245 - party cove

after the steamboat festival we headed back down river to a place which is deemed "party cove." however, we hit a couple of snags along the way.

you may know that you need to go through locks on the river. well, one thing you do not want to do is get behind a barge as they take hours to go through and you have to wait for them. well, as bad luck would have it, a chair flew off our deck and we had to go back and get it. in the meantime, a barge had called into the lock before us. therefore, we had to watch them cruise by and delay us a couple hours.

i guess our luck had completely run out, b/c by the time we made it down to "party cove" the clouds started to roll in. most people were taking off, but we were too far away from home base, so we docked in on shore and waited out the rain. the rain came hard and fast and was gone before you knew it, only nobody was left in "party cove."

we decided to make a day of it and head back get showered up and hit the "historic" city of lacrosse. is it just me, or is every city "historic" or at least have a "historic" district.

well, their "historic" district consisted mainly of bars, so it led to some good times. i let the pictures speak for themselves, but not before mentioning the peters tried to ditch his own bachelor party to go home and sleep. wimp.

246-winona, mn

bachelor party: day 2

first order of business was to get some hard liquor. i like beer and all (not really), but i can't drink it straight for a whole weekend. i like my drinks stiff. luckily conlu was there, if anybody knows how much liquor to buy for a party, it's him.

today we headed up north (up river). that's typically the plan since you want to make sure you can cruise back down river to get the boat back on time.

up and up we went, all the to winona wisconsin! you wouldn't think much would be going on up there, but we lucked out as it was steamboat days. so we just pulled right up and docked our oversized boat and went to the party right on the river. apparently, this is the weekend where all the college kids come back and party. st. mary's, winona state and a junior college are all located there.

let's just say the influx of college girls boded well for a bachelor party...on to day 3...

however, i would be remissed if i didn't mention the most exciting thing of the whole day:

247-leaving for the mississippi

day 1 of peter's bachelor party

i had never been on the mississippi river in my life and now i will be on it for the second time in less than a month.

about ten of us got together and chipped in to get a boat to cruise up and down the river. we left thursday night to make sure to get a good start on the long weekend. i cruised the 5+hour trip with warth and conlu and it immediately felt like the spring break trip of 2000...all we needed was some spearhead playing. luckily, we weren't doing what we did on that trip we got pulled over for speeding and a broken headlight. luckily we weren't really speeding and the cop just let us go (he obviously was just bored on his shift).

i didn't know what to expect when we got there, but this boat was no joke. it was bigger than most people's three flat apartments with 6 sleeping areas, a full kitchen and two bathrooms - not to mention the hot tub, bar and two gas grills!

we got in late and the first night was kegs and poker (what else?!?). tomorrow we get up and learn how to control this beast.

248 - duck snorts romp 16-5

the best thing about playing for the snorts is the weekly recap from the skip:

Snorts,

I was asked last night before the game to say a few words to pump the boys
up... I declined. I declined because we have a special group here, guys
that are really motivated to win and play well for their teammates. For
example, I received a text message from Dave Anderson last night, who is out
of town on business, asking how the Snorts did. There's a guy who lives for
this stuff.

Now, down to the recap. What a sweet performance all the way around last
night in a 16-5 victory. Let me start by saying that we just defeated the
undefeated first place team. It feels good. And we did it with only 9 guys
for 3 innings. At one point I heard their bench say, "dude, they've only
got three guys in the outfield, come on!" There was plenty of offense
again, which was quite an accomplishment considering that guy was probably
the best pitcher we've faced. Tommy 29 hit what was probably the first
legitimate no doubter HR of the year with a towering bomb to left. Earlier
Tyler had his stick going with a line shot that got through the outfield for
a homerun. Tyler and Phil were big difference makers last night with 4 RBIs
apiece. I just have to also mention that our leadoff hitter, Glow, went 1-1
last night with 3 walks... talk about a table setter.

What can you say about the D? There were no glaring mistakes and again I
heard the opposing bench talking about the arms in the outfield. No one
wants to take an extra base from the Snorts patrolling the grass. Plays of
the game would definitely have to include a beautiful backhanded, leaping
stab by Glowacki at short to rob the opposition of a sure double... sweet
grab! There was also a textbook relay home on a jack to left. The relay
came in perfectly with Justin blocking the plate like and All Star and
applying a sweeping tag to deny Chicago Trading a 3 run homer.

Thanks again to Justin for helping out and being a rock behind the dish last
night as well as adding some offense. Great work team, the stats look sick
they're so good. Check them out and let me know if there are any mistakes.
Game next week is at 7:30pm so let me know if you can't make it.

-Skipper

wait, where's my name...i guess 3-for-5 on this team doesn't cut it

249-cubs vs. astros

i can barely stand to watch the cubs and more, but when you buy the tickets in february...

plus, it's a good chance to reinitiate spivey to the wrigley culture. no more dodger dogs for you my friend, just losing baseball.

and sean marshall did not disappoint. good inning, bad inning, good inning, bad inning. and of course the cubs' bats were dormant in a 9-2 loss.

at least we got a kick out of the guys behind us who told us about all the things 'that didn't suck' like hanging out with ex-nebraska football players on rooftops. sweet. they also are apparently attracted to overweight bleach blond women with big boobs making one man comment "bulldog's about to break his chain!" classic.

250-youtube

i like to use google products for most things. after all, gmail was one of the coolest things to happen to the internet if you ask me. i mean, you can chat within your email. pretty cool, especially since most companies filter out instant messaging programs. also, the ability to search your email quickly had yahoo and hotmail scrambling to come out with competitive products. and, above all they were the first to offer 1gb of storage and it's still growing.

however, i think they wimped out when it came to video. first it takes a couple of days to review. and if it is anything that may be copyrighted, it is not allowed. what ever happened to the free internet. i guess copyright infringement is sort of a big deal, but all i wanted to do was show clips of how bad the cubs were. (you have to see it to believe it, trust me.) good thing for youtube. they claim to check for copyright stuff, but they pretty much leave it up to you to decide and the copyright holder to complain. go youtube.

my username is bernok, if you ever want to see any of my clips.

251-old town/wells street art fair

i didn't make it down to the wells street or old town art fairs this year. i don't know why. most people love it along with all the other chicago street fairs. this fair just seems to be one where people go to be seen, and some days that just ain't my style. of course, the watching part can be fun.

some people go for the art, some people go to be seen, missy likes to go for the corn on the cob: