Conversations Head While Tubing

One of the new experiences I've had in Texas is the art of tubing.  About 30-45 minutes outside of Austin there are several places to "go tube", and yesterday I went with a few friends for the first time.  What I experienced was a mixture between an extremely relaxing ride in a inflated tractor tire tube, and the biggest frat party I've been to since freshman year of college.

The professional tuber is in a fraternity or sorority.  They tube with a large group of their tanned, string bikini wearing sorority friends.  They bring a small, floating cooler for water but a LARGE industrial sized cooler for Bud Lite cans.  Only Budlite.  Only cans.  The girls, since they're much classier, sip out of pre-mixed margaritas or wine coolers - because you know, that has a lot more style.  What's also imperative for sorority tubing style, is decorating your beer cooler with your greek letters and fun sayings like "What happens on the river stays on the river."  

I did enjoy my tubing experience, minus the annoying "tube rash" on my arms today from rubbing against the rubber tube.  These were the highlights brought to you by Delta Kappa Alpha Omega OBitchy. 

The river is mostly calm, but there are small periods of rapids.  The key to these rapids (as we soon learned) is to pay attention to the fraternity boons in front of you.  When they start screaming and flipping over, you should probably take notice and not go that way.  Once you discover that, it becomes a fun game of "Watch the girls mess up their hair and scream" which I enjoyed quite a bit.

There's also the fact that the river is a collegiate mating ground.  Not in a literal sense, but in the game of the chase.  At any given point you'll see a brave young frat boy paddling madly upstream against the current to go see the princess of his dreams, guzzling an electric blue margarita out of a longneck glass bottle.  The stimulating conversation seems to go something like this:

AKA: "Are there fish in this river?"
TKE: "Not many.  Mostly turtles."
- gulps beer and glances backwards at his frat buddies, who are tossing a helpless turtle they picked off a log back and forth over the groups of tubes -
AKA:  "Omg, snapping turtles!"
- squeals and chugs more margarita from a bottle -

Then of course, after the frat "fraternizing" if you will, we reach the end of the river and to the eventual breakup of collegiate love.  I witnessed one girl, sobbing over what I believe was a broken flip flop - her boyfriend all the while moaning why she had to be so emotional. 

Good question, probably that mixes with the wine coolers and the river muck.