text: Tubing down the Salt River was an experience comparable to floating down the River Styx (from Greek Stux, also meaning \"hate\" and \"detestation\"). I feel like I not only circled the underworld nine times but got sucked into it, and the ferryman Charon was a beer-bong wielding asshole.\n\nMy best girlfriend & I got there when it opened at 9 and the first part of our tubing experience was very pleasant, but now I know it's only because at that point it was still too early for everyone else to have gotten sufficiently plastered. We had our cooler tied between our two tubes and yes, we had a few beers too, but we were just looking to have a nice chill float down the river. We met some cool people along the way, hung out for a bit before we'd drift on down our way. A couple hours into it we stopped off at the side of the river, and a group of twentysomethings, mostly guys and a few girls, had banked as well, and asked if we wanted jello shots. So we figured yeah, cool, & hung out and drank with them for a bit. But it turns out they're the type of people who feel like if they give you a bit of alcohol, you owe them your freakin' life. At this point what I figure happened is, these guys were looking to get laid, & when me and my girl went to bail, they flipped out. I was supposed to catch a late afternoon flight back to San Diego, and she was supposed to go to work after dropping me off at the airport, and these assholes f*cked everything up. They dumped our little tube with a tub on it which held all of our stuff- cooler, shorts, sandals, towels, sunblock, water, everything. And somehow sent our other tubes cascading down the river; my girl managed to somehow retrieve her car key by some miracle at least. By then I had gotten out of the water, she swam back and joined me, and one of the guys got in her face talking sh*t and looking like he was about to hit her, which pissed both of us off so we started going off on them. Then they called some sort of gang code that somebody else recognized, to which they informed me and my girl we were f*cking with the Hells Angels and we best step back. At this point one of the guys' girls still floating in the river starts yelling at me, to which I simply yell \"SHUT UP,\" and she did. Smart move, because I was livid. \n\nAnyway they didn't seem like any Hells Angels to me, just some wannabe thugs who'd been drinking all day, but they were Hell's something because they sure ruined our day on the River Styx. So now me and her go to one of the firemen guys standing around at the side of the river, and ask if they can help, and they say they can't do anything unless we're drowning. Oh great, we can nearly get beat down by these punks but unless we're drowning, we're SOL? They gave me this bullshit little compass thing, but I didn't need help finding my direction, I needed help finding my hope in the general decency of humanity, which had been swept down the river along with all of my belongings. No compass was going to help me find that.\n\nAwhile later we encounter this group of hippies on a big raft, who graciously scoop us up and ferry us to our pickup point down the river, and these people were so kind and amazing compared to the drunks surrounding us, plus the guy steering the thing looks like he could be Jesus. They helped redeem a bit of my faith in the world, especially when one of them gave me their oversized flip flops as mine had been lost and my feet were already badly cut up.\n\nSo in retrospect, was it an unforgettable experience? Definitely. Would I want to repeat it again? Definitely not. \n\nNow I know what spring break in Hell is like.