Rowing Arnold Schwarzenegger

During the slow winter months between river seasons, I worked at the ARTA office in Oakland booking reservations. One day I got a call to book a trip for an “Arnold Schwarzenegger”. As it turned out, my friend and fellow guide Jann Dorman and I had just been to see a movie called Pumping Iron, a documentary about body builders, in particular one from Austria who had claimed the title of Mr. Universe six consecutive times. How many people with that name could there be? As we pondered this likelihood, I got another call from this man’s agent, contesting a clause in our standard trip waiver allowing ARTA to use any photographs of our customers in their marketing materials. The agent claimed that his client made a living selling photographs of himself and they would not agree to this clause. Confirmed! It was him! Jann and I made sure we were scheduled to work this trip.

Arnold brought a small group of fellow body builders and a current girlfriend on the trip. He was charming, funny and excited to float the Stanislaus River, one of California’s primo whitewater rafting spots before the New Melones Dam brought the fun to a crushing end. He was also large. And strong. Did I mention he was Mr. Universe?

A backstory here is pretty funny: the ARTA guides determined that an all-female crew would probably be interesting to have on the trip. At the last minute they needed one more guide and got Tom Silva.

Turns out Arnie was really great and everybody loved him. In our paddle boat, Arnold was on one side of the raft and everyone else paddled on the opposite side. He still managed to turn the boat with a single stroke, at which point everyone would exclaim “Arnold!” and he would look innocent and say “What?” He joked around a lot – especially about himself – and even got on the left side of the paddle raft while everyone else was on the right when they came down to the laughing, gawking crowds at Rose Creek.

He quoted schticks from Saturday Night Live regularly and seemed to enjoy himself immensely. When they hiked up the tilted slabs at Rose Creek, he was crab walking. When asked why, he said in his accent “I make my living from my beautiful body. I cannot let it be bruised!” Later, at lunch Tommy had trouble opening a jar of Claussen pickles.  I decided to ask Arnold to open it.  He got up, flexed conspicuously, got that muscle look, took the jar, walked over and tapped the lid on a rock, and said while opening it “ My mamma taught me that it’s easier if you hit the lid first!”

Once we had served lunch to our peeps, Jann, Tommy and I went down to the boats and, hidden out of sight, entertained ourselves doing pose-offs like we had seen the body builders doing in the movie. We cracked ourselves up, especially since Tommy was a scrawny little teenager trying to look buff.

At camp at the end of the evening, and after being entertained by more SNL sketches, we all headed to bed. Before separating, Arnold kissed me on the cheek, a flirty little gesture not lost on the glaring girlfriend.

At take-out we got ready for a group photo and at the last second, Arnold scooped me up on his gigantic bicep and lifted me high in the air. That is the photo (above) he sent me after the trip, along with his book, signed, a lovely letter, and a series of pictures of Jann, Tommy and myself doing our pose-offs by the boat.

After our trip, Arnold went on to become the Terminator, the Governator, (and the unfaithful husband) and a regular guest on SNL.