Chapter Twenty: Tubing – Relaxing on the Sugar River

 Chapter 20 of the Autobiography... Letter T, Tubing.

Chapter Twenty

Tubing – Relaxing on the Sugar River

  So many summers of mine have been spent tubing down the Sugar River. We would start in Albany, WI and pay for our tube rentals there and then get in the river right behind the rental place. The water is usually less than six feet throughout the majority of the tubing area, so it tends to stay pretty warm in the water. Most summers I would go tubing at least a half dozen times and at the peak I was going three times a week. I had so many good times with a number of different friends while tubing down this river. 

  Amongst all the fun in the sun while tubing there were also some bad times as well. The thing about this tubing adventure, as some may call it, is the biggest share of the people come there to get obnoxiously drunk while they float down the lazy river. I haven’t had problems on most occasions while I was there, but where there is alcohol there is usually trouble. On one occasion I got separated from the friends I was tubing with and at one point even lost my tube while I was searching along the sandy beach halfway down the river. When I dove back into the river to try to catch my escaping tube, it managed to get some distance between me and it. I tried so hard for the next twenty minutes to catch up to my tube, but it was no use, it was going faster than I was. Then I came across a fishing boat that was tied to the bank of the river, so I jumped in it. I needed to make it to the exit point somehow. When I got in and untied the boat I realized it had an outboard on it so I fired it up and took off up and down the river a few times to try to find the friends I originally came with. After a few rips up and down the river I gave up and pulled off the side of the river next to the exit point and tied the boat to a tree. I laid in some tall grass at the top of the hill until I heard a bus coming. Then I realized I was a little ways away from the exit point. So I had to run through this field to get to the exit point before they ended up leaving me there. I crossed a few electric fences in wet shorts while getting to the bus. It wasn’t a very pleasant feeling, but I managed to get there just in time. Luckily my friends were all there waiting for me too. For a while I thought I was going to miss my ride home too. That is the last time I went tubing on the Sugar River. Hopefully I can still enjoy hot summer days floating down the river once I find sober people I can go with. In the meantime I think I’ll have to stick to fishing or something else like that.