I know, it was easily the most shockingly nasty thing about the entire game. I didn't reload but I DID honour his memory by stealing his pistol and shooting people in the face with it.
The following is a cautionary tale entitled "The boy who swam the colorado and got his arse handed to him"
If you decide to experiment by swimming the colorado river, come loaded for bear. Actually fuck bear, come loaded for tank division. Decided to give it a bash just to explore, lets just say I was outnumbered. I started at the southern most section of the river and swam across after taking down half a dozen lakelurks (if you've not seen them yet, they're basically the mirelurk king from F3). I cross the river and kill another lurk as I come up the hill, I crest the hill and see what must be a dozen more at least. I fight my way through them and find a small cave with a corpse and 2 duffelbags full of miscellaneous crap. The best loot I got was a stealthboy, whee! At least the lurks are 50xp each and I got to play with the archimedes weapon which was fun.
I beat them and cruise north along the river, nothing of interest for ages and I'm getting discouraged when I see a way up to a clearing. Happy to see something new and maybe find some cool stuff I run up the hill only pausing when I detect an enemy. Uh oh, its a deathclaw, wait there's 3 other pips on the radar, fuck they're ALL deathclaws! Engaging in a tactical fighting withdrawl which involved screaming like a little girl and shooting HE grenades everywhere, I find one important thing, deathclaws are afraid of the water! "Aha," the weasely, rimmer-esque part of my brain says "there's an exploit just waiting to be used, revenge shall be mine in carefully planned stages!" It takes a lot of my ammo (powder charges are useless agasint deathclaws, its like throwing a water balloon against a tank) and a short period where one deathclaw was stuck in geometry but I manage to lure them all down and kill them. HAHAHA! Victory is mine! I climb the hill in triumph ready to plant my flag on mount deathclaw but see 2 more off in the distance, they've not seen me yet so I whip out the archimedes gun and give them a severe case of sunburn which unfortunately doesn't quite kill them but they were on the edge of the blast and my plasma pistol finishes the job.
It looks like the clearing won't go on for much longer so I decide not to worry about the critically low state of my ammo, I've got enough for one or two more deathclaws if I'm careful. I move towards a rocky outcrop and spot another deathclaw, I just stop myself shooting it when I realise its dead, no idea why but hey, its a tough wasteland. Figuring the area is safe at least from THAT deathclaw, I mount the rocky outcrop to get a look at the next area. "Oh bollocks, a deathclaw. A black deathclaw. A black mother deathclaw. Oh shit, a grey deathclaw, a grey alpha male deathclaw. Oh fuck, another black mother deathclaw! Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit 8 brown adult deathclaaaaagggghhhhh they're ripping me apart!"
