This weekend we travelled a lot.
We started out by heading to Chicago on the way to Alpine Valley for 2 days of DMB. On the route up, we tried to take a shortcut from I-57 to I-55. Unfortunately, the bridge was out and we ended driving through all sorts of weird non-marked roads. We did make it to I-55 and finally up to Tony’s house. Friday we stayed at Tony and Vanessa’s apartment. We stayed up late and played cribbage. We played 3 way and I won 2 out of the 3 games. The three people playing were Dave, Tony, and me.
Saturday we got up and at 11 we took off to meet Josh and Andrea at Josh’s old apartment in Wheeling. Unfortunately, Josh forgot his tickets and had to go back to get them. So, we just headed to the hotel near Milwaukee. Josh caught up to us there and we headed to tailgate and watch the first night of the concert. On the route over, we listened to the broadcast of the space shuttle launch. With just minutes left, they scrubbed the launch and decided to try again Sunday. Anyways, back at the concert we started drinking, Dave beat me in a very windy game of cribbage. The concert was good. We got four encore songs and I drank a ton of beer. Once out of the concert, we set up again and waitted for the crowds to thin out. I was really drunk (not the only one though). I decided to pour beer on Andrew’s sock. I was then smacked across the face with a beer soaked sock. It was funny. We discovered back at the hotel that the room we stayed in (we stayed in the 2 room suite the first night) did not have good airflow. Sunday morning it was extremely hot.
Sunday, we got up late. Went and got food at the restaurant. We waitted around for a little while and found out the shuttle launch was delayed again. We went a tailgated again (Tony and Vanessa didn’t stay the second day). I beat Dave in cribbage and partnered with him to defeat two other teams in bags. Sunday was much less windy. I drank a lot less Sunday (I had to drive back to the hotel that night). After tailgating, we headed to the concert. We set up in about the same place. Sunday nights concert was even better than the first night. It was really good. Alpine Valley is a really cool place to see a concert. There were about 30,000 people each night. Looking out over the crowd was really cool. We stayed late again to let the crowd thin out. We got back to the hotel about 2 AM Monday morning.
Monday we got up around 8:30 got ready and headed to Oak Run. We got there around 1 in the afternoon. We went out on the boat and rode the new tube with my cousins. It started rainning so we headed back to the house and waitted the storm out. It passed over relatively quickly. We decided since the rain got people off the lake to try some skiing. We went back out on the boat and I took a turn skiing. Then Todd went skiing. Then Crissy went skiing. After that I was going to try again. I got into the water and was getting ready and Jeff turned the boat off, because it sounded funny. Todd opened the engine compartment and found a fire. I swam back to the boat and pulled myself on. The girls flagged down a lady on a Seadoo for help. Todd and Jeff were looking for an extinguisher. The lady started fiving us her fire extinguisher and Crissy found ours and it was passed back to me. I put the fire out and Jeff headed to their place to get their boat to pull our boat back. Todd and I looked at the fire and decided that it was an electrical fire and told Crissy and Kim to shut off the battery. We had to tell them where it was and we could tell that the two red hot wires were shorted, since they instantly started cooling off when the battery was shut off. My dad looked at it and said that was where the alternater was located. Which is odd since there was already a recall that had been fixed for that.
So today, we got up around 10 AM and got ready to pull the boat to the lift. There wasn’t a whole lot of action and we managed to get it up on the trailer and pulled out. We had lunch and watched the space shuttle take off. It was pretty neat to watch. I’m glad they postponed it to a time that I could actually watch it on television. The trip home involved a stop in Peoria to pick up the dogs and back home.
It was a fun weekend. But it was long and pretty exciting. And involved a lot of driving. Well, I’m tired, so I’ll type again later. Oh, and congratulations if you actually read this far.