"What does Liloing Involve? NO Skill No expensive gear and NO BRAINS."

January 17, 2013 2:44 PM

Liloing: "the art [pdf] of enjoying oneself paddling down a river on an inflatable rubber mattress,* shooting the odd friendly rapid." Groups like Span Outdoors organize liloing trips, and much discussion of liloing can be found at bushwalk.com. (*i.e., a lilo)
posted by ocherdraco (18 comments total)

Doing this on the Lower American River in California is fun. Raft, innertube, cooler of beer...the occasional, "It's too shallow to float" section.
posted by Chuffy at 2:54 PM on January 17, 2013

The thing that I find so fascinating about this is that it seems to have spun out from people just saying, "Hey we brought these inflatable mattresses. Why don't we float the next bit instead of walking?" and just going for it.
posted by ocherdraco at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is extremely fun in gentle ocean waves too.
posted by fshgrl at 2:57 PM on January 17, 2013

If you do it wrong, how many stitches do you get?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:59 PM on January 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Huh, and here I thought LILOing was what I was doing that one weekend back in college trying to get Slackware to boot on my Gateway 2000.
posted by steveminutillo at 3:47 PM on January 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

Isn't LILOing the art of making a monster into a member of your family?
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:25 PM on January 17, 2013

Huh, and here I thought LILOing was what I was doing that one weekend back in college trying to get Slackware to boot on my Gateway 2000.

LILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILOLILO........

* shudders *
posted by miyabo at 4:27 PM on January 17, 2013

I read too much celebrity gossip, because I thought LiLoing was getting drunk and crashing your luxury car while making bad career decisions.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:35 PM on January 17, 2013 [6 favorites]

Oh, so this is a safe for work post?
posted by NoMich at 4:41 PM on January 17, 2013

LILOing is showing up late and then staying too long.
posted by basicchannel at 4:41 PM on January 17, 2013 [4 favorites]

I'm so glad I live next to a river with class 3 rapids.
posted by Vhanudux at 5:03 PM on January 17, 2013

This is called "floating the river" in Texas, and it's just something people do. I never thought of it as anything more noteworthy than the fact that people go to amusement parks.

I notice a conspicuous lack of beer coolers in these photos. I thought we were bros, Australia.
posted by cmoj at 7:03 PM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sorta did this in a "family" inflatable pool (see profile pic) on the Red Cedar in East Lansing, MI. We stopped before the "rapids" on the MSU campus. Just didn't want to risk breaking the very thin bottom lining of the pool. Our buddy who joined us did end up going over them on his inflatable mattress. He was fine luckily. Unfortunately he had missed the rope that our friends had set up at the last bridge before the rapids. I certainly don't regret that experience.
posted by Melee Loaf at 1:58 AM on January 18, 2013

We spent all our summers as kids going down bits of a Scottish river in beaten-up rubber dinghies, often with no floor in them. Awesome.
posted by alasdair at 3:50 AM on January 18, 2013

A plastic mattress would not do well against the sharp basalt rocks in Oregon. Somehow I don't think liloing will catch on in the Rogue anytime soon. Which is too bad, 'cause it'd be really, really fun.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:50 AM on January 18, 2013

There is a river here in Switzerland that looks good for this. It's the outflow from Lake Lucerne, the River Reuss. Lots of water flowing, and very clear. But I'd rather have a raft of innertubes, tight together, than an air mattress. More room for the beer cooler.
posted by Goofyy at 8:09 AM on January 18, 2013

Another normal, happens-every-day thing given some silly name.

It's called a float trip. You get a bunch of beers and something that floats and chill down a river.

Usually, you have an indestructible mother-ship raft with the beers and you swim or float all afternoon with whatever else you got.
posted by thylacine at 8:52 AM on January 18, 2013

I just considered it being a kid in VT. I've done the Warren to Waitsfield journey in the river on nice days in a tube. It is a lot of fun as you just float down river and get picked up at the end and get driven back to your friends house. There are even deep stretches where you can jump off of rocks. Our tubes never popped either because the big boulders had been worn smoothish by the constant current, definitely a good thing to do on a summers day.
posted by koolkat at 9:12 AM on January 18, 2013