We just couldn't resist...

According to my last post, the Nautical Thugz were planning to take the weekend off from boating and catch up on some house chores. Well, all those plans went south when Cam and I each put in a hard day of labor on Saturday. Saturday was wonderful and at about 2pm...5 or so hours into deck/fence work...I thought to myself, "What the h^ll am I doing? Why are we not on the boat?" Anyway, later on after a good night of drinking, Cameron and I both determine that it would be in our best interest to hit the river on Sunday and enjoy the sun. And so we hit the river on Sunday, and enjoyment was had.

Cameron decided he'd take the family truckster out and myself, Colleen, Berk and Mindy tagged along for the ride. Yes...the wife and I left the Tahoe at home and mooched off of Cameron. But, to make up for it, I did buy him a big soda at QT and gave him one of my fantastic Ricochet energy drinks! The day was relaxing. We first cruised up towards Winfield and anchor in a cove for a few hours and threw the frisbee. Later, we headed down to Iowa Island and saw an abundance of boats filling up the beach. We ended up staying away from most of the crowd and just hit the next sandbar. We stayed there the rest of the day until the cooler ran empty.

During our stay on that sandbar, we did get to converse with a couple other 'What's up on the River" chatters. As we all say, the infamous Stl_Boater_Man himself, Rob, anchored up for a few cold ones and shared some good stories from the past couple weeks. He was even generous enough to provide me with a cigar to add to the blissful day! It turned out that we were also beached next to JBonz 67 (Jesse). He's new to the posting forum, but I'm sure he'll become known to all as well. He had some "not-so-good" stories from last weeked, but was still in good spirits to enjoy the day with his family.

Well, as I said earlier, once the cooler ran dry (we even had to drink some girlie fufu drinks because the beer was gone!) we headed back to Two Branch to trailer the boat. The day was a success and I wish all of them turned out like that. Until next time...See you on the river.

Still no pictures...

My laziness has become extreme lately. I really don't feel like downloading the pictures onto the computer so for now...still no picture. Well, this weekend is turning out to be a boatless weekend. With the price of gas on the rise and upcoming lake trips we have, its hard for me to accept spending $150 for a tank of gas in the boat right now. This weekend will probably be filled with house chores that have already been put off from previous boating. On the bright side, we do have a pool so I'll still have a way to cool off during the day. This weekend can also be spend relaxing. The following weekends are booked with plans so we'll probably be busy for the next month or so...

July 22/23- Do some house chores and relax.
July 29/30- Lake of the Ozarks trip with the wife and in-laws
Aug 5/6- The wife's 10 year high school reunion and such.
Aug 12/13- Friends weekend down at Table Rock Lake
Aug 19/20- Jamaica Daze River Bash.

New energy drink. Good for boating...

I was up in Wisconsin (outskirts of Milwaukee) for a wedding this past weekend and found a new energy drink. The drink is GREAT! and is similar to Red Bull, however, it contains alcohol..6% by volume. The price is good...about 50 cents a can (so I stocked up on 4 boxes of it), and it seems to be a good drink to start off a day of boating...to get you up and moving and ready for steady beer drinking. The drink is called Ricochet. It's a private label drink produced by Albertson's grocery stores. Below is a picture of the drink and a small bio I copied from Bottlewatch.com back in January of this year...



Ricochet is a new alcoholic energy drink produced by Albertsons grocery stores.The citrus-flavored beverage, with 6 percent alcohol by volume, combines Siberian ginseng, guarana, and caffeine, to produce an energized drunken stupor. Albertson's is the first retailer to market its own private labeled alcoholic energy drink.Packaged in a sleek, eye-catching red and gold, 8.4 fl. oz slim-line can, Ricohet is available exclusively at over 2,000 licensed Albertsons and Albertsons banner stores (Jewel-Osco, Sav-on drugs, Osco Drug, Shaw's and Express Stores) across the country this month.

Back to the being in Wisconsin part. I wish I had brought the boat with me. I had no idea that the wedding was going to be at Concordia University- Wisconsin. It turns out that the University sits on Lake Michigan and our hotel was only 20 minutes away! I could have enjoyed Saturday morning cruising the lake before the wedding. After all, I was not part of the wedding so no one would have missed me if I had just happened to run late or not show up to it at all.

Lazy...

I haven't gotten around to downloading the camera pictures from the weekend. Too lazy I guess. I'll probably get around to it sometime this weekend so check the blog out next week for some pictures. Tomorrow's blog will probably be much of this same babbling. I've really got nothing on my mind now so its difficult finding what to say. Anyway, checkout Cam's blog (altonpool.blogspot.com) to get a story on the happenings over the weekend. Colleen and I went with her parents down to Kentucky on Friday night to see my parents again. We came back on Sunday and you can read on his blog how the rest of the weekend filtered out. We ended up spending Tuesday night at Cam's house sitting in the driveway and watching him and his neighbors shoot off about $1000 worth of fireworks.

More email hilarity?...

With all of our group's passion for being nautical and in the process of some of us getting new boats this year, Tom and Stephanie have begun to think more seriously about purchasing their own boat. They want to have the freedom to go out on their own, enjoy some quality time together, and be able to bring their dogs with them. In this process, they have initiated the debate of "what type of boat to get". Should they get a bowrider, cuddy, deckboat, jon boat, or even a performance ski/wakeboard boat? We don't know...but so far, it appears the leading contender is the performance ski/wakeboard boat. Back at the boat show in January, Tom feasted his eyes on the spacious, not overly expensive Moomba Mobius LSV and they've been leaning towards it ever since. Not a bad choice, however, to add to the confusion of Tom's decision is the fact that he does NOT wakeboard. Well, he can get up on one (for a short time), but I would consider that more "survival from faceplanting" than "wakeboarding". Now, Stephanie can wakeboard, nothing in terms of fakeys or flips, but would get SOME use of the boat's facilities. One day, during some random friendly banter between Tom, Cameron, and myself, I decided to create some dialogue that Tom would encounter if he were to purchased said Mobius.
You gotta know Tom to really enjoy the comedy, but it's still good...

A stranger at the marina: Nice boat!
Tom: Thanks...just got her this spring.
Stranger: What kind of engine you got in that?
Tom: Ah...an Indmar 350. Runs great.
Stranger: I bet you get some great wake off that.
Tom: I wouldn't know....I still haven't gotten up yet.
Stranger: WHat?
Tom: Yeah, I've only be doing this for a couple years and have only been able to get out of the water once, and that was only for a couple seconds.
Stranger: Ok....keep practicing I guess...
Tom: It's hard man, you try it. It hurts my rotar-cuff, but my fiance/wife does good.
Stranger: At least someone gets something out of it.
Tom: Hey...I love it. It's got this spot under the seat for my beer cooler, and listen to this horn...**sounds like a barge horn***...that's some horn...not like my friend's family truckster
Stranger: Anything else you like.
Tom: uh...I can stand in the water and get stuff out of the front area since there's no seat there. That's cool too.
Stranger: I see.
Tom: Gotta go, my buddies just showed up. The 3 of us are going to slowly cruise by trailer parks and camp sites with my waketower speakers/subs blaring and yell for the b^tchs...you wanna join us? There's room for 16.
Stranger: Can I wakeboard on it then?
Tom: Uh...I don't have a wakeboard.
Stranger: WHAT! No wakeboard?
Tom: I just borrow my buddy's. They're expensive and I already spent a buttload on this boat.
Stranger: Ok then...nice talking to you. Enjoy your glorified pontoon boat!
Tom: I will...I will. Now...where should I put this extra beer? Ah...in one of these stupid compartments that's suppose to hold the wakeboards. Aces!