Don't hit the deer

Having sworn to rest for a while before heading out on my next adventure, I immediately left for a two day whitewater rafting trip with Marcus. We headed up on Friday night to camp at the launch point on the South Fork of the American River, east of Sacramento. We had our new tent and some other camping goodies that we were eager to try out but had never assembled. Marcus had printed out a Google map to direct us to the location. We were all set.

Alas the Google maps turned out to be confusingly unrelated to the actual roads and we were forced to ask for directions. The woman at the inn where we sought guidance immediately recognised our difficulty. "Oh yeah, Google maps are useless out here." Who knew that could happen? By the time we finally found the campsite and managed to erect our unfamiliar tent by torchlight (flashlight) it was very late and quite cold and we still hadn't eaten anything. Still, that wasn't the worst of it.

Marcus was driving because I flatly refused to get behind the wheel of a car again until I had recovered from having just driven half way around the continent. It was dark, the roads were narrow and this is Bambi country. I felt marginally better as a passenger than I did as the driver in such conditions, but not by much. It turned out to be just as well because at one point, when Marcus was fiddling with the radio, a deer trotted out into his path.

I snapped my arm up to point at the deer. Then something strange happened. Usually time seems to slow down when a crisis strikes. On this occasion time sped up so that my voice sounded like it had been recorded at 78 and replayed at 45. For anyone too young to understand this LP reference, it means my voice slowed down and dropped in pitch, now isn't it past your bedtime? My nervous system had apparently exhausted its rapid response capacity with the prompt pointing and it took at least four hours to get out the words "Doooon't hiiit the deeeeeeeer."

Marcus swerved around the deer. Then he started laughing at me. I imagine he will stop laughing in about 50 years, or when it all gets too much and I kill him by not pointing out any more deer on the road. Several more deer jumped out at us later and I gradually managed to upgrade my verbal warning response time from days to milliseconds, from "Doooon't hiiit the deeeeeeeer" to "BAMBI!" See, I told you I'd been scarred by hitting that deer in Montana.