Jim Griffin

Jim Griffin
Sex	M

Jim Griffin is one of the boatmen with Grand Canyon Rafters and a friend of Scooter and Crystal Chladek. He was on a trip in spring of 2000 with Scooter, Crystal, and Al, having signed on to get some oar experience as an unpaid swamper. The two girls got to know him better on a special Park Service trip in March 2001, a trip to improve boatmen's background on the Canyon. When Al Buck came up short one boatman at the last minute for a trip in April, Scooter suggested he could fill in.^CF4

Because GCR runs motor rigs down the Canyon in a week, they pass Canyon Tours rafts frequently. This often gives boatmen a few minutes to talk. Jim is first described as "a lanky guy with a huge white cowboy hat was leaning back on a seat backrest near the back of the raft" ^CF7 He has only been running with GCR about as long as Scooter has been with Canyon Tours, implying a start around 1999.

Jim and Scooter meet in 2000, and they start spending weekends together in 2001 when their schedules match up, which isn't very often. Scooter wishes that they could be together more of the time and is pleasantly surprised^RR57 when Al and the owner of GCR arrange a personnel swap that solves two problems: Jerry switches to GCR to allow him more time with Kelly, his girlfriend and Jim comes from GCR to become an assistant trip leader for Canyon Tours.

On November 24, 2001, he and Scooter are married by Pastor Jordan at Lee's Ferry, just seconds after the wedding of Crystal and Noah Whittaker. He and Scooter spend their honeymoon and first few months of the off-season in Mexico where Dave and Mary Wells usually stay. They sailed with other rafters and Randy Clark around the Bahamas on the Felicity Ann in January 2002.^PE32