Took A Surprising Turn
Several years ago I went down to the New River Gorge with my wife (then fiancée) and a group of friends to camp and rock climb over memorial day weekend. Over the course of the trip, five of us decided that on the last day, instead of doing another climbing location, we were going white water rafting. We booked with a guide company and showed up in the morning ready to go. We hopped on the bus to the launch site and when we got there we were told that we were going to have an addition to our group of five. The guy who was introduced to us said he got too drunk the night before and missed the first trip of the day that he and his friends had booked, but he lucked out since there was one open spot on the next trip! Great! We load up and start the trip, just shooting the sh*t with our new rafting friend.
Over the course of the ride down, this guy seemed to know his way around a raft and seemed weirdly familiar with the river. At one point, our guide was pointing out a class 2 or 3 rapids section that he said was safe to swim through – this guy immediately jumps out of the raft, climbs up a rock in the middle of the river, and does a perfect 360 flip into the rapids!
Near the end of the trip, our guide hits us with the plot twist: we’re his first-ever group, this was his test, and our suspicious knowledge addition was his supervisor! We were all blown away! We spend the rest of the trip just piecing together the missed clues in the best bamboozle of our lives. Needless to say, the trainee guide passed his test and got a great first review (and a nice tip), and we all got a great story.