My flood story (I believe I've posted this story here before, but worth repeating in my estimation), it was a warm February day, my best friend and I were perhaps 15 - 16 years old. My Dad had bought an unsinkable Sportspal (foam lined) canoe only weeks earlier. We lived on the edge of a deep valley golf course that was totally flooded. The air temp in sunshine was nice, water temp was probably dangerously below 40.
We paddled around on an after school excursion without my Dad's permission (he was still at work) maiden voyage for the little canoe.
At some point we crossed a tini 1 inch drop in water level from the huge golf course into the fast running Rogue River. That was the mistake. Suddenly we were traveling way faster than a canoe should be able to go and heading straight for a bridge that had cable supports underside. We crashed into the bridge and were instantly sucked under, plunged into freezing cold water but nobody got snagged by the cables.
My Friend had recently broken his shoulder and was in a sling which sucked because he was always way bigger and stronger than me but he did manage to grab on to one end of the overturned canoe . I managed to swim to the other end and kept trying to swim us closer to something to grab on to.
Everything I got my hands on was ripped so violently and my hands were so bloodied I didn't realize how cold I was getting. At some point I managed to get my ankles locked around a tree and we stopped the down river flood. After that My buddy was able to real me and the canoe out of the fast moving water.
The funny part of this story is we managed to get the canoe back into the garage before my Dad knew what happened. There was a few gouges and scratches that he never noticed or asked me about. Years later I told him the story and he just cracked up about the whole thing.
Whoa! That is one heck of a story!