So I've started tanning this week, and by tanning I mean really tanning, or as some people call it, fake baking. It occured to me that spray tanning was not going to get my skin ready for the raging sun in the Sunshine State of Florida. I am a naturally pale Irish girl, and taking me from a cold winter inside the house to a week filled of outside activities in Disney World, will fry me like a lobster.
Last summer, our friends Paul, Natalie, and Ben and I went to Turkey Run State Park in at a hotel called the Billie Creek Inn, in good old Indianer for a weekend. The first day we drank ourselves into oblivion and ran wild outside the hotel, literally. As you can see from the picture, there was plenty of room for us to do so. After a long day in the pool, we were throwing a light up frisbee acting like assholes in front of my little brothers and the neighbor kids. My parents and the neighbor parents were sloshing it up at the pool, double fisting Miller Lights and what not until wee hours of the night. It was a good time. The next day, the four of us decided it would be a good idea to go tubing for 3 hours in the river. Turkey Run provided large blue tubes and give you a start point and an end point. I believe it was only 5 miles, so we figured it wouldn't be that long. They loaded us up on a couple of busses and shipped us down to shore to see us off. Before letting us off, the hippie that was driving starting giving us the rules and badgering us drunks about drinking in the river. "There are conservation police all over these trees, scoping you out with binoculars, so all you underagers, don't drink--but since I know you are going to anyway, try to keep them in coozies or don't do anything stupid to draw attention to yourselves. You are going approximately 5 miles, which will take roughly 2 1/2 hours.' AH! We all exchanged glances...2 1/2 hours? I guess that makes sense since we'd be floating roughly 1.5 miles per hour. I figured an hour tops, and my dumb pale ass had forgotten the sunscreen. That being said, we unloaded and hopped into the river. About 3 hours later we got out at the end point, tired, starving, burnt and angry. I was under the impression that floating down a river would be relaxing, and it was, for the first hour. After the second hour, you're very much ready to get out. I swear I could literally hear my skin sizzling after that second hour too. There are a few brief moments of shade during the float, but nothing that will really help. We left Turkey Run shortly after that, grabbed some quick Burger King and headed home.
About 30 minutes into the ride I started getting 'cramps'. A day in the hot sun, followed by a greasy BK lunch was not something my body was prepared for. A case of the 'D' word fell upon me rather quickly and we were forced to stop in a teeny town along the way so I could use the teeny bathroom. I was rather embarrassed. Do you ever get those cramps? They are HORRIBLE...and they come in waves. They go away after you relieve yourself, and then come back full force 20 minutes later until there's nothing left. You're literally forcing nothing after so long. I don't get it. From what I remember correctly, I did make it home ok. When we got back to town it was rainy and chilly out, which was a strange change of events considering it was warm and sunny just 2 hours ago when we left Turkey Run. We both got home and examined our charred bodies in the mirror. By no means whatsoever am I exaggerating or lying when I say that we were both as red as fire trucks. Ben tans easier then I do, so naturally I was almost more purple then red. Since we'd been sitting in tubes all day, there was a very awkward white crease across my stomach, as well as some other inconvenient white patches amongst my Jet Puffed Marshmellowman body. We both scrambled for the aloe and started generously bathing ourselves in it. It was horrible. The streaks didn't go away for at least a month. It was very attractive.
