Toobing on the Comal River – New Braunfels, TX

Yes, the place actually spells it with 2 “o”s. (It’s going to be painful for me to actually write it that way, but I’ll do it, so you’re as annoyed as I am with it.) My nephew and his wife have been talking about this place in San Antonio where you can go tubing on the Comal River. It’s sort of a natural river where they landscaped the sides and put in some awesome “tube shoots” and you can kill an entire day lounging and drinking on the water.

After lunch, we drove up to New Braunfels and found the park at the start of the toobing place. Bikinis and d-bags as far as the eye can see. DeliveryBoy and Amanda Hugginkiss had been here a few weeks back, so they knew the routine. Fill up a cooler with tasty beverages, go rent toobs and an extra tube for the cooler, and hop in the water. We got all signed up and sunscreened up and carried our toobs towards the drop in point on the river. There are police everywhere. I’m guessing a hundred monitor the start area and all along the river itself, watching for underage drinking, drugs, drowning, etc. A cop stopped us and told us we had an unauthorized cooler. Apparently, the size limit is 16 quarts on the cooler. Ours was in the neighborhood of 40+ qts. Whoops. We didn’t know.

DeliveryBoy and I hopped one of the shuttles back to the rental place. Along the way, the shuttle driver stopped the bus to openly stare at a girl in a bikini. He was hilarious. We got back and made the swap of the cooler – we had to pay an additional $4 to rent one of theirs. Then we watched a girl complaining to the rental staff that she couldn’t swim, oh yeah, and also, she had just had surgery on her arm and it couldn’t get wet. See what kind of morons toobing brings out? We started transferring refreshments and the guy watching us said we couldn’t have glass bottle on the river. Well, our refreshment supply was cut in half due to that. Bummer. But in the long run, probably for the best. We left our cooler, hopped back on the shuttle and went back to meet Coach and Amanda Hugginkiss.

We headed towards the water, made it past the police and began what would amount to christmas morning if it involved almost no clothing whatsoever and NONE of my relatives. There was very little clothing out on the river and most of it was a welcome sight. A few sights were very unwelcome, but a couple of Strongbows would take the bite off of those particular views. We put in our tubs in the chilly water and set off at the slowest pace I’ve ever travelled. I have sat in bathtubs with a stronger current. It took us a while to actually move more than 30 feet since there were soooo many people. But the water was nice and cool without being frigid.

Amanda Hugginkiss was getting annoyed with these high maintenance girls who kept saying, “I don’t want to get wet” and “quit splashing me” and putting on makeup like idiots. We mocked them most of the trip, since why the heck would you get into a tube in the water if you wanted to stay dry? Morons.

The first thing that happens is you see signs above you saying “weak swimmers get out here”. Uh Oh. Then you see signs for the “tube shoots”. I didn’t know what this meant, but DeliveryBoy and Amanda Hugginkiss just smiled and laughed when Coach and I kept asking about it. We found out. There’s a small dam right after the drop off point. It’s all roped off, so you can’t go over the falls. But it funnels you into a man-made concrete chute about 8 feet wide that launches you like a water slide down into the river below. And you have no hope of any part of you or your things staying dry. Remember those high maintenance toobers? Yeah, they were NOT happy. Nor were their cameras or blackberries. Hahahaha

We popped open the Strongbows and commenced a long afternoon of drinking and floating.


Again, the current was almost nonexistent, so we might have travelled a half mile (I have no idea) in about 4 or 5 hours. During this time, coach tried to hop back into his toob before another tube shoot and immediately flipped over. It was classic. Everyone in the area was cracking up as coach watched his feet go over his own head.


Every time I would go through one of the tube shoots, I would get hung up just before the shoot – NO, I wasn’t bottoming out or anything, just got hung up in some weird back current. Then immediately after the shoot, I would get trapped in the current and pinned to the opposite wall of the place. Everyone else would float past me and head down the river and I would have to paddle like mad to get away from the wall and catch up to the group. Apparently the laws of physics don’t’ apply to me in toobing, the same way they don’t apply to my golf game.

I have sooo many stories to tell and I don’t want to write 14 pages for this post, so I’ll try to slim it down to the highlights:

Coach’s limit is 2.5 Strongbows – he had 3. Then things got hilarious.
DeliveryBoy realized Coach was over his limit when Coach proclaimed “I don’t even care anymore. I’m just openly staring”, which was hilarious because I don’t think his eyes were focusing at that point. Plus by that time, it was a floating sausage fest…
Coach doesn’t even need girls around for him to yell “show us yer boobs”
There were multiple tiny Chihuahuas with male owners out on the water
Coach asked a ton of random small boys with fishing poles if they were fishing for people
Whenever any females mentioned they almost lost their tops, my camera became activated


One of the most hilarious moments was when we passed a group of scrawny rednecks who were completely soused. They were arguing over college football. One of them got all bent out of shape when one of the other rednecks smack-talked University of Texas. They tried to get out of the water to fist fight, but neither of them had enough balance to walk up the grass on the bank. Seriously, these guys wouldn’t be driving anywhere soon. Then, when the one belligerent guy gave up, his friend yelled, “Texas loves boys!” and it started a whole other fight. Best comeback ever. Then while all this was going on, the other rednecks were getting loud with random people floating by. “Who’s your team!? WHO IS YOUR TEAM????!!!! F*%k you!!!” You gotta love Amurka.

We got to the end and tried to get out of the water. Coach had had 3, and was reminding us his limit was 2.5. When Amanda Hugginkiss realized she could totally mess with Coach, she’d pretend to help him out of the water, then push him back in. Classic comedy! It took Coach like 10 minutes to actually make it out of the water.

I'm not sure if you had guy friends who loved to play the game "slap your shirtless friend really hard and leave a mark", but I know we did. We saw a kid with the champion of handprints on his back. Seriously, you could draw a beak and legs on it and use it for a Thanksgiving turkey it was so clearly defined (and HAD to have been painful).

Coach hadn’t peed the whole time on the river, so he ran/staggered towards the portapotties. As it turns out, he went into the stall marked women. When we mocked him about it, he got all loud and yelled “if they didn’t want guys to use them, they wouldn’t put urinals in there!”

On the way back to the rental place to pick up our keys and cooler, I witnessed a lovely discussion about areolas from the girls next to me. They were… ummm… comparing them. Best vacation ever.

Walking back to the car, Coach took a little stumble, but played it off by grabbing DeliveryBoy’s shoulder for support and hugging him as if it were intentional. Then he reminded us for the 93rd time that his limit was 2.5 Strongbows and he had had three.


Top 5 things about toobing on the Comal River
1. Perfect weather for tubing
2. Concentrated boobs
3. The fight about college football
4. Seeing high maintenance toobers shaking water out of their blackberries and looking like drowned rats (whorish drowned rats)
5. Hearing Coach’s limit 93 times – it should have been a drinking game for us, not that we needed the help

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd would have loved this ridiculous trip, even though it would have been too hot, too sunny, too wet, too slow, and too many drunk people
2. These people should learn how to spell tube
3. 16 qts is not a very big cooler
4. We didn’t know about the cooler limit NOR the glass restriction (even though both make sense)
5. I apparently missed a swath of my chest with the sunscreen

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