Since April 24, I have felt the euphoria, the jet-lag, the curiosity and the fatigue that I'd presume contestants on CBS's Amazing Race feel. Over the last 30 days, I've swam with sea turtles in Maui, avoided kidnappers in Colombia, and toured Victoria, British Columbia with my wife cycling beside me and my two daughters screaming, and sometimes sleeping behind me in the bike trailer.
Victoria wasn't supposed to be the final leg of this Amazing Race. It was supposed to end with a one-day sprint down 110 miles of Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon. I had the permit. The waterproof sleeping bags from Sierra Designs and the air-supported bivy from Nemo. I had my old teammates of  exploration—Tao Berman and my brother Josh. And they had both the time and motivation for the 11-hour drive and the $220-shuttle and the 110-mile paddle.
I had drybags, already full with a Coleman stove, camping  food from Trader Joe's. I had the company Subaru Forester; plenty of fleece the Spot satellite tracker and Allen two-way communicators.
What I didn't have was the actual permit. All I had, according to cover sheet of the package sent to me by the Salmon-Challis Ranger District, was a reservation that would transform into an actual permit only if I had paid the $4 per person per day fee three business days in advance. I also had to prove my compliance with the district's list of necessities—something to poop in, a shovel, fire pan, etc.
It said it right there, as my brother demonstrated, in black and white, red print, bold print, large print, normal print.
Somehow, I hadn't seen it.
I can make all the excuses I want—and believe me, I tried. I was too busy with traveling to open the package and when I wasn't busy, I was too tired. I had, in fact, actually opened it once, but my drooping eyes didn't pick up on anything urgent under the living room's gentle incandescent light. I had asked my wife to take a look at the package's contents while I was in Colombia, but she didn't. My good friend, whose put-on date preceded ours by just two days, had earned his permit through the same cancellation program that I did, but he said there was no need to do anything.
"You've got the permit, bud," he assured me.
The last excuse was, I felt, the best: The lady at the ranger district told me everything was taken care of.
Well, it wasn't.
I could use all these excuses and when my brother, who just finished medical school and thus earned this one three-day weekend to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, was staring at me with an expression that says: "I'm trying to be the bigger person here, but you're making it really, really freakin' hard," my brain was scanning for any possible excuse.
But the truth is the only reason we didn't put on the Middle Fork on May 23 was me. I didn't read the contents of the package. I assumed. I shirked. And I lost.
Fortunately, we were only a minute into our drive when I remembered that I had forgotten the  manilla envelope back at our house. And fortunately, we were able to salvage what turned out to be a beautiful Memorial Day weekend.
But just imagine if the assumption I had made wasn't about a permit. What if it was about the need for a throw rope. Or the knowledge of a basic rescue technique.