louisiana glossary: tubing

Photo from Lauren's album on Facebook

Voluntarily making contact with surface water in Louisiana--is it evidence of "going native"?

The rivers here are matte finish café au lait brimming with all manner of swimming snakes and sunken cypress snags. But for $16 the guys at Tikitubing will give you a green floaty innertube and a ride upriver on a rickety old schoolbus. Along the way a cheerful man in a blue Livingston Parish Sheriff's Department polo shirt gives a little lecture about not giving beer to minors, especially not the flirtatious 15 year old girl who's also an undercover ATF agent.

Anticipation is high, your party gleefully pointing out their "tubing scars" from last summer's trip. Your party flops into the water happily. Floats are strapped onto coolers and they too are set drifting. All together you have a flotilla of inflated pink and green toroids nestled together, like a tribe of protoza blown up by a million. There had been talk about the weather, but little worry. Your party bet against the brewing thunderheads and the forecast and is rewarded with Louisiana sun on the Amite river.

Someone from Kate's kickball team arranged it. They were all Department of Oceanography and Coastal Studies graduate students (and two visitors from Dauphin Island Sealab), who alternated calling out the latin names of overflying birds and competing consuming beer via the shotgun technique.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday than lazily floating down a river, happily buzzed on Tecate in a flotilla of cute bikini-clad girls.

I think this is the first Fun Thing I've done with non-lab people since coming to Louisiana!

Strange fact: One of the Dauphin island girls claims to have been the 2nd confirmed case of Swine Flu in Mobile County.