“Rob, you were right,” I said as we dragged our boats up the bank. “It felt like a different river this time.”

“Of course,” Rob replied, “the water level was lower this year, but it wasn’t just the river that changed. I’m proud of you.”

22

When we got back home, we brought on board three additional guides for our upcoming Grand Canyon adventure. Steven Mace was twenty-five years old and had established himself as an expert river man, both as a rafting guide and formidable kayaker. We also enlisted Timmy O’Neill, who was not only a climbing legend, but had been paddling a kayak since he was nine years old with his father. He had a reputation of being a wild man who did stand-up comedy and made underground climbing films about “buildering,” free-soloing the sides of buildings and even tall bridges throughout New York City. However, behind the popular image was a meticulous planner and brilliant strategist. We also recruited Skyler Williams, my right-hand man at my speaking career in Golden. Skyler had started kayaking to be able to help with my learning process and had come along on some of the training trips, and he was such a strong athlete and quick learner that he was soon a vital part of our kayaking team.

At this point in my training, it came down to one crucial objective. We had to become a cohesive team that understood how to fluidly step in and out of different roles and respond seamlessly to the wide array of challenges we’d encounter on the Grand Canyon. The way to achieve this was to log a lot of river miles together. So we all began heading out to local paddling areas like Shoshone and the Upper Colorado.

Over the next year, we also made several training trips to Peru. With warm water, hot sun, and massive snowmelt off the Andes, it was an ideal boating destination, with exotic-sounding rivers like the Maraûùn, the Apurimac, the Yanatile, and the Urubamba. We also headed north of the U.S. border to the Ottawa River.

In 2014, with the trip to the Grand Canyon fast approaching, I planned a father-son adventure for Arjun and me. As I’d been upping my kayaking skills, Arjun had been joining me on Bear Creek Lake and Clear Creek. He was such a natural; by age nine he had a solid roll and by age ten he had a “hand roll,” a roll without a paddle. The time was right, I thought, for his first kayaking trip down a big river.

We headed to the Upper Colorado with the team. Arjun loved being one of the boys, squeezed into the backseat of Skyler’s truck, trading insults, burping, getting noogies from Steven, and listening to us break out our old jokes.