Toobing season is here, and with it, the smell of Banana Boat-basted skin, slow-roasting asphalt and fifty hot, muddy bodies crammed in an old school bus. Wait, what’s that? Your summer smells like a $300 electricity bill and a fresh Netflix DVD? Friend, you’re doing it wrong. Just because you’ve got a job, a car payment and a vaguely sentient animal-and-or-child who relies on you for sustenance doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the greatest of all Texas summer activities. Toobing is not just for college kids, y’all.

Of course, you can’t just catch the Kappa Whatsit bus out to New Braunfels any more, at least, not without robbing a drama-filled cradle. No, you’ve got to toob like the grown-ass person you are. Here’s how.

Shotgun No More

We’re not saying you can’t shotgun a Lone Star faster and with more style than some river-floating newbie. We’re not saying that. We’re saying you shouldn’t, because shotgunning is for kids, and flasks of whiskey are for adults. If you need a quick drunk on the river—and let’s face it, with the water levels this low, it helps to be a little bit blitzed early on—go for some Johnnie or Jack. Added advantage: that grown-up pudge is easier to hide when you’re not chock full of brew.

Don’t Bring Your Whole Facebook

Time was, friendship was about quantity, rather than quality. That time has past. Twenty-five giggling twenty-one-year-olds tied together down at Don’s Fish Camp says “We’re all gonna indiscriminately make out with each other later.” Twenty-five giggling thirty-one-year-olds tied together says “Who’d like to open the meeting in prayer?”

Quit Trying To Out-Awesome The Sun

Remember when you were impervious to all manner of environmental threats? When you told people you just kind of barely burned before turning almost instantaneously into a sun-kissed bronze deity? When applying aloe was purely an intellectual exercise? Now that you know a co-payment is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the dermatologist, put on your SPF-70 every 40 minutes and keep a close eye on that suspicious mole.

Designate A Driver

Driving drunk at any age is stupid, but driving drunk when you’re old enough to already be on probation for having driven drunk when you were 22 is especially stupid. At your age, chances are somebody’s wife is pregnant and has at least to maintain a modicum of sobriety—buy her whatever she wants in exchange for getting her to pick you up at the river, and shut the front door when it comes to making cracks about those elastic-waisted pants.

Leave No Trace

Now that you’ve been dwelling God’s/the Goddess’/the flying spaghetti monster’s green Earth for some time, we hope you’ve developed a little appreciation for keeping the joint looking nice. Bring an extra mesh trash bag to scoop up your empties and—wait for it—the empties of other people. Some folks actually were raised in a barn (this is Texas, remember) and don’t know that trash doesn’t magically disappear once they stop looking at it. No, it’s not your problem, except that it actually is your problem, because it’s everybody’s problem. Clean ‘er up.