9:00 am: My phone rings, the machine picks up. Jason’s voice booms, larger than life: “As your attorney, I advise you to get your Kinetic (my non-play boat) and get over here to run the Obed. It’s at 9000, and Wes says that’s a great level.”  What the hell… I call him back immediately (after all, I wasn’t asleep), and after some bribery agree to come over to Loghaven for further details. But no hurry, he says. We’re on Wesley time, which is about an hour behind Trent time (which is, in turn, an hour behind real time). So I brew a pot of coffee, heat up the waffle iron, get on the internet and check the gauges… hmmm, that’s funny, the USGS gauge for the Emory at Oakdale is 20,000 and rising. I call him back. “Ummm… Wesley says that’s not the gauge for the run we’re doing.” Good god, everything is at flood stage, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing! Well, I’m going anyway, if nothing else to take pictures and gawk at the water.
     11:00 am: I show up at Doghaven, completely ready to go. Woody shows up, we discuss possible road closures due to the massive tornadoes that ravaged Morgan county the night before and gave us all this water. All the phone lines in Wartburg are dead, so what the hell, we’ll just drive up there and see. Wes loads up three glass boats on the Dragon (his huge 70-something Ford double-cab pick-up with dual smokestacks). I put Jason’s death machine on my roof so my plastic boat won’t feel lonely. We leave Loghaven around 12:30; Wes, Woody, and Donnie in the Dragon, Jason and myself in my truck.
     2:00 pm: After stopping for gas, snacks, and coffee (and some minor engine problems with the Dragon), we arrive at the turn to Frozen Head and hit the roadblock. Well, we didn’t actually see the roadblock, just a line of traffic extending out of sight. We should have saw this one coming; Morgan county was dispersed neatly over the surrounding counties thanks to the tornadoes. They are obviously going to turn us around if we ever make it to the front of the line; since we don’t live there, we ain’t got no bidness’ there. Hmm. Well, we can always go through Catoosa and get to Daddy’s Creek. So it’s back to Oliver Springs and over to I-40.
     3:00 pm: We arrive at the Antioch Bridge over Daddy’s Creek only to find it raging between 3.5-3.7 feet. “Well, shit, this is way too big” Wesley observes. Just about that time “Captain” Patrick comes roaring up in his gigantic Dodge truck, boat in the back. Jason and Captain have been playing phone tag for the past 2 hours trying to figure out where to meet. Captain is quick to point out that the last time he was on Daddy’s Creek it was over 5 feet, and he’s never doing that again. Losing daylight fast, I suggest Crab Orchard Creek. After pouring over the topos and the bible (Southeastern Whitewater, for the unknowing), Captain thinks we should run White’s Creek. Now I’ve never heard of it, but I’m also new to the paddling scene, and am in no place to question an elder. So it’s back across the interstate, roaring down Hwy 70 to Ozone, and on back-ass roads that lead to god-knows-where.
 3:45pm: After a near mishap of putting on at the wrong bridge (not even the same creek), we arrive at the put-in to White’s Creek, completely geared up. Now we have to run shuttle. My jaw dropped as I looked at the topo and saw that the takeout was on Hwy 27, north of Spring City. There is absolutely no way to get there from here. At this point I’m beginning to think that I might not get to paddle today, after driving no less that 150 miles. But no one else is concerned, and Captain blazes off in his Dodge, with me in hot pursuit. We drive all the way back up the mountain to Ozone, turn on Hwy 70, drive all the way down to Hwy 27 at the junkyard, and then down 27 to the 4-lane bridge over White’s Creek near it’s mouth on Watts Bar Lake. Captain leaves his truck, grabs two beers (ahhh), and we chug back to the top in my sad, worn out Exploder, taking about twice as long as it did on the way down.
     4:30 pm: Captain and I arrive at the put-in to find… nothing. Our boats sitting by the road, alone. Son of a bitch. So we have a very quick chat, consisting of briefly discussing our paddling history (Cap’n Patrick has paddled more hair that I have ever read about, but hasn’t been in his boat in a year. I have been paddling for about 9 months straight, and am very confident in my abilities, but he doesn’t know that, and I could swim on the first riffle for all he knew). So we put on, and after the first rapid we found the group, happily surfing at a small wave train. We headed downriver, daylight fading fast. The upper half of the run consisted primarily of pools with a little current, interspersed with ledge rapids, sort of like a pool/drop Natahala. Nothing too difficult, to my delight, since it was nearing dark-thrity. One particular rapid was a tight, technical little series of ledges/boulders that tried to stuff you into overhanging cliff on river right. A couple people tagged it and slid out; I managed to pull a funky little rockspin and avoid the tight spot. After several miles of this, Piney Creek entered on the left and doubled the flow. After this, the river became much wider and had more uniform gradient, consisting of wave fields and lots of big, fluffy, low-angle play holes. I later found out this portion of the run is called “Surf City”, rightly so; the play holes reminded me of the Pigeon below Hartford, wide and shallow. But since the sun had completely set at this point, none of us stopped to surf. It was an interesting sensation, paddling in the dark. The moon was out, but the skies were overcast, so there was just enough light to make out the other boaters and the white backwash of holes and waves.
     6:30pm: We made it to the Hwy 27 4-lane bridge, took out in the darkness, loaded up in Captain’s giant truck, briefly discussed the safety of the trip, and drove back to the put-in to retrieve the other vehicles.
     11:30am, day two: I drive back to the put-in to retrieve my Chacos that I left on the side of the road in the darkness.
 A fun run, I’d like to go back sometime and do it in the daylight.