The Real Jeff Orr: Is a Beer Pirate

On the Fourth of July, Erin and I tubed down the Sacramento River dressed as pirates. Pirates equipped with a shovel. We landed at Beer Can Beach and, in the midst of a crowd of drunken revelers, dug up a treasure chest full of beer. Here is the story of how this came about.

Last year I took a tubing trip with Jon, Katie and Ali. On the trip, Katie told a story about some people who had buried beer at Beer Can Beach and had dug it up the next day while dressed as pirates. I thought that this sounded like a really fun idea and started thinking about trying it on my own. A few months ago, Erin and I were coming up with a list of things to do this summer. I mentioned the pirate adventure and she thought that it sounded like an awesome idea. After looking at a calendar, we decided that the Fourth of July would be a perfect day for it because it was on a Sunday and there would be a lot of people on the beach.

I feel like I need to explain Beer Can Beach. It's actually an island in the Sacramento River, kind of just a glorified sand bar. It takes about 45 minutes to get to it from the start of a tubing trip and it is about 5 minutes from the landing where most people end their trip. Erin and I discussed the logistics of getting everything to the island and we decided that it would be possible to start at the landing downriver from Beer Can Beach and go up-river to bury the treasure. We would just need to swim across a 50 foot wide lagoon, then the water would be shallow and slow enough for us to wade up to the beach.

The day before the Fourth we got all of our supplies ready. We went shopping and bought some eye-patches and bandannas from a party store. We also picked up a pirate flag and an American flag to decorate our tubes with. There's an old ice-chest at our house that we decided to make our treasure chest. The top was spray painted black with a big white skull and cross bones and the inside of the chest was painted gold. After filling the ice-chest with ice and cheap beer (Milwaukee's Best) we were ready to go and bury our treasure. It was 9:30pm.

We got to the landing with a raft, ice-chest, two shovels, a flash light and a headlamp. Even though it was 9:30 at night, the temperature was still in the mid 80s. It was a dark moonless night when we loaded the ice-chest and shovels in the raft and swam it across the lagoon. The water was cold but not too bad. Getting to the island wasn't too difficult. We left the raft at the end and started to carry the ice-chest and shovels towards the beginning of the island, where everybody usually congregates. We very quickly realized that Beer Can Beach is a lot longer and more heavily overgrown than we had thought. Rather than weave through endless bushes, we decided to wade up the six inch deep stream for a while.

All this time Erin and I felt like we had walked into a horror movie. Our only sources of light was a flashlight and my headlamp. It's kind of amazing how this lowers your depth perception and creates some optical illusions. Dead trees start to look like people standing on the shore watching you. At one point I saw a pair of eyes low to the ground, staring back at us from the opposite bank about 40 feet away; I decided not to tell Erin about it.

Erin and I finally made it to the spot where we wanted to bury the treasure. We chose a spot that we thought we could easily remember the next day. After each grabbing a beer from the ice-chest, we got to work digging.

This. Took. Forever.

Beer Can Beach is about half small rocks (ranging in size from pebbles to half-bricks) and half hard-packed sand. The digging was hard work, but we were so exhilarated from the journey there that we dug with a frenzy. At first it looked like we were making quick progress. We checked the size of our hole by placing the ice-chest in it and found that we were already “about half-way there.” Around this time the sand we were digging out started to get wet and heavy. The hole also reached that awkward depth where you can't really get good leverage on the shovel. After checking the depth a few more times, we decided that we had done a good enough job and buried the sucker. Once it was buried it looked painfully obvious to us that something was buried there because the ground looked wet and disturbed. There wasn't really anything we could do but hope the sand dried...and remind ourselves that nobody would be expecting anything to be buried in the first place.

The trip back to the car was much easier. We found a path to the other side of the island (that we had somehow missed on the way up) and Erin and I each got in the raft to make our way to the landing. While on our way back downriver there was a large splash about 15 feet in front of us. We were about 50-50 on whether it was a fish, or some psycho hiding in the bushes on shore messing with us.

It was around 11:30 pm by the time we made it home, thankful that we hadn't become the inspiration for Deliverance 2. We had been gone about 2 hours.

On the Fourth of July, Erin and I each dressed up as pirates, with an American twist. I had an American flag pattern bandanna and Erin had painted an American flag on my chest. Erin was similarly decorated. We went tubing with Jon, a couple of other roommates, and a few hundred other strangers. The weather was perfect for tubing and the trip down river was a lot of fun. The island was pretty packed with people when we arrived. Erin and I both stormed the beach with shovel and foam sword in hand screaming, “Land ho!”

I rushed to the place where we had buried the treasure and our fears from the night before were vanquished. The sand had dried and it looked just like any other stretch of beach as I started to dig. At this point we were attracting a pretty good sized crowd of people, people whose faces wore a mixed expression on surprise, confusion and excitement. People started asking us questions, we started answering succinctly.

“Why are you digging?”
“Treasure.”

“How do you know there's treasure there?”
“Pirate instinct.”

“Can I help?”
“Sure.”

We hit the top of the chest pretty quickly, much to the excitement of the crowd. After clearing out most of the sand with the shovel we just started using our hands to dig around the sides of the chest. A few strangers lent a hand. Finally, enough dirt was cleared off and the chest was opened with a cheer all around. I reached in, grabbed the handle of whiskey we had placed in the chest, and took a victory swig. Then a few onlookers swooped in a grabbed some beer for themselves, before Erin had the presence of mind to close the ice-chest. One of the guys who helped us asked us what his share of the booty was, he was already holding three of our beers; I told him he was already holding it. Then we relaxed for a while and drank our spoils.

It was a great adventure that I wouldn't mind doing again if we could get more people involved. I'm really glad that Erin is willing to do silly things like this with me, even if it is just the two of us. Next time, I'll try to remember my camera.