And the Riding Is Easy

Come summer's dog days and Americans tend toward extremes. Some exhaust themselves swimming, gardening or golfing while others conserve energy lolling about on back porches or public beaches. But a growing number of people, in the search for a happy medium, are rediscovering a sport as old as the first air-pressure auto tire-tubing.

Armed with sturdy inner tubes, floppy hats, buoyant coolers full of iced beer cans, and an extra car to leave downstream for the trip back, enthusiasts simply stake out a docile stretch of river, plop themselves into the tube's cool well, and float downstream. When the afternoon is over, the tuber is sun-kissed but cool, refreshed but relaxed, with nary an aching muscle. "Tubing," says one insider, "is not tiring." Without once passing beyond the perimeter of his patched piece of commercial refuse, he has communed with nature far more intimately than the man who has played 36 holes of golf. And he returns home with almost as much money as he had when he left.

Yelps & Bruises. On one two-mile stretch of the Apple River near Somerset, Wis., as many as 2,000 tubers drift by on a sunny summer weekend. The current is swift enough to keep off the mosquitoes, the scenery is of travel-brochure quality, the tubes rent for 50-c-, and the Apple offers several stretches of rough water that lend the illusion of sport. Every once in a while the submerged portion of an inner tuber hits a projecting rock, resulting in yelps, bruises and occasional punctures-- not only in the tube.

Even more amazing adventures can occur--like losing your way. Tubers often float too far downstream or take the wrong fork. Early this summer two women chatted away so feverishly they did not notice that the river had slowed to a swamp. Startled by the sound of cows grazing on the riverbank a few feet away, they scrambled ashore, only to find their path blocked by a gun-toting farmer.

Whirlpool Bath. The Comal River in New Braunfels, Texas, is advertised by the Chamber of Commerce as the shortest river in the world, running only four miles from its spring-fed source until it spills into the larger Guadalupe River. But some 1,200 tubers flock to it on Sunday afternoons, mostly to ride the steep, 350-yd. stretch where the river swirls like a whirlpool bath. For the sake of togetherness, Texas tubers frequently link feet under arms and form an enormous water snake composed of 40 or 50 tubers. At the end of the run, few tubers have remained linked together, but all of them are usually ready to reform and go into the breach once again.

In Colorado, where flash floods can transform even docile streams into treacherous torrents, students in particular have taken to inner-tubing with a fervor that has alarmed the local authorities. A month ago, a 16-year-old boy was tumbled out of his tube by a particularly boisterous cataract, and sometime later was found dead about ten miles downstream. Said a sheriff's deputy: "The body was horribly mutilated--as if it had been run through a meat grinder."

A Problem of Inflation. Tubing has now produced its own teen-age gangs. One set of Colorado youths have made life miserable for fishermen along the South Platte River above Denver. Exhilarated by beer and foaming rapids, they race by anglers shouting imprecations and fouling lines.

Even for the most sedate tuber, a problem looms. How long will the supply of inner tubes last? Ever since Akron manufacturers switched to tubeless tires, the cost of inner tubes has suffered from inflation and the supply from depletion. Perhaps demand will force Akron to produce a new item: the tireless tube.

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