Outdoor adventurers ready for life’s rapids
Life has a way of throwing curve balls, similar to that of a raft drifting smoothly and peacefully down a river, then encountering churning water that flips your world upside down suddenly — in a fun, adventurous way.
That might be an appropriate analogy for Eric and Megan Lehman, longtime Columbus residents whom fate brought together at Whitewater Express, the local Chattahoochee River outfitter, and ultimately led them to a love-filled altar last October. He’s a second-year river guide and trip leader and she’s a three-year office manager who works the zip line whenever needed.
Throw in the fact that Eric has enlisted in the U.S. Navy and plans to report for boot camp in August, and you’ve got a world that is beginning to change more rapidly for the couple. It’s a military career that very well could take them around the planet at some point.
But for one last summer they will be among the hard-working crew at Whitewater Express, looking to safely bring a bit of adventure into the lives of rafting and zip-line customers from near and far. Dan Gilbert, owner of Whitewater Express, says he is in need of another 10 or 15 rafting guides, which will ultimately round out at about 80, as his company embarks on its fourth prime warm-weather season here in May.
The Ledger-Enquirer sat down with Eric, 23, and Megan, 21, recently to discuss their matrimony, their jobs and what it takes to keep customers safe and happy floating on the river in a rubber boat and soaring above it via a steel cable. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity, with an expanded version available at www.ledger-enquirer.com.
Q. I understand the rafting guides get nicknames. What is yours, Eric, and did you pick it?
A. Eric: Everybody is given their name. Nobody picks their own. MMMBop is one. We have one guy whose last name is Hanson and MMMBop was a song by a group called Hanson back in the ’90s. Mine is Gypsy. I was given that name by a group of guests that came down and took a ride with me. I didn’t have a name at that time. I’ve moved around quite a bit, and last year my hair was a lot longer and I had a whole bunch of braids and stuff in it. They said I looked like a river gypsy, and that’s kind of what I stuck with. I like it.
Q. You’re heading for the Navy?
A. Eric: Correct. I’ll be leaving Aug. 17 of this year to go to boot camp. It’s going to be fun, because after boot camp we’ll be in Charleston (S.C.) for about a year and a half. That’s where the Navy nuke school is. For at least 15 to 18 months, we’ll be in Charleston before we get re-stationed ... On the contract right now, I’m going to be a nuclear propulsion technician. I volunteered for submarine duty, so I’ll be working on the nuclear engines that power submarines.
Q. You met on the job and were wed in October. How did you meet and was it love at first sight?
A. Megan: I work in the office a lot in the summertime. In the winter, when it slows down, I pick up zip line. And also on my off days from the office I’ll raft … But I saw Eric around. The new raft guides, I don’t pay them any attention because there’s a lot of them and you don’t know who’s actually going to stick around. So I was just like, oh, whatever. Then we went to Momma Goldberg’s with a bunch of people from work, and from there we all went out together. Everybody at Whitewater all hang out together. It’s really cool because you have people of all ages, from like their 40s to 18.
Eric: I’d definitely say it was love at first sight. I knew when I saw her that she’s exactly who I wanted to be with (Megan laughs) and I was going to work until I got her.
Megan: Aww, that’s cute. He’s the romantic.
Q. Are you Columbus natives?
A. Eric: I am as close to being a native without actually being born here. My family moved here when I was 11 months old and I’ve lived here ever since. My father worked for a company — at one time it was called Mead — out in Cottonton, Ala. My father is a powerhouse operator out there. So this is where I say I’m from. Lynchburg, Va., is where I was born.
Q. You’re from here, Megan?
A. Yeah. It goes back to my grandparents worked in the mills.
Q. How did you get into your jobs?
A. Megan: I went rafting with my family, and later on Facebook my family was like, oh, Megan, they’re hiring. It’s so up your alley because I love doing adventure stuff and being outside. So I applied and got the job three years ago. I started in the office. We opened the zip line, so I’ve been working on it since they built the tower. I was doing that and decided to get checked out as a raft guide. I just like doing different stuff, and being able to do it if I wanted to. I could just go outside and stay in the sun and swim. In the fall, zip lining is awesome because it’s not too hot.
Eric: For myself, I’ve always been like an outdoorsy kid. Growing up in the woods, we were always out playing around. But when I moved back down here after leaving Georgia State, I already had quite a few friends that worked there as guides. Because I was looking for a job, they said, hey, we’re hiring raft guides. And I had never even rafted as a guest before I came down here and started training … But after my very first trip, I fell in love with it, so that’s what I started doing.
Q. What do you enjoy about it?
A. Eric: I’m water prone, so getting out and being able to play in the water, and make money while doing that, it kind of married very well. I needed a job moving back here and what a better way than to work outside, outdoors, with a bunch of different people? … I guess by trade I’m a bartender. I’ve worked in bars since I was 18. I’m 23 now, so I’ve been doing it awhile.
Q. Basically, you’re a people person?
A. Eric: I am a people person. I like being able to meet different people from all over the place and getting to talk to them. This was a pretty good avenue of being able to talk with people and work outside all day long.
Q. The river guides and other employees come from far and wide?
A. Megan: Oh, everywhere. I love when the employees come in, they’re from all over the place, some from Virginia, we have a new girl who’s from Alaska.
Eric: We’ve been recruiting people who work on rivers up in Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, all of the neighboring states that have good whitewater.
Q. Columbus and the Chattahoochee are a draw?
A. Eric: When the water’s running during our high-water trips, we have some of the largest rapids on the East Coast. It gets really big water, and it’s something that people have never seen. Most of the time when you’re rafting, you’re tucked away in the woods or in the mountains. But we’re downtown Columbus. You can get off the water and go eat sushi, which is something that you can’t do on other rivers.
Q. Do customers ask you where are the best places to eat?
A. Eric: That’s always one of the questions that we get once they get off the river. It’s where do we go eat? We’re like, well, we’ve got Broadway up here, which is three blocks or so of nothing but food and retail shops. People love it, especially people who come from out of the country.
Q. Some customers are from overseas?
A. Eric: Oh, most certainly. I’ve taken people down (the river) from England, from Ireland, from Australia, a whole bunch of different places … something would bring them into the states, and then they would want to do something adventurous while they were here in Georgia and then, boom, Whitewater Express on the Chattahoochee would be suggested.
Megan: And the military also brings a lot of people. Their families come to visit from wherever and they just want to do something as a family together.
Q. What’s a typical day for you, Megan?
A. Megan: It’s all over the place because it depends on if I’m doing the zip line or rafting or in the office. In the summertime, it’s the office. You get there at 8:30 and it’s really busy. The guides are coming in and you’re keeping up with how many boats and how many people we can do.
Q. There’s a lot of juggling?
A. Megan: Yeah, yeah. The zip line, you have five trips every hour from 9:30 until 5:30, and then we have the full adventure, the express pass, and you can go as many times as you want for four hours. So there’s climbing the tower and hooking them in and going constantly, and we usually rotate positions.
Q. How many zip line trips can a customer squeeze in within four hours?
A. Eric: The most that somebody has ever done in four hours is between six and eight, I forget the number.
Q. But it’s a constant flow?
A. Eric: Definitely. We’re always moving.
Q. Discuss the zip line operation more.
A. Megan: We hook people up to the line and you’re going from the first tower to the second tower, and they have a second zip line you can send from, or you’re catching and unhooking and then hooking them up to the aerial course. We have people (customers), they’re called retrievals, if they don’t make it across, like the younger kids if they don’t weigh enough. So we have to go out there and get them and pull them in. On the aerial course, we do have people who get scared and we have to help them.
Q. Have you ever had anyone break down and cry on the zip line?
A. Eric: I’ve had kids cry before. You have your kids that will get up on the aerial course and they’ll lock up and start shaking and cry, and you have to get out there and coach them and say: It’s alright. You’re OK. You’re not going to fall off, I promise you.
Q. Is there any pressure for you dealing with people? You’ve got to think safety at all times?
A. Megan: I’m probably one of the most paranoid (about safety) up there. But once you get used to just checking everything, checking the wires all the time, looking at the aerial course, who’s hooked in, you just kind of start doing it automatically.
Eric: I would say that the most stressful part is just keeping on time because in this business everything works off of trip times, and you’ve got to start and end your trip in time to be able to start and end the next one, and so on and so forth. That’s where the pressure really gets going, especially when you have people get locked up and scared, and it takes a minute to coax them off the towers and zip line.
Megan: And people’s lives are on the line. Especially when you’ve got overeager kids. I will make sure they’re hooked in at all times. We have a little leeway when you go to the top of the tower. You can look and watch people come in when the gates are closed, but the kids leaning over the edge and stuff, they’re always hooked in. It’s nerve-wracking just making sure everybody is good to go.
Q. How many people can you process through the zip line?
A. Eric: Our record this year, we did 94 people on the zip lines in an hour and a half. And that’s getting the first 50 over and back, getting their gear off, putting it on the next people, and getting them on the tower and going over. It’s a constant flow of people, very circular.
Q. Is there just as much pressure for you on the water with the rafters?
A. Eric: Where the pressure comes in is keeping on time and figuring out your group. No two trips are ever the same. You’ll have people that really want to flip. They’re high adventure. So they’re paddling really hard. It all works on time, so if they’re paddling really fast it’s, OK, we know we’ve got to slow down a little bit because we’re going to get there too soon, and that hour and a half or two-hour trip is only going to take 45 minutes, and that’s not what we want. And then inversely you’ll have those groups that don’t want to paddle, don’t want to flip, but still want to get out there and have a good time. So it’s always about learning your customers, your guests, right as they get in the boat, because then you have to cater that trip to them.
Q. The majority rules?
A. Eric: That’s right. If you get down to the biggest waves and don’t want to flip, then you’ve got to make sure that you navigate them through those rapids correctly so that you have the highest chance of not flipping. Sometimes it happens and we’re sorry about it, but the pressure is trying to figure out what your guests want as soon as you get in the boat and on the water.
Q. What’s a day like for you, Eric?
A. Eric: An average day for me during peak season as a raft guide is getting there early in the morning, getting geared up, taking the first group to the top, and then I pretty much don’t get off the boat or off the bus until the last trip comes home. After that, I can finally go back into the shop and take a break. I’m going from top to bottom all day long.
Q. Is there a percentage of rafts that do flip?
A. Eric: When the water’s running on high-water trips, like the crazy challenge trips (after Georgia Power releases water around mid-afternoon), I would say about a good 50 to 60 percent of the boats flip. It’s not by lack of experience from the raft guides. It’s just there’s a lot of factors. If your customers are not paddling well and you go through those big 6- or 7-foot-tall waves, you’re not going to make it.
Q. What happens when you flip?
A. Eric: If you’re not going fast enough, if you don’t have your weight appropriated correctly, you’re going to flip. And I can tell. (snaps fingers) As soon as the boat starts coming up, it’s like, I know we’re flipping. So we have little ropes on the side that wrap around the boat, and I grab onto those so that I can hold on. … Then we’re in the water. As soon as I come back up, I instantly turn the boat back over, get in the top, and start searching for people and then start picking them up. If you do all of that correctly, you can get to them and get them back in the boat in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t take all that long once you’ve done so many flips. It becomes second nature. You don’t even think about it. You just know what you’re doing.
Q. It sounds like a pretty physical experience?
A. Eric: It’s exhausting. At the end of the day, you’ll know you did it right if all of your muscles are screaming.
Q. You like that about it?
A. Eric: Yeah. It’s physical and keeps you in good shape, and like I said, you’re in a job where you’re playing in water all day.
Megan: When Eric takes high-water trips, I can can just watch everybody go down and get pictures (for customers to purchase later). And we have safety boaters at the bottom (of the whitewater course), inside inflatable kayaks, so that we can get to them faster. If they’re floating down, we can go straight to them.
Q. The pictures can tell a story of sorts and taking them is fun for you?
A. Megan: I like being outside, and I like people. There’s pressure involved, but it’s rewarding at the end of the day when everybody has a good time and comes back. And they do like to look at their pictures.
Eric: The pictures, we take them at the biggest rapids, so you can see the sheer look of terror. You can see what was going on in their head at that moment, and I can look back and think about how they were acting when we got through (the rapids). It’s like, they were scared, but they had fun.
Q. This is a life-changing job for you, Eric, it appears.
A. Eric: It’s definitely been life changing for me. It’s opened up a new realm of hobbies that I had never contemplated. I’ve started boating and learned how to kayak since I’ve been here. Like I said, I had never rafted or been in a kayak before I started working here. I was just always more of a hiker and a camper. But now we like to go to the other rivers that (Whitewater Express) operates on and camp and hike around there as well. I thoroughly enjoy it.
Q. You’ll obviously follow your military husband, Megan, but does this prepare you for your own career?
A. Megan: Right now I’m the office manager, so I’m doing a lot of hiring and training of the girls in the office, our employees in the office. I’m getting experience that way, just by managing people, and also being under pressure and knowing how a business operates and things you have to be aware of … I got CPR-certified; that’s a plus. I’m hoping that in South Carolina, when we move there, that there’s going to be another outdoor company that I can work for because this just doesn’t feel like a job. It’s really cool.
Eric and Megan Lehman
Ages: He’s 23 and she’s 21
Hometown: Both from Columbus
Current residence: Married in October and live in Columbus
Education: He’s a 2011 graduate of Shaw High School and attended Columbus State University and Georgia State University, studying history and secondary education. She’s a 2013 graduate of Columbus High School and attended Kennesaw State University and Columbus State University, studying art education
Family: Each other, plus a Bluetick Coonhound named Huckleberry that they adopted from a shelter in Carrollton, Ga.
Leisure time: Enjoy hiking, camping and being on the water — just being outdoors in general; they do play disc Frisbee at Flat Rock Park on occasion
This story was originally published April 30, 2016 at 9:42 PM with the headline "Outdoor adventurers ready for life’s rapids."