I spent a really great weekend whitewater rafting with an old friend in Colorado. We spent two days with some of his friends on the Arkansas river and had a ton of fun.
One of our river guides was a Nepalese guy named Boche who had been living in the US for the past 6 years guiding rafts on a bunch of different rivers. Before that, Boche had grown up guiding rafts in Nepal. And I mean, he really grew up on rafts.
As a boy Boche was employed as essentially a movable ballast on rafts in huge rapids. He would sit in the middle of the raft and when they were about to hit a huge wave (say 14 feet tall) he would jump over to the high side of the boat and help to add extra weight so they wouldn't flip over.
So Boche knew how to handle the river pretty well. He was also a pretty quiet guy who would occasionally just break into laughter. When I asked him what was so funny he just looked over at me and smiled and said, "Oh, I just like to laugh sometimes."
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