SHALL WE START A BETTING POOL ON HOW MANY PEOPLE DIE BY DROWNING DURING THIS EVENT?!?

I'VE GOT $10 ON THREE PEOPLE DEAD.

This reminds me of a joke I heard over the weekend.

Q: How do you make a baby float?

A: 1 scoop of baby, 1 scoop of ice cream. Top it with root beer.

thebigfloat.com said: the Willamette River is fine for swimming, except in rare instances when Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) conditions are present.

Rare instances my ass. City of Portland says CSO events occur about 50 times per year (any time it rains more than a few drops). It also recommends waiting at least 48 hours to go in the river after an event. Potentially, isn't that about 100 days per year that people should stay out of the river?

The WKRP turkey drop comes to mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST01bZJPuE0

If you have the time, you should check out the heavy duty sign that says in big letters 'Clean Waterway', and it is COVERED IN SHIT, it is not hidden. It is next to the shiny new building, fountains, blah blah blah..I wouldn't put a shoe on that flipping thing...I tried to take a photo of the 7 foot long turd...no avail.

A) Gross.

B) Repost Matt Davis' story about his Willamette swim.

Is it really the best idea to encourage a thousand Oregonians to get into a large body of water on the last of a four-day beer festival? Graham, did you factor this into your bet?

@bobby: the big pipe (92% complete!) is supposed to prevent that from happening, even in the rainy season: http://www.portlandonline.com/cso/index.cf…

It's not scheduled to be completely completed by the end of 2011, but we should be all good for the float by end of July. Endless shit with the weather gets *really* weird.

I fear 'The mass hipster river rescue of '11'

Just to confirm, you're talking about floating from the Marquam to the Hawthorne? Isn't that just a few hundred yards?

Apparently, all of Portland's Brooklyn transplants need some edu-ma-cation on how to do a river float. Hint: it lasts longer than 15 minutes.

@Blabby
I believe there will be a route that extends farther than that, and the entire float is supposed to last an hour. (And I'm not from Brooklyn.)

As anybody who cut their hesher teeth sailing down the Clack or the Sandy know- a proper river float is measured in 12-packs, not units of time.
That said, E-13's "Yellow Floater" comes to mind when I think of the Willamette.

You're not going to die by spending 30 minutes in the Willamette, guys.