Watershed Moment

Carnegie Mellon Today, Winter, 2008

Julia Schwarz, Chris Harrison, and Bryan Pendleton were getting ready to eat the first meal of a three-day vacation paddling down the Allegheny River. Lounging on their homemade wooden raft, the three of them, all students in the Human Computer Interaction program, had just unpacked their tuna sandwiches, when the sky opened, unleashing a torrential downpour. As they dove for shelter under the tarp, the lightning started.

“It was right next to us,” says Schwarz. “Sometimes it felt as if the sound came before the lightning- it was ear-splitting.” Meanwhile, the raft, a platform of wooden planks supported by four plastic barrels, had been pushed into a faster section of river, near the shore, and was hurtling towards an overhanging tree- backwards. If the tree snagged the raft, there was good chance the current would push the raft over, knocking them into the river during a lightning storm. As Harrison and Pendleton paddled furiously, Schwarz managed to maneuver to the front and push the tree over them. Throughout the ordeal Harrison was joking and smiling. “I had to laugh to ease the tension,” he says.

The voyage was his idea- to have an adventure like the rafters who shipped timber down rivers centuries ago. He convinced Pendleton, another PhD student, to join him early on, but recruiting a third person was trickier. Harrison says he asked a half dozen people before Julia Schwarz- an undergrad from Washington studying at CMU over the summer- overheard him talking about the trip in the HCI lab. She heard, “rafting, trip, multi-day, building” and was hooked. They spent the next two and a half weeks constructing the raft in Pendleton's garage. The finished vessel was named in honor of his wife, Joy, and her decision to let him participate- The Joy Willing. After borrowing life-jackets, tents, and oars from the CMU Explorers club, they were ready to go.

Apart from the early storm, most of the trip was peaceful, but hardly boring. They constantly had to navigate around islands, rocks, and other obstacles. During quieter moments they saw turtles, otters, and bald eagles. When it got hot, they would swim in the river, checking the underside of the raft for damage. At night they camped on the shores of islands, eating smores and staring up at the Milky Way.

On the third day, the crew, and The Joy Willing, landed safely, thirty-five miles from their launch. They created a Web site, www.alleghenyrafters.com, hoping to inspire others to use the river. Maybe, says Schwarz, the trip could become a popular spring break for students. “Rafters gone wild!” Harrison jokes.