Chattahoochee Chatter: Conquering the great outdoors
Last Saturday was a busy one on the Chattahoochee River.
Just ask Dan Gilbert, owner of Whitewater Express, the lone outfitter on the urban whitewater course.
"Our best day ever," Gilbert said.
Whitewater Express is in its third season of operating on the Chattahoochee. On Saturday, 1,115 rafters went down the river. There were 181 who zipped across the Chattahoochee on the zip line.
And the crowd was not a local one.
"Very few of the folks were from Columbus or Phenix City," Gilbert said. "There were a lot from Atlanta and a good many from Florida."
Whitewater Express put more than 1,500 rafters down the river over the weekend. The outfitter also welcomed its 75,000th customer -- that includes rafting and the zip line -- on Saturday, Gilbert said.
In about 11 months of operation, more than 14,000 people have gone across the zip line. That is more than double the 6,000 Gilbert had projected for the first year.
Let's stay in the great outdoors for this next Chatter item
The city of Columbus asked the public for suggestions to name the new rails-to-trails project currently under construction in south Columbus.
From the 135 votes and suggestions it received, the city named a winner Tuesday at the Columbus Council meeting. The trail, which will run along an abandoned rail bed from Cusseta Road to Torch Hill Road, will be called the "Follow Me Trail," named, of course, for the motto of the U.S. Army Infantry.
That name got 27 votes, followed closely by the "Wounded Warrior Trail," with 24 votes.
Other suggestions, with the number of votes they received, were:
The Chattahoochee Choo-Choo (12)
The Eugene Bullard Trail (9)
The Cherokee Rose Trail (8)
The Robert Montgomery Jr. Memorial Trail (6)
The Triple Nickel Trail (5)
The South Lumpkin Trail (5)
The Robert Greene Trail (4)
The Lumpkin Legacy Trail (3)
The Reginald Pugh Trail (3)
The Newton D. Baker Trail (2)
The Longleaf Pine Trail (1)
Those of us in Chatterland think they chose a winner.
Speaking of winners
Perhaps nothing causes new middle school students more anxiety than learning how to open their locker and how to fit all their stuff in it.
So kudos to Aaron Cohn Middle School principal Richard Green for opening the school Saturday for students and their parents or guardians to practice those tricky combinations and calmly prepare their lockers before the Monday mania, when the 2015-16 school year started.
Green began this annual locker practice in 2012, his final August at Midland Middle School, before leaving for ACMS, now in its third year. He figured, "I'm going to be here Saturday anyway, and seeing how much the students struggle with those lockers, why not let them in?"
An estimated 70-75 students showed up Saturday, almost all sixth-graders and mostly females.
"The boys don't care," Green said with a laugh. "They just ram everything into their locker, like their bedroom, but the girls want to dress their locker up really nice, trick it all out, and the mamas like to help them.
"It's a good time for them to be together as they take that next step. They can interact with their child and make it a special moment."
Educators such as Green, who deliver servant leadership to create environments for those special moments, are a blessing to our community.
We'll end this Chatter with an unfortunate first day of school experience
The first day of school was rough for two local parents, but not for the reason you would imagine.
Columbus Police said two parents who went to Fox Elementary to drop off their child got into a heated argument about diapers in the school cafeteria early Monday around 9 a.m. The dispute escalated when the two cursed at one another and the mother, Jami Parrish, slapped the father in the face in front of 30 school students and several employees, police said.
Parrish was arrested and charged with disrupting a public school and simple battery. Recorder's Court Judge Michael Joyner exchanged the charges for a lesser-included offense of disorderly conduct during Monday's preliminary hearing.
The father attempted to dismiss the charge against Parrish, but the judge refused. He said the fact it was a family violence incident gave the state the authority to still continue the case.
"My concern is that this kind of thing can happen again," Joyner said to the father. "Y'all are both emotionally upset. I can see it in your face, and I can see it in her face."
The judge granted Parrish an own-recognizance bond but not before giving both parents, who have been together for 12 years, a stern lesson about self-control. He told the couple to handle their personal issues in the appropriate place and in the proper manner.
He told the father that he could have easily been charged.
"Both of you violated the school's peace and harmony," Joyner said. "Even though you may not have instigated it and you were victim of a slap, you were also involved in the language, too."
This story was originally published August 12, 2015 at 9:42 PM with the headline "Chattahoochee Chatter: Conquering the great outdoors ."