So, it's only a week away, and you're quivering with antici...pation. You've gotten into paddling shape, hiking shape, you've got an assortment of brand-new Bill's Bag, Tevas, and Sun Hat, to go with your Ratty old boat, PFD, and helmet. You've bought a lifetime supply of sunscreen and you've mortgaged your house to buy the kewlest new micro-digital camera with enough memory to power NASA's next three robotic missions to Mars.
Are you ready?
There are other aspects to "being in shape." The trip will go more smoothly, and be more fun, if you do as much as you can to acclimatize yourself to the Canyon experience before going. For that, I offer up a list of Things to Do in the last week:

1. Start cutting back on your drinking. Hance Rapid is no place to be getting the DT's.
2. If you must have a beer, have a friend or Significant Other dole it out to you. (S)he must make you do a trick for your beer, as if you're a trained seal. The beer should be canned, either Coors Lite or some other Atkins-diet horror like Miller skankwater. No Sam Adams or Pete's Wicked Ale for you!
3. Before dressing in the morning, "shake out" your clothing to be sure it's free of scorpions and rattlesnakes.
4. Go two days before changing your underwear. (You can always “refresh” your underwear by turning it inside-out.) Toward the end of the week, work up to four days. (Hope you didn't pack your nose plugs away yet!) When you shower, make it less than 45 seconds and cold. Don't wash your hair, and don't even think of changing your shirt.
5. To simulate the "feel" of sunscreen, spread a cup of Crisco all over your body every day. Then go sit in your car in the sun, with the windows closed, for four hours a day. To simulate rolling in the river, periodically dunk your head in a vat of ice water.
6. Get a bucket of sand. About a gallon should do. Apportion it as follows:
--- 1 cup in your shoes.
--- 1 cup in your underwear (yes, the same underwear that's getting more and more solidified during the week).
--- 2 cups in your mashed potatoes at dinnertime.
--- the rest should be liberally sprinkled in your sheets and blankets.
7. Go out to your yard or garden and get a few mugs of topsoil. With each carafe of coffee you brew, put a mug of soil into the mix.
8. Get one of those portable toilets (the kind one would use when convalescing), set it in the front yard, and then wave at the passing automobiles while you sit on the Throne. A passing transit bus would be especially apropos, since that would more closely represent the canyon experience.

By following these small butt essential steps, you'll be fairly ready, butt nothing can prepare you for the Compleat Experience. The unforseen can and will take place. My advice is that you go with the flow. Even when a raven takes off with the battery you were just about to put into your depleted headlamp, take heart. Remember that Powell and his boyz didn't have modern conveniences like sunscreen; the latest model of Teva sandals with toe guards, desert-rated closure systems, and Da-Glo colors; and freeze-dried felafel mix...and more than 50% of them made it out alive, so the odds are probably with you.