Heather and I survived another year at Frosty Keg Float and would probably have to mark this one down as the worst one we’ve ever attended. It was a pretty bum deal to spend the last 5 months planning and working to make sure this years event went smooth and then have it ruined in a matter of minutes by some bored officer. We headed down to Tahlequah on Friday afternoon to start setting up the registration booth, put some finishing touches on the stage and to get our campsite setup. We then spent most of Friday getting about half of the 350 people who attended registered for Saturday’s float trip. Around eight that evening we shut down registration cooked up some burgers and then sat down to listen to Standing Ape Count and The Bedouin Duet play for the evening.
Saturday was the big day and the morning started early with people banging on the RV door wanting us to wake up so they could get registered for the trip. Sooo it was back to work for both of us. We started loading up buses at about 11am sending them on their way to enjoy the FKF Experience and after about 3 hours we finally got to board the final bus of the day. When we got to the landing we were greeted by about 100 very angry FKFers who were waiting on rafts that weren’t available. As soon as I stepped off the bus the mob started demanding answers and I start to scramble trying to find out where rafts are and why they weren’t at the landing. After about an hour of dealing with this we finally get to push off and enjoy our float trip, or so we thought.
There were four rafts in the final group of FKF and we hit the water around 3:45pm which by floating standards is a pretty late start. We did have the river working for us though since it was flowing pretty fast due to the recent rain. After we hit a couple of stops we come around the bend to a beach full of Oklahoma Scenic River Commission Officers who are instructing us to pull to the side of the river. I have no problem with OSRC officers and I understand they are just out their doing their job. I just so happen to get pulled over by the one officer who wanted to prove a point that day. After answering a few of her questions and asking a couple of my own all in a calm voice and very level headed this officer decides I’ve had enough fun for Saturday and I should spend the evening holding down a concrete bench at Cherokee County Detention Center (CCDC). She was such a super nice lady and gave me a nice trifecta of tickets including Public Intoxication, Consuming Liquor in Public and a Violation of Posted OSRC Rules. I’ve floated the Illinois River probably 100 times and have never had any issues with the troopers patrolling it until that moment. The more questions I seemed to ask the more ink she seemed to put in her ticket book. I soon realized it was pointless to talk to her and observed my right to remain silent. She then gave me a ride to my new room at the CCDC where I would get to spend the next 8 hours with 8 of my not so close friends.
Eight years we’ve had this float trip and the first year we have any issues. I suppose I can look at it like that but where is the fun in that, right? I’m actually much more pissed off about this situation than I am letting on in this blog, but since the internet is the information superhighway I’d rather not let my frustrations get out and ruin any chance I have at fighting the tickets. I’ll keep everybody posted on the outcome of this little fiasco.
Anywho… we’re hoping for a much less eventful weekend coming up and the short week next week for the 4th of July. We hope everybody’s having a great summer!
Heather & Her Criminal Husband
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