The Iconoclast

In order to achieve terminal velocity and escape the Western Washington’s Recreation program with diploma in hand, you needed to devise a suitable internship plan.

Late in the winter of 1978, several of us started seriously thinking about our Phase III Recreation internship.

(A ‘phase’ is a college quarter dedicated solely to classes in the field of Recreation. A ‘phaser’ is one who participates in a Recreation phase. Most parents probably believed, and hoped, we were just going through a ‘phase’ when we declared Recreation to be our major.)

Initially, our plan was to resurrect the defunct Outdoor Program at Whatcom County Parks. We talked extensively with the head honcho at Whatcom County about the vision we had for a renewed outdoor program. As far as we could tell, all systems were ‘Go’ for our ambitious project which seemingly included everything from square dancing to mountain climbing to Anasazi basket weaving classes. In the meantime, the deadline for submitting our internship details to our inscrutably patient Recreation professors loomed

At the eleventh hour, the administrator of Whatcom County Parks pulled the rug out from under our ambitions and hired a recreation professional out of the Bay Area. In hindsight, I am positive he did us a favor. The Outdoor Program we envisioned would have taxed our organizational and logistical capabilities. In addition, working for the county government might have soured us on the idea of recreation as therapy forever.

With our plan shattered, we pieced together an alternative. Why not start our own business? Why not outfit horse trips (Deb Poulter’s strength), bicycle tours (Michael liked to bike) and river trips (my --- dubious --- forte)? Of course, we couldn’t divulge this harebrained scheme to our professors. They were likely to burst our balloon and send each of us individually out to seek an internship we didn’t have the heart to do. I imagined working for some sort of governmental bureaucracy doing menial chores, like smoothing the infield dirt at a city ballfield, and I just couldn’t get excited.

So, we planned a business covertly. One of the progenitors of the Whatcom County Park idea bailed out in fear the project was doomed to be rejected. Another was uncomfortable with the potential money and liability exposure. So, after those two partners bowed out and after the three remaining budding entrepreneurs ‘pencilled’ out a few vague numbers, we decided we could use a couple of additional partners for financial reasons, if nothing else. Consequently, Deb, Michael and I were joined late one school night at the Samish Way Denny’s by Linda, Michael’s effervescent girlfriend, and Paul, who was a self-described ‘artiste’ and who looked like he and Chewbacca had been separated at birth. Paul was also Michael’s childhood friend from Chicago.

Deb Poulter’s parents owned a Summer Camp called Bear Pole Ranch in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. She played the guitar and had a musical quiver full of John Denver songs. Deb’s time outdoors and working with kids outnumbered the rest of us combined.

Michael had a head on his shoulders for numbers and business terminology and ‘keeping books’. Linda already had several years of experience working as a corporate receptionist --- managing filing cabinets, fielding phone calls and customer service. That left Paul and I.

I was happy being the equipment and logistics guy and Paul was, essentially, a fifth wheel. In Paul’s case, he was a squeaky fifth wheel, even though he signed on as a ‘silent partner’. Meaning, the money he borrowed from his grandmother was used to help launch the business, while we expected him to stand clear and not make our lives unnecessarily complicated.

Paul viewed the world in the abstract. He could be funny and amusing in conversation, but exasperating when trying to explain shuttle arrangements or how to efficiently slice a cucumber. You could never be certain he fully grasped the gist of what you were saying, or reality, for that matter. More likely than not, he would look at you quizzically as if he were attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube, or you were speaking interplanetary gobbledygook.

He wore his hair long, shaggy and unkempt, and the same could be said for his clothes. But he liked the idea of being an entrepreneur. It was a concept that grew on him as the process moved along. He would announce to anyone and everyone with a handmade business card and a doofy grin that he was the owner of a rafting company. It amused him and, even though he seemed lost in space, he took the business seriously.

At the Samish Way Denny’s, at the corner of Samish Way and I-5 in Bellingham, we hashed out business details, to-do lists and what would be the business’ name over coffee, tea and frozen hash browns. We kicked around names for hours before I finally suggested ‘Orion’ from one of the boats on my original Prescott journey. Almost every name we mused over before ‘Orion’ sounded like an herbal essence shampoo, or some other New Age phenomena.

As for business details, we quickly learned that horse rental was impossibly expensive and that insurance companies were not interested in insuring bike tours. Rafting was our only option.

Rafting insurance was more straightforward than it sounds because I knew companies in Utah had to be insured. Byron L. Turner Agency out of Salt Lake City covered our operation for less than a thousand bucks. Nary a question asked.



Next, we needed a brochure. A ‘How-To’ river running book by Verne Huser sported tons of action-oriented rafting photos and, since we were thousands of miles away from the East coast where most of the photos were taken, and thousands of miles away from where Huser, the native Texan, lived, we thought --- What were the odds? We were in Bellingham, at the farthest reaches of christendom, doing a direct mail to youth pastors in the state of Washington --- who would find out?

We worked twenty-four consecutive hours painstakingly assembling the brochure using press-on type lettering. Paul created our logo (the one we have resurrected for the 25th season) which we joked about having a phallic semblance with the jagged peaks and globular waves positioned directly below the ‘forest of marching penises’. We folded, stamped and labeled one hundred over-sized brochures and sent them on their way.

We had the name, we had the business concept, we had insurance, and we had just completed our first marketing campaign. It was time to drop the bomb on our unsuspecting professors.