Time Off, The Return Of Justin, Birth, Float Trip.

I finally had a little time off from work as my boss was out of town. Thursday night started the festivities as Justin returned from Japan. Nick, Justin, Casey and I went out to celebrate (I think.. the weekend is a blur). All I remember is standing on top of my Jeep in front of Nick and Justin’s house, relieving myself over the hood onto the winch….. don’t ask me why.

Friday morning Nick’s older brother became a father and Nick became an uncle. You can read more about the birth of Madison Paige Switzer here on Nick’s website. I went to hang out with Nick in the pool for a bit after I finally woke up. Once again we ended up going out to God knows where and partying some more. This time without Justin. We went to a bar for a bit and then decided to take a detour to a… uhh….. gentlemens club? LOL… that’s such a great name for them. Casey and Nick had never been to one before so we decided to check it out. We met some other friends there and drank a bit until closing time. I stopped by at an old friends house to hang out at a party. I hadn’t seen my friends there for months so it was great to hang out.

We had to get up early Saturday to go on a float trip down the Illinois river. I was awoken by a phone call from Nick at 9:05AM. This was kind of bad since we were supposed to be at Paige’s house at 9. We flew over there as fast as possible and met up with everyone. We grabbed some breakfast on the way out because all 3 of us (Casey, Nick, and I) were in dire need of sustenance. We followed Paige, Casey (a different one), Andy, and I think Zach to Talequah for the float. We met up with several other people who were going on the trip with us. We had 16 in total in 4 boats. We were told there was no cursing on the river and no ‘party-barging’ (where you tie rafts together). We decided to follow the party-barging rule.

After about 45 minutes on the river we came upon a massive party of people from a corporate get-away. There were 75 people in total on 25 or 30 rafts all tied together. It was insane. We decided to join the party after we caught up and enjoyed the fun. It was such a large cluster of boats that we took up the entire width of the river. This ended up making us run into obstacles. I was trapped against a fallen tree at one point and had to fight not to get pulled under. My raft was pinned under the tree and I eventualy managed to push myself closer to the shore and under the tree by ducking down into the bottom of the raft. It was quite an experience. We ran into very little trouble on the river. We had one guy get caught on a log and stuck in the current… He was quickly helped out. We almost got in a fight with a guy… Apparently we were hitting on his daughter….. who was apparently only 13 (didn’t look it). Closer to the end of the trip the young lady Casey in our party had her leg caught on a sunken log in an area with a fairly quick current. She was pulled past the tree and about a foot under the water. I was lucky enough to be close by and heroicly saved her (hehehehehe). Seriously though, it could have been very bad, very easily. There was no one around us at the time and she would not have been spotted easily had it not been witnessed.

We finished the trip and came to shore. We stumbled around cleaning up the boats and trying to find our belongings. We went back to the campsite that Paige, Casey, Andy and Zach got and hung out for a bit. I realized at this point that I was pretty badly sunburned. Casey, Nick, and I drove back to Tulsa that night and went out again with some people we met on the float. We went to Crawpappy’s for a bit then headed to the Brookside Bar for some mini-pitchers. Barnesey and Justin came with us. We had a great time hanging out with Tim, whom we met on the float. After we shut the bar down we went to Village Inn for some breakfast before going home and going to sleep.

It was a great weekend and I had a blast on the float trip. It’s good to have Justin back in town with us and I want to say Congratulation to Ryan, Brenda, and Nick on the birth of Madison Paige Switzer. I spent Sunday and today in bed because I have been unable to move without excruciating pain because of my sunburn. I am doing better tonight and should be fine to return to work tomorrow. Sorry it was such a long update, but I hope you enjoyed reading it.