outing would last six to seven hours, and, oh yes, they were level five rapids. Fortunately, because of ignorance being bliss, I had no idea what that meant.

After hiking downhill five miles, carrying rafts above our heads, we finally reached the river. As we put the rafts into the water, with only nature surrounding us as far as the eye can see, the guide mentions that this is "the same river they filmed 'Deliverance' on". To what I was sure was the sound of dueling banjo's and squealing pigs, we began our million mile trip down river.

I thought I was going to die. As we went down a seven foot drop, I shoved my foot further into the raft and refused to fall out. We stopped for lunch, on a rocky bank. Then we stopped on another rocky bank to see a waterfall. Then we stopped on a rocky bank to climb the rocky bank. And then we would raft and stop on rocky banks for the next seven hours.

When finally we reached the end of the rapids from hell, we had to walk uphill for five miles, carrying the rafts over our heads, to a waiting bus. It was the most harrowing day of my life, but the two J's loved it and so I was proud of myself for doing it.

The next day, I was more tired than I had ever been in my life. I was sleeping soundly up in the loft, half way listening to the boys eating breakfast. Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the cabin door. The boys, alarmed that anyone would be knocking on the door in the woods at seven in the morning (and perhaps remembering the "Deliverance" thing) began yelling "someones at the door, someones at the door!" and I sat up in a panic.

Going down the loft steps, half asleep and physically exhausted, I let my guard down, and ran on auto pilot. Unfortunately, there was one errant loft step that was off to the left of the rest, and I missed it. As my left foot hit the hard wood floor, my ankle buckled. In an effort to save myself, I switched the weight to my right foot, and that ankle buckled in the opposite direction. It was the most incredible pain I've ever felt in my life. TO BE CONTINUED