Saturday had been mostly overcast, but on Sunday morning we woke up to the kind of fog that you just know will burn off and give you a nice day. While it was still foggy, we got a little demonstration of tracking and lining in double rapids. We then spent some time with the throw bags, and all I can say is, if you're on a trip with me and you're depending on me to throw you a rope, you will drown.

Insert stupid joke about throwing and girls, in this case I definitely proved the stereotype. Not only that, but I threw the rope and took my foot off it - so I almost jumped into the river catching hold of the end before it headed downstream never to be seen again. Not one of my more shining moments.

And then… some more ferrying and eddy turns in Double Rapids, but not before Rolf had us wade into the currents with our paddles to get the idea of "dialing in" more power - the more perpendicular your paddle is to the current the more power you have, obviously. I pictured myself anchoring the paddle and then making the boat pivot around it, and this actually worked. Not only that, but our ferries got a lot better - now they seemed like much less effort.

That achieved, Rolf now told us to go hang out in the little surfing wave that had terrified me when it sucked us in the day before. Rolf repeated what sounded like a mantra over and over again - relax. I have no idea how many times I heard him say "relax" over the course of the weekend, but every time it reminded me that I was perhaps not going to die.

And sitting in the surfing wave? Pretty fun. And since we had gotten fairly comfortable with peel-outs, when we started to turn in the wave, we actually remembered to lean away, and presto, we got spit out downstream without swimming. Too cool. After that, we did some bracing drills - fortunately for me in water shallow enough that I could use the bottom to get myself out of trouble, otherwise I would have been a very wet girl. I was starting to get the hang of doing the slap-sweep thing - but it's going to be a long, long time before I ever instinctively use it when I need to. Must work on that.

By now it was a bright sunny day, and we even decided not to wear wetsuits for our trip to bigger water. We took our lunches, and headed off for Blue Chute, which we ran without any whining or panicking from my end. Nope, this time I was looking forward to it. I was saving all of my fear and whimpering for the next one. Downstream from Blue Chute is Little Parisienne Rapids, and when I saw that one, I contemplated swimming back to the campsite, I so did not want to go down that one. But, after lots of scouting and discussion, of course we did.

And you know what? Same thing as Blue Chute. Big fun. We got to the bottom, had lunch, and then went back to ferrying practice. Our very first try, we caught what Rolf referred to as "the sweetheart wave" - it picked us up and catapulted us to the other side of the river into the eddy, I couldn't believe how fast we zipped across that one. The second time, we tried the same thing - but here the leaning challenge combined with a slightly too aggressive angle, and the wave picked us up and flung us into the water.

I had lots of time to realize I was going to swim, and noticed my legs automatically coming out of the thigh straps and noticed the gunnel go down nowhere near my head, and then I popped back up. Rolf had warned us of the boils at the eddyline, and I was very nervous about being sucked down despite his reassurances that I'd come up again, but by the time I was ready to follow the eddy to shore I was past the nasty boils. I swam to some warm rocks, and watched Rolf rescue Lee and the canoe.

You know the saying about getting back onto horses… I don't ride, my last experience with horses was falling off and I never did get back on. I did, however, get back into that canoe, and we did a very conservative ferry further downstream and then paddled to the liftover to run the entire rapids again. Once again, big fun, though Rolf thought we'd swim again given that I screwed up the lean on the turn into the eddy at the bottom.

For our next run, Rolf had us aim for an eddy part of the way down on river left. It required going far too close to some rocks which looked like they would suck me under for a good long while if we got too near them, and I was once again a chicken - but Lee wasn't, and he steered us toward where we had to go. We didn't quite make it, but we got close - and our abort wasn't that bad, we ended up doing a fun run for the rest of it. But by this time, it was mid-afternoon, and we were tired. Time to head back to camp and pack up.

We successfully ferried our fully loaded canoe up Double Rapids, and then went back upstream to Big Pine. Rolf had offered to run this one with both of us as bow paddlers. I wasn't sure about this at all, and decided to watch while he did it with Lee.

Lee then came back to me with tales of terror and almost dying, which I translated as "it's big fun, and I get to bug you how much fun it is if you don't do it", so I put on my helmet and my PFD and hopped into the boat. Wow. So much fun. I had no time to be afraid, nothing like paddling with a pro! He told me exactly what to do, and apparently that meant we even did a back ferry.

Now, how can that not be fun? I can't believe that I almost didn't go down Big Pine!

And then… we were pretty much done. We dragged the boats up Little Pine, and then the long slow (boring) flatwater paddle out. I was very tired by the end of it, from excitement as much as exertion. There was just so much packed into two (very full) days. As I'm starting to digest it all, I realize that I may be at the start of a whole new obsession.

So much to learn, so much fun to be had (so many times to be afraid and having to push my limits to get through it). Though nobody made me push my portaging limits, the entire weekend I seemed to be under the impression that I was a little princess and Lee and Rolf did all the canoe carrying and heavy gear lifting. Insert stereotype about girls here too, and once again I prove it.

I can only say good things about my paddling partner and the quality of the instruction this weekend. Guaranteed, I'm going to scheme a way to do more courses with Rolf - he got us to do things I didn't think we could do (things we couldn't do before he taught them to us). But I also know that we didn't even get near the tip of the iceberg, all we did was bat around a little chunk that fell off and floated away. There's no shame in being a novice, it's just a shame if I let that keep me from having fun and learning new things.

And then... we went home.