Virtual Reality crosses into Real Life

Second Life is a project that we are involved with so that our whitewater rafting industry is not forgotten in the virtual world. Our rafting avatar has been learning Linden script, building and security measures for the lands that we own. We haven't published our location yet, though it seems every avatar knows where we are. We have already set up several landmark givers and links to the river land already.

Raftwet Jewell took apart most of the old waterfalls and streams recently. The task of a second life builder is to create the best project with the least amount of prims. This way, the property owner has a reserve of prims for future projects or for current vendors on the land. Prim count is extremely important in any build.

With water scripts, the lag can be enormous. So decreasing each scripted prim is essential to the sim. I asked our avatar how she was doing in the goal. She told me that the last two nights, she was able to recover approximately 150 prims. I'm not sure exactly how she did it, but when I saw the results, I was blown away.

The water looks so real and the waterfalls are awesome. We will be publishing the location of the builder's land. It is a place where our company avatars practice building and scripting. They have essentially taken over the project completely. Those of us in the real world are having difficulty understanding exactly how they do this. All I know is that the place looks incredible and visitors have increased 10-fold.

We'll keep you posted as the land gets done. Now if we can only get the avatars to stop going to all these parties... they might get done quicker. Meanwhile, visit us in real world on the web for all your California rafting trips!

Website Updates

The new home page for W.E.T. River Trips was loaded recently using a 3-column template. It was hard to look at the new pages without missing the old one. So we put a link to the old page for people who might need the comfort of the old one.

The new format is divided into seasons; spring, summer, fall and winter. Yes, even winter. We find that many of our loyal client base loves to take a stab at winter boating. It's not for everyone definitely. It's cold and usually raining. But the river is deserted and spectacularly beautiful after a storm. Wildlife is usually roaming before the real cold sets in, so beavers and hawks and turtles roam the river corridor.

The seasons are unique in that each season specific rivers will run. Early spring, you have the incredible northern rivers running from spring melt and rainstorms. This is prime whitewater rafting season. Then in summer, dammed rivers kick in with controlled releases and great whitewater for the majority of the public. And fall, with most crowds tucked away, a time for wilderness rafting trips on multiple day excursions. Winter? Just for the whitewater paddling enthusiast... the junky of the paddling sport.

Drop us off a note if you have suggestions for the site. Trying to make this dinosaur of the oldest white water rafting site on the net has been quite a nightmare. We figured if we make changes and modifications to each of the old pages, we may be done by August 2008. Ha!

Raftwet Jewell Second Life Rafting Avatar

Hi all... as I usually say when I walk into a club to dance after building all day. The past few months have been an incredible journey of learning how to build, learning the Linden script and socializing with an international group of people, businesses and groups. I am officially a builder here. It's time to let you in the real world know a little more about W.E.T. River Trips focus here in Second Life.

Many of you who read the W.E.T. River Trips blogs, especially the California Whitewater Rafting Blog are usually reading about rivers, rafting, guides and California whitewater. The company started to write about lifestyles since extreme sports and whitewater rafting usually attracted certain types of people and markets. We in the SL world are focusing on promoting whitewater rafting.

The sims that have extreme sports are usually reflected in the groups that you might join here. There are skiing, snowboarding, sky diving, scuba diving, surfing, kite surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, paddling, and on and on. Are they there to sell the activity? Probably not. All of us who own sims and land do this because we love the sports we love.

Second Life is just that. A secondary reality that usually reflects hopes, dreams and light and dark visions that a RL (real life) person may visualize. SL is not the answer for a lot of people. There are rites of passage while navigating this place. And some are not so nice.

I love being here. The support from this community has been unparalleled in any place I've ever been. I love my friends and especially those who love extreme sports. We thrive on living on the edge. Those who laugh and poke fun at us avis... they don't understand. And we don't expect them to understand.

My best friend here is a tech head in RL. He is also a builder and scripter in SL. Here is what he has said about the critics: "Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." (quote by Albert Einstein) And I can't argue with that.

Posted by Second Life Avatar: RAFTWET Jewell
Groups: rafting, whitewater, W.E.T. River Trips - join our groups in Second Life!

2008 Website Revamps

Back to work... it's that time again for all the rafting outfitters to evaluate their websites and figure out the latest SEO for their site rankings. With social networking being derigeur, the whole SEO ballgame goes out the window (or so they say...). Page views are no longer as important as they were before. With Ajax, stickiness becomes more difficult to measure. Is it the time the consumer spends? Or is it the ROI?

I'm a nuts and bolts kind of person. I want to see numerical results. So, when I see profit margins shrinking because of PPC and other strategies, I have to re-evaluate, even when the internet marketer is telling me otherwise. It's the bottom line that has the tendency to gather all my attention... especially after speaking with the accountant... ha!

For this year, we have decided to try, once again, to ratchet back the number of paddlers we accommodate in a given season. Last year, we pulled all marketing internet traffic around the beginning of August in a half-ass attempt to slow the sales down. By the first of August, we were sold out for the entire season. But, that left us with hardly anything to offer for the rest of the season.

Our staff, for an entire month, stayed busy by invention. Each time the phone rang, the entire staff just cringed. The phone was an enemy in which we only said, "... sorry, we're sold out this weekend..." Then the consumers were hitting the store online and showing up without reservations on the day of the trip. (Yes... we have a gazillion disclaimers on the store site... people still showed up on the day of the trip anyway...)

Our biggest concern for this upcoming season is how to control the internet traffic in such a way as to not overwhelm our small staff, and to have this traffic in a more reasonable flow... yeh, right... if we can do this, we will have accomplished a miracle.

Rafee and Beau

My name is Raftwet Jewell, and I am the avatar in Second Life. When I first arrived, I was struck by the beauty of this world. A place where people build their own virtual worlds from fantasies deep within their psyche. I am having fun here; meeting new people from all over the world, dancing in clubs and ballrooms, listening to live music, going to art galleries and visiting incredible, magical places. The people have mostly been very kind and helpful. There are those who seem to live with the need to hurt others. Just like in the real world. And those social aspects don't change much even in this utopia.

My building skills have improved as other friends here have helped me with techniques and tips. The builders are generous people... showing off skills in the sandbox and always helping when asked. I've been practicing with the sculpty textures. The colors and surface are much improved. And it's been fun learning as I go... though I should go to more classes here.

A friend recently placed an object for me on our Builder's lands. It was his first build project. I was so touched by the gift that I created an abstract object using his theme. I placed the object right next to the river. One of my neighbors is an old (2002) avatar who has peppered his property with many fantastic objects. Everyone seems to be practicing with the sculptys... I love my builder friends... they are the best friends...

I met someone who has been a wonderful person to me. He has so many good qualities that it was natural that I would like him. It's funny how a virtual world could introduce us two in this way. We are enjoying ourselves. Really! You will see us together, dancing, walking on the beach and looking deep into each others eyes. As in the real world, there will be bumps in the road. Cross your fingers! I hope we can make a go of this... I just adore him... Rafee in SL

The Rescue Plan

New players coming aboard to help with the new W.E.T. River Trips site are like Neo to the rescue. Part of our group is forming a partnership with another network in order to make things flow together. (Pun intended...) Hey, finally we're excited again.

So many changes are happening on the internet that it is making our heads spin. As page view stats start to disappear, everyone is going to see a much more familiar landscape on the net. It's called plain ol' advertising... marketing with an internet twist, of course. (Madison Ave is finally listening...)

The daily grind of the seo expert is currently changing with the wind. More on that later as we welcome new strategies and ways to our revamp. Some old stuff will remain as they have proven their worth while other strategies are going out the window. YJ, are you listening, dude... Aloha, from the beach...

Waterfall Blown to Bits

One of the avatars in Second Life has created several waterfalls for our property. It takes a lot of time placing the prims in such a way as to create a nice water flowing object. One of the waterfalls is quite large and took her many hours to create it. All of us have tweaked and modified each other's work to improve the look. After all, we are learning.

The other day, we went in to practice building, when we discovered that someone had blown our large waterfall up. Yeh. Seriously. The entire top of the falls was destroyed and the rocks were blown around the area. Geesh. I just stared. Then, I started laughing. Amusing. Annoying. Ready for game-like combat. It's a game, the chant started in my head. It's a game. And someone else thought it was funny enough to do this.

Then the other day, I went in to upload some new textures, when we discovered that someone had scripted us into high heavens whenever we teleported on to the land. Geesh, another annoying problem. But then we discovered that someone had altered our land by taking the land mass out from below our warehouse! A good one. Another quick fix, and it was done.

Maybe a competitor in the whitewater rafting business? Or maybe we just pissed someone off with our company presence. Who knows? I just wish they would have communicated their annoyances before they demolished our work. Second Life is so interesting and creative. Luckily we had the entire waterfall in our inventory and we just replaced it in a flash. Hey... maybe they just thought our work stank!

RAFTWET -the Avatar

Second Life is becoming complicated for the avatar, Raftwet. She has evolved from a rudimentary avatar of warehouse freebies dressed in clumsy attire and non-scripted hair, to the alluring realness of a well-dressed woman. She has a form and shape that is to die for as she moves gracefully into the social world that exists there.

She is dancing at ballrooms and raves. She has been given social invitations to upscale events. She's traveled to Venice for a rooftop party in the square. She went to Barcelona to shop for beautiful clothing and shoes. And she's just been invited to tour Nantucket in a yacht with friends.

Recreation and activities are available on most of the islands. Rafee (new nickname) loves surfing on Japan Resort, raving at TJice, cruising through the Gardens at Apollo, dancing at the Moonlight Ballroom, swimming in the ocean and floating on the rivers. What's gotten complicated is the social aspect. Like the real world, there are liars, con men and thieves. Our naive avatar has made many multiple faux pas in this world, thinking it was a utopia instead of a possible dystopia.

Our Raftwet avatar has gotten involved with a man there. He is a handsome, polished character with many friends. He has professed his love for her. We think our avatar is in love. Yes, the avatars do fall in love. And with a declared love, comes the complication of love triangles, miscommunication and jealousy. The two characters have openly debated the need for more time as couples do in RL. But in doing so, this has opened the door for our avatar to meet others.

There's Ron, a gorgeous guy who is always dressed to the nines. A physical attraction has developed between the two friends. We can tell that they like each other. He has connections to many of the retailers in SL and has helped Rafee with her new look.

And there's Popo, her friend who is teaching her French. He is a gentleman in Paris who was one of her first dance partners. In RL, he lives in Paris and works for a technical firm. He has saved her from the hooligans and griefers on many occasion.

Anto, is an Italian friend, who has been a great support with introducing her to many places and people. He is also a fine ballroom dancer. He may be a woman or a man. It doesn't really matter in SL. He recently took her to Venice for a penthouse party in the square.

Another interesting character is Fernando from Argentina. He is a mad scripter and griefer. Our avatar has a bit of a crush on him as she seems to be attracted to the crazies and their brilliant minds. He has given her many scripted items. He took her for a ride on Pegasus. Then he gave her the flying script with the winged horse, and they both flew around the islands all afternoon. After that, she was his friend forever.

So where are the woman friends? There's CeCe, Emily, Notorious and others. The problem with women in SL, especially in the dancing or club scene, is just like in RL. Everyone is jealous of each other. On the dance floor, women will literally push you away from a guy. Or block you from dancing with a friend. Really! It's kind of odd, since you can always change your look to whatever you want. So jealousy in SL... does seem weird.

And finally, there's Lou. Her first real friend in SL. He has been there since day one. A good friend to dance with, to talk to, to hang out with. He is gorgeous, young and has lots of friends. The two avatars keep their lives separate as he is a punk and metal guitarist for a band and leads a different lifestyle in SL. He has helped warn her of the problems in SL and the social dynamics.

The avatars do fall in love. They get married, they get pregnant, they have children, homes, pets, property, jobs and love lives. The only difference is that problems and relationships can disappear quickly as easily as turning off the computer.

Raftwet - The Avatar

Rafee (nickname) went shopping with $10,000 Linden dollars last week. About $30+ in US currency. With that money, Rafee went to Barcelona for a shopping spree. Beautiful gowns and casual sets were purchased. She also went to some of the hottest retail properties in Second Life suggested by many other avatars. A new skin and shape helped to make the clothes look even better as our avatar evolved. Off to Gurl for the latest in hairstyles, and Rafee was set.

She had been invited to a dance party at both Virtual Party and Mediascape. She went to both. In RL, the members of the team were also having a party. So the weekend was spent raving on in RL and in SL. All the team had their laptops gaming their favorites while a lot of them spent their time in SL dancing with each other while we tweaked what we could.

Blurry eyed, lack of sleep, it was a 2-day event of no-sleep, gallons of caeffine, bad food, awesome music and dancing. They all met people in SL, danced with them, cuddled and danced some more. Our avatar finally hit the sack in RL around 4am on Monday morning.

The RL world remains the same, but SL moves faster than a griefer's scripted command.

Everything Old is New Again

End of June, and we've been too busy to do much with the website. Just a bit of editing here and there. We've been working on several other projects more fun than plain old web stuff. We are actually looking forward to the end of this season for more reasons than we can go into here.

We have finally made a decision to work with a new webmaster for the revamp of raftwet. This will be a hard thing as new people come aboard and the oldies move over for new technology and new strategies. Working with them has shown us that everything old is new again, so we're really not doing anything brand new. Just more efficient.

Some improvements will be in place this year as we are anxious to test them. Others are still waiting for approval. All in all, this might make us excited again to work on the site with more enthusiasm.

RAFTWET

Cleaning a closet... that's the metaphor that appropriately describes what we're doing here. We're throwing away the junk. You know the old saying,"If you haven't used it in a year, then throw it away or donate it..."

Cleaning up the raftwet website is kind of like that. Much of our content over the years has been copied by other websites, so cleaning up means checking for dead links or links that have changed, adding new content and doing more research. Fixing code errors and trying to keep a uniform sense has been difficult because of my chronic ADD. I just keep getting distracted. While most websites stay with one template, one css file; I find that I want several looks within the site. There just seems to be so much info that needs to be organized and how can I pigeon-hole it into just one look?

I'm already missing the old website with it's crazy layout and even wilder navigation. It seemed so unrestrained and primitive reflecting the early days of the net and our marketing attempts. But, the public keeps demanding simplicity with lots of info and bells and whistles and interaction and novelty and media and on and on and on.

What I find though is most of us who surf the net for information want it quick. Sure, the site that has the cool flash intro is fun to look at, maybe once or twice, then it gets tedious and old rather quickly. In fact, most of us click off the flash intros to get to the meat of the info in the site. Because, the reality is that we are really too busy to waste time when we're trying to reserve rafting trips or family vacations. Sure, we'll spend hours doing research, but we want it quickly and to the point.

New Stuff

Well, we uploaded several new pages using two new templates and two new css files. Do I love it? No. I'm already tired of the "new look." But, it is definitely more organized. Today, we added back some photos. The zen of pure code was taking over the joy of the visual experience. So, we added back in the pictures. Then we looked at the code. Yuck. It really junked up my nice clean structure. But, oh, I forgot... we are trying to sell river trips...

Speaking of clean code... learning script has been interesting... especially the Linden script for Second Life. It's getting easier and easier to look at script and filter out the junk and actually see the commands and action. Fun stuff. Now if I can apply this to real life script, I might be able to do something cool on the raftwet site.

A colleague of mine is a master programmer. He works on real life scripts. I'm scared of him. He has told me how scarey script can get, and I now know what he's talking about. It is scarey... the power of the action and commands that can "tell" something to do something that seems quite magical. I'm totally intrigued... lots of late night learning to do next.

New Stuff & Marketing

We've posted some new pages on the site using new templates and css files. Nothing to shout about, but definitely more organized. We've broken down our categories to simplify navigation. The site is so darn big now, that we've kind of forgotten some of our old pages... and maybe, they will die quietly? Or maybe we'll take some time to freshen them up, too.

Our friend Pat, over at raftinfo.com, has just launched another new look to his rafting directory. It is sweeeeet! Clean and easy to navigate, the directory includes many outfitters throughout the country. We really need someone like that to take over our dinosaur...

One of the things that I've noticed since we started revising our website, is the obsession of clean code. I get it. I really do. There is a perverse joy in seeing the code simplified without a bunch of junk coding and html.

The obsession is creating a sort of backlash against graphics and pictures, though, as we try to keep each page as clean as possible. It's become sort of a game of trying to get away from templates and authoring programs and focusing on pure code. And this from a non-programmer!

I think most of us who "play" with the web are always looking for a game-like response to each new change on the internet. First it was just learning simple HTML, then the SEO game, then the organic search mantra, then the bid strategy for PPC, then CSS simplification, then clean code advocates, social networking and now, just organizing the sites (back to square one?).

Everything is cyclic as we see each internet giant buy into the "old media" giants housed in New York on Madison Avenue... back to plain ol' advertising... with a twist, of course. What will we be facing next? More advertising placed on every single thing that you do on the internet. That is the future. Because Tivo ruined the onslaught of advertising on TV, everything moves to the web.

Griefers

Our Second Life property is a work in progress as we practice building waterfalls, flowing streams and rock formations. We've been working on scripting the prims to do some cool stuff, too. Each time we're there, we play with the prims and create different items for our inventory. My favorite prim is the torus. It seems that you can do so many cool things with it. I discovered that I could make these really neat objects and then attach the whole thing to my avatar. Dancing with the "thing" looks so cool when you're at the festival or at another dance site.

I was there one day engrossed with the playing of prims. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, another avatar was standing on the property next to ours. She (you never really know the gender, as role playing is rampant) was building some neat stuff, too. I sent a chat over and said, "Hi." She didn't respond so I just went about my building. She might not have seen the chat because I know I've missed greetings before while taking a break in the bathroom or just being so involved in whatever project I was attempting. So there was no offense taken.

I kept working when she dragged a very large item right to the property line in front of my bridge. The property next door has nothing on it except for a couple of scripted small items that the owner is storing there. Many people purchase properties just to gain more numbers of prims for their main estates. I wasn't sure if the avatar was the property owner or maybe a friend of theirs.

Then she disappeared, leaving this huge thing looming right on the property line and blocking my bridge. It was kind of weird. So, I felt a little bit of sorrow as I realized that it was done on purpose. Solution? I placed a transparent wall there to soften the obstruction and proceeded to change the configuration of my property. You got to live with your neighbors. Just like in real life.

The item disappeared soon after. Each time, we keep refining and changing stuff on the land. It's become an obsession as we keep practicing what we've learned. Yesterday, someone left three giant neon green pulsating items looming over our site again. Geesh. I clicked on to it and sure enough, it was for sale.

Okey, I get it now. Someone was trying to force me to purchase their stuff so that I could delete it. It was just some ugly thing that someone left just to annoy me. Sigh, just like in real life, when a neighbor puts up an ugly fence or wall. Perceptions are everything. Sometimes, you just have to live with the neighbor or the people who hang there.

In Second Life there are islands and properties that have covenants where this type of behavior is restricted. It's like living in a gated community with a neighborhood association. Ick. That's the last place I want to hang. At least this interaction has been annoying, amusing and actually kind of interesting. The blandness of a gated community leads me to want to hang where I am and maybe make a new friend.

Griefers in Second Life can be looked at as just another annoying source on the internet. At least here, it's just a game.

Links

We've got a lot of links on our site. Most of them got there because the site owner asked, and we saw that their website had valuable information for our rafting clients. When you love something like rafting and whitewater, you want to share that passion with other people.

My brother-in-law's nephew was in town from Ohio a couple of weeks ago. We sent him on a bunch of trips on the American River. He even did a 2-day wilderness trip on the South Fork. He was hooked. He called his uncle and told him that it was the highlight of his California tour. He said that while he was lying on the ground in his sleeping bag in the Lotus Coloma Valley, he saw a night filled with stars like he had never seen before. He said, arms outstretched, "... here..., I am... me, under this universe of stars." The joy in his voice was contagious.

That's why we link. We link to other rafting companies across the country and throughout California and the west because we really love rafting. We know that once you're hooked, you will come back to us or to another company. You will talk it up and bring that same contagious enthusiasm to your friends, your family. Then you'll bring your kids when they are old enough because you love it so much. Pretty simple concept, heh?

We still get the spammy emails asking for links. We usually just ignore it. The links we do give are usually to smaller outfitters that bring an intimacy and love to their river trips. Most of these rafting companies are like us, they do it because they love rafting. Otherwise, what's the point?

Rankings - SEO

Rankings are dropping... geesh, I wonder why... I can't seem to concentrate on SEO anymore. I haven't optimized or cleaned up pages in a while. Haven't even updated some of the '06 stuff... I'm bored. The challenge of keeping the site fresh is daunting. Daunting because the site is just too big, now. I do admit that I am slowly cleaning up the code on our more important pages, but it is really, really boring. Several templates have been designed in anticipation of re-doing the entire site. But honestly, blogging just seems so much easier. The content is always fresh. The information is always timely. Some of our rankings in keywords are still high on the search engines, but, it seems that the whole search thing for me doesn't seem quite as important as it was a few years ago.

This is a good year to step back and re-evaluate where we would like the rafting website to go. There are a lot of ideas in my head. Some are "old-school" marketing techniques that can be applied to the internet and others are very contemporary and new.

There are a lot of resources on the net providing businesses with templates for their websites. But even after customizing them, they all look the same. And the designers that create fabulous looking websites don't care about SEO at all. They just care about the beauty and the bells and whistles. As a creative person, my tendencies are to look towards an artful way of presenting our information. The only problem is that the code prevents the ranking. So, W.E.T. just keeps plugging along... we're trying to balance both.

Our team bloggers have taken over the main California rafting blog, while I seem to write more about the business itself. It's what currently dominates my thoughts.

RAFTWET's Second Life

Social networking is booming on the internet... or so they say. When we first jumped online in 1995, our first "website" was with Geocities, a social network of free websites that linked all of us together as a community. We published all of our funny river rafting stories and other commentaries about rafting trips. Most of these were about private trips, strange customers and funny stories about the guides. Never did we think that it would be a marketing tool. It was just a place to store the stories and to vent and rage on about stuff.

Most businesses left and so did we, though our site still exists and still draws quite a bit of traffic. Small businesses all started "real" websites. In other words, we paid to have it hosted. For us, there were lots of authoring programs that allowed us to create the site with minimal HTML knowledge. We just dropped and dragged text boxes and photos on to the page and then uploaded the document to the servers. Pretty simple.

Linking to other websites became a different social network of like-minded webmasters who were creating content that complimented each other. We were all "bro'in'" down with each other as we sent internet traffic to friends and each other.

And here we are, in 2007 and the buzz word is "social networking" again. Okey. So what's new? Myspace, YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, etc all provide more ways to communicate with your personal network... your friends. Of course, Myspace, YouTube are kings of them all. And Blogger is one of my favorites for journaling everything. But it still seems to be the same way of communicating, just more sophisticated.

A couple of years ago, I heard about a different type of communication tool. More buzz was coming from the gamers about this social network. At first, it sounded like the Sims, but I tried Sims and I got bored with it. The newer concept was Second Life, a virtual world from Linden Labs. They created "land" and people bought it... just like in the real world. Builders were constructionists who had 3-D knowledge and made buildings, trees, boats, cars... you name it with "prims." Prims are building blocks. A cube, a sphere, a pyramid, a cylinder... and then you manipulate it. The basic building blocks of life. Programmers created script to make things move and do something. A river flows. A carousel spins. A door closes automatically. A person can fly and become a fire-breathing dragon. I loved it. So fun. And so much time lost in a virtual world.

It didn't take a rocket science to realize the marketing potential of having a storefront or a billboard or an event hyping your product. And yes, the spammers are there as well as pornographers, gambling casinos and con artists. Just like in the real world. Even the obnoxious stereotypical dude that you hate at every party is there.

W.E.T. River Trips has land on Mauve, a popular land mass with a great sandbox (sandbox definition: a free place to practice building). We've met lots of great builders and programmers. The mind-blowing world invites awe, as beautiful properties unfold before your eyes. Oceanfront property, magical forests, free-flowing rivers and forbidden lands all entice you to explore. Those who attempt to build are surprised by their own accomplishments as an array of international members and residents are so willing to advise and help.

A recent post by Steve Rubel outlines the reasons for being there. It is the future of marketing. Even if Second Life fails, that future has been assured. Though, tech-heads are ruling that virtual world now, the execution will become simpler and simpler for the everyday business world.

For now, you have to have quite a powerful computer to operate in it. I envision Second Life to be a browser based application on Firefox so that anyone can participate. A world mirroring our own reality is waiting for any creative internet marketer. In the meantime, I'm having a blast.

Resource Developer Passes Away

The email missives came regularly, updating our staff about Ms. C's condition. She was diagnosed a couple of years ago with leukemia. Her sister, a good friend of mine had taken charge of the kaleidescope of medical procedures that require almost a medical degree to navigate. Persistent, my friend with no background in medicine, became an authority on every drug and treatment that her sister was facing. She took Ms. C along with her only child, back to her own home to care for her beloved sister.

Ms. C who owned her own business raised her son by herself after her brief marriage. I met her through my friend. A take-charge kind of woman, she was single, running a successful business, raising her son and owning her own home. An American dream... just not with a spouse.

Last year, during a remission, she moved back to her own home again to try to create some normalcy after many series of treatments. She felt good. Her need for independence after relying on so many, had taken a toll. We hired her to develop areas of our website. She thought it was cool to be able to surf the net and get paid for it.

Her work was thorough and complete. She learned very quickly. She relieved a burden on our staff. And as many of you know, how difficult it is to keep good researchers on task.

Then one day, her emails stopped. I knew she was struggling again. The work came to a grinding halt as we knew it wasn't any of the regular email excuses that we've all used about sending and receiving messages. I talked to my friend and she told me that Ms. C had relapsed, and the cancer was back.

This week, we received the email that we were dreading. Ms. C had talked to the family and her doctors asking for no more treatments and to be released from the hospital. She was ready, and wanted to go home. She was peaceful in this decision. And when the time came, her entire family, along with her priest, was there to bid her farewell. She died yesterday afternoon on a beautiful, sunny day in spring. We send our prayers to her son and her extended family.

Website Makeover

Oh, the agony of a novice that is trying to figure out PHP and Mysql. I'm not a programmer and I didn't go to school to learn computer languages. I'm like most web design learners. I just want the site to look good and navigate well. And that ain't happening. The myriad of templates and tutorials is making my head spin. I can't believe how many templates and CSS files I've created. I just can't make up my mind and pick one to work with and redo the entire website. Maybe I should use all the templates and all the CSS files since the site has so many different places to go.

One of our colleagues who does websites very well is Matterhorn Marketing. He has created a ton of sites for Eastern rafting companies. His sites all look good and navigate easily. Why can't I just let him take over our site? I know he'd do a great job and I know I could finally relax a bit over here. He could take over our internet marketing and I could go on vacation for the first time in years... wha' up wit dat? Why not?

The thing about letting anyone else do your website is mixed up in a realm of ego and control. Will the site be hosted on their servers? Will the files be part of my website or hosted somewhere else? Will I get the template files, the header files, the CSS files, the PHP files, the graphics, the footers, the blah blah blah blah and on and on... and what hidden scripts will be lurking in those mysterious places that only a webmaster knows? Sigh... I'm telling you, this has been the toughest decision ever.

And yet, while the other rafting companies' webmasters are busy optimizing, we're sitting here procrastinating. And guess what, we still haven't made a decision on which way to go, and our first rafting trip is in two weeks.

Server Down

My goodness! Is there anything that can't go wrong? The past 3 days was spent troubleshooting the RAFTWET site as we watched the site download to a crawl... and then to that unsavory window that states, "The site could not be found or the server may be too busy. Please try again." Or something to that effect. Blah blah as the saying goes, but essentially the IP host was having serious problems that essentially took down the entire network. Sorry, they said.

Here we are in the middle of our booking season with several number one Google positions for our rafting keywords and then boom! No site. Nothing comes up but the spinning rotating cursor. So we spent hours talking with tech people and trying to stay calm and cool. What the heck? If it's not going to get fixed within 24 hours, why stress? So, I took off for the day and spent it with friends near the river. Not a bad solution to a problem, I say.

More grist for the blog, I guess... and hey, the site is back up again! Yeh!

Ugly Website

Our rafting website RAFTWET.com is really, really old. We created it around 1995 on the old Geocities site that is now part of the Yahoo network. Do you remember how exciting it was to create a website with your own thoughts and design back then. And then, actually publish it and realize that it was out there in a universe so large, so big that it was practically incomprehensible? That old Geocities site is still hosting our original words about our rafting company, W.E.T. River Trips. I can still remember when we first purchased the domain RaftWET.

We originally wanted just plain old "wet dot com", but it turned out to be a porno site. Bummer. So we came up with a catchy domain name that said what we do without the vulgar reference.

The first incarnation of the website featured one of our guides, Bruce, who is now a Colorado river guide on the Grand Canyon. His mug was on the index page with a cartoon bubble caption telling you to go rafting. Very primitive and very crudely done. But, it was amazing how many people saw it and ended up going rafting with us.

One of our colleagues told us last year, that at the national convention for outdoor outfitters, a company of web design and marketing showed our website as being the worst site in the outdoor market. Ugly and difficult to navigate, our site was shown as an example of a website that badly needed a remake. Yikes. It kinda hurt our feelings... as we rafted to the biggest year of our company's history. So go figure.

As some of you have noticed, we are attempting to do a remake. What a nightmare. We asked 3 different webmasters to help with the remake; all turned us down. The site is too big, said one. Another said that it would be a year long project. Another quoted an outrageous price that indicated to us that they really didn't want to tackle it. Whoa. So, we are attempting to do it in-house. It'll be a labor of love ... and agony as we test out different templates and css files. As far as SEO (search engine optimization), we've kind of left that in the dust... too many spammers out there now with link farms and other sketchy techniques. Now's the time to just get the info to our paddling public in the most organized fashion possible. It may be slow going, but we hope we'll be done by next year.

Rafting Directories

Just a shout out to one of our long time web relationships: RaftInfo, the rafting directory for the United States. When W.E.T. River Trips established its company domain, RAFTWET, back in 1995, we were one of a very few California outfitters with a website. RaftInfo created a directory of rafting outfitters across the country right around the same time and included W.E.T. as a featured California rafting company. Now several rafting trips and outfitters are included along with international river trips.

Their recent remake of their website now includes several blogs from different regions. And the iBetty Network is an invited guest blogger on their site along with RAFTWET. For more information on rafting trips throughout the nation, check out their website. And the California whitewater rafting website has full river descriptions about rivers in California and a listing of California rafting companies.

RAFTWET.com

W.E.T. River Trips = RAFTWET.com

You can get to our main website using either domain:

• wetrivertrips.com


• raftwet.com

If you can't figure any of the internet domains out; just call toll free!
1.888.RAFTWET (888.723.8938)

And for all those websites out there who are using elements from our website, well we say, blah! If you really want to get WET, then go to this site to get to our main website:

• getwetrafting.com

It will also take you to our main website... ribbity ribbity ribbity and that's all folks!

See you on the river in 2007!
W.E.T. River Trips since 1978 founded in Sacramento, California on Planet Earth!