The float trip
classic summer fun on the James river
It was the mid-90’s, those relatively carefree years between college and marriage. As I may have pointed out in a prior story, it was that fun time of life where we were only really responsible to ourselves, beyond our job. We could eat what we wanted, make our bed or not, drink what we wanted, and just have lots of fun. It was like being an older kid, but this time we had a few more dollars to spend, we had our own car, we had our own places (or a place with roommates, as I always did), and we could go to bed anytime we wanted to.
I had a great deal of fun in the young adult service club that I was a member of back then. I met a lot of great people, some of whom I am still in touch with and friends with to this day. One of those persons served in my wedding, and I met my wife indirectly through this same friend when we all went out a particularly night several years later. I also met a person or two that was influential in my general career path. And I could say that this person helped set me on the path to where I am now. So you could say I’ve been around some great people that have made a difference in my life.
On several occasions in that era, we’d all get together and take a nice long float trip down the James River. While it was mainly people from the young adult service club, there would be the oddball roommate, or work colleague, or significant other that got invited into the overall mix. These float trips would of course usually occur in the warm summer months, usually in June or July. The name of the floating company that we used was James River Runners.
This firm is still around, you can google them and look into their offerings. If you live anywhere at all in the general central Virginia area, I highly recommend you take a journey with them. I don’t usually offer the real name of a firm in my writing, but I make an exception in this case. Why ? Because what they offer is so damn fun, that’s why. The James River is an absolute treasure that is beloved by people all over our state. Our two sons go fishing on it frequently on their boats.
We’d all pile into our various cars and head out to the launch site of James River Runners, they’re approx. 1.5 hours west of the Richmond, Virginia area. After you get your tickets and gear, they place you in an old school bus and drive you a few miles west, up river. From here, you launch your float trip and then lazily float east down river until you got back to the place where your car was. Even the old-school bus ride, in an old school bus, was great fun. You could hear beer can after beer can pop open on the school bus before we even left the parking lot. Spoiler alert - there was a lot of beer drinking going on during these floating trips down the James River.
You’d rent an old tire innertube to float on. If you were thinking ahead, you might rent an additional innertube as well. I always rented a second innertube as well. This second innertube would be the float boat for your cooler filled with beer, sodas, and food. You had to wrap your rope all around it in such a way as to form a bit of a bottom to the second innertube, so it could hold your cooler. Then I’d have the excess rope tied to my innertube, so it would be towed behind the innertube that I was floating in. To be quite honest, I didn’t want to work that hard on the float trip. I wanted to lay on the innertube, drink beer, and talk and laugh continuously with my friends for the afternoon.
The float trip would generally last 4-5 hours or so if I recall, its been a lot of years. If the water level was high from lots of rain, the river would move faster, and therefore you would as well. If it had been rather dry overall for a while, the reverse was true, and your float times would be longer. And of course, many times people would tie-up at the riverbank, or on some rock formation in the river, or on some little itty bitty island, and just chill for a little while. Anything to extend the day.
There was one guy named Billy (that was his real name) in our group. He would come with his girlfriend who was a little older and a good bit taller than he was. They made for a curious and comical couple. Billy worked in maintenance or something for one of the local county’s parks and recreation department or something if I recall. Someone once made a private joke that “Billy was a little guy, so the county would dispatch him to go to the elementary schools to fix the children’s playground equipment. He could test it and ride it after he had completed his repairs.” It was very funny to hear back then, but perhaps not so nice in retrospect. Political correctness has limited and diminished humor over the years, at a time when humor is needed now more than ever. I’m into humor, so bring me your jokes and stories, always.
“We’re gonna send little Billy down the river first, the river looks very high this time. He’ll be the litmus test, if he gets down to the facility quickly, we’ll know how long today’s float trip might be,” one of my good friends said as he stood up in the old school bus while it was bumping down some country road to our drop-off point. Everyone on the old school bus laughed, even Billy. We all cared for another, and we cared enough to level the jokes regularly. It was a light-hearted adventure with nothing and no one to be taken too seriously that day. This same funny friend remarked about a mile into the float trip, “is anyone as stressed out as I am right now,” obviously making light of how fun and relaxed the day was. Laughter reverberated up and down the river.
It was always funny to see how people dressed for the river. There were cut-off shirts and old shoes. Old t-shirts and new t-shirts. Tennis visors, old ball caps, straw hats, stylish sunglasses, and cheap sunglasses. You would see it all. You always wanted to wear old tennis shoes or those rubber aqua socks for safety. The river bottom would sometimes have broken glass, old fishing knives, old fish hooks, sharp rocks, broken and sharp sticks, or whatever. You never wanted to risk an unnecessary injury to your feet, so you protected them. Most wore their traditional bathing suits, bikinis, and the like. Had I known my future wife from Australia back then on these trips, she would have called her bathing suit a swimming costume, because that is how they refer to it in Australia.
We all probably packed several beers each, sodas, a few bottled waters, and maybe a Gatorade drink or two. The truly committed and dedicated beer drinkers might bring a 12-pack for themselves. The ladies would usually bring a cooler filled with Jello-shooters, and maybe some wine coolers or some smaller-serving wine products. There was always a person or two that brought liquor, but that was overkill if you asked me.
Our lunches were packed in our coolers along with bags of chips, maybe some granola bars, maybe a chocolate bar or two. The ladies would sometimes bring along more refined and healthy snacks as well, like cut fresh fruit, or cut carrots and celery sticks. And there was always some gal that brought a container or two of homemade brownies or cookies. I made sure I was near that particular person. And if she was in a stunning bikini, so much the better.
Going down the river, we’d often lock arms, or perhaps loosely tie the innertubes together, to fashion a bit of a flotilla. As we consumed more drinks, we all got louder. We would sometimes sing songs from someone’s boom box radio, and we would tell lots of stories and jokes. The laughter got more frequent as well, and it also increased in volume.
It was not uncommon for a warm day’s afternoon sun to disappear under dark clouds, and for a little bit of rain to fall. For some dumb reason, we didn’t like to get rained on, even as we were all wet, having floated in the James River for hours. On a couple of occasions, an ominous summer storm with lightning and thunder would roll up on us. I’ve always been one to enjoy these types of storms. But when they happen while you’re in the water, it could be deadly. We had to paddle our hands quickly in the river over to a riverbank to wait the storm out. When the storms passed, we’d continue along the way on our float trip.
Another thing I always enjoyed about these trips, you really got to know someone well in these super-relaxed settings. They weren’t at work. They weren’t in any sort of setting that required active contributions, or effort, or planning, or thinking, or strategy, none of that. They were dressed in a bikini or bathing suit, and drinking in the James River while drinking a lot of beer on a fine summer day. Inhibitions were always left behind on the old school bus.
These float trips seemed to last forever, thankfully so. They were so much fun, and they form some of the classic memories of my young adult years. These days, I work too much, I run my busy side-hustle, Toasty’s Firewood, and of course I do a lot of writing a few evenings a week here on Substack in my writing portfolio. I really have to get back to some of those fun adventures like a float trip on the James River. I highly encourage you to look into these adventures if you live in the central Virginia area. Call up your pals, your colleagues, your neighbors, or take your kids along. I promise you, it will be a day to remember. And you will not be stressed at all.
For some other stories in my writing portfolio that capture the scenery and the personalities of this era of my life, I recommend you read a few other stories in my portfolio. These include : “The Magic man” (July, 2025), “A country boy can survive” (July, 2025), “A night on the water” (October, 2025), “The tree lot” (December, 2025), and “The James River batteau festival” (February, 2026). If you live in the Richmond, Virginia area, next time you cross the James River in your vehicle in the summer time (western part of the area, away from all the rocks in the river in the city), look over the bridge. If its a warm summer day, you’ll perhaps see some locals doing a little float trip on the water. You’ll wish you were down there floating along with them.
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