My buddy Dustin hits me up a few weeks ago and tells me about a TKE Alumni conference being held in Indianapolis the first weekend in August. With very little prodding he convinces me to go with him. The original itinerary is for me to leave Tulsa on Friday morning around 7:10am and be in Indy at approximately 1pm with a connection in Minneapolis. I arrive at the the airport and find out that my flight has been delayed which in turn is going to make me miss my Minneapolis connection, GREAT! So they shuffle me around and put me on a different airline heading to Houston at 9am and getting me to Indy around 4:30pm, SUPER! I love spending my entire day in airports.
The conference is from Friday through Sunday, a nice short weekend to network with other Tekes. The actual conference was great with a lot of good material for me to take back and hopefully use to help our chapter move towards a Top Teke chapter. So the conference was great I had a good time, learned a lot and all that jazz.
My departure is Sunday morning at 7:45am and no I didn’t book these flights! Who in their right mind would want to fly that early? I wake up Sunday morning around 6 o’clock to get packed and ready to leave. The hotel we were at was within walking distance of the airport so I take off on my morning walk to catch my flight. As I’m walking through the airport I see all of two people until I take the escalator to the second floor where I’m greeted with a line of about 100 people all waiting for the same airline I’m flying. There are all of 2 or 3 people at every other ticket counter with my counter packed to the gills.
I patiently wait for my turn to check-in only to be told that I can’t check-in. I was expecting this because for some reason I’m on a TSA watch list. I’ve had to go through extra security each time I’ve flown this summer which has been a total pain in the butt. This time however it’s not a you can’t check-in for extra security it’s a you can’t check-in because you have to check-in 30 mins before the flight departs, I was checking in with about 25 mins until departure. I’ve never heard of this and for this reason I will never fly Northwest again. They are zero help from this point on. Flat out YOU’RE NOT GETTING ON THIS FLIGHT. Gee thanks lady, do I have any other options? She offers to put me on standby which departs at noon but it doesn’t look good that I’ll make that flight either. I then pick up the phone and call Northwest’s reservation number. They offer to put me on a 5pm flight for an additional fee of $400 bucks, yeah right! She then says I can get on a flight the next morning for about $125. Which $125 plus another night in a hotel and having to call into work doesn’t sound like a great option either.
I do some quick thinking, which at 8am isn’t very quick. I call Heather and have her research a one-way rental car to Tulsa. This option is going to cost me about $145 plus gas. After weighing my options I rent the car and head home. I was dead tired so I stop for a quick hour nap somewhere outside of Indy in a lovely Mickey D’s parking lot. After the nap I’m ready to head out again…. 10 hours later I arrive at Tulsa International Airport, yea back to the airport where I was supposed to have arrived at 11am that morning. I drop off the rental car, catch a ride to the parking garage to get into my car and drive home.
This has to be the worst experience I’ve ever had traveling. I’m currently working on getting myself removed from the TSA watch list and I’ll probably do a write up of that process to hopefully help some other poor soul like me. On a side note… I did get to see the St. Louis Arch and the new Cardinals stadium.
Heather and I spent last weekend at lake Tenkiller with my Dad and Susan. We weren’t camping unfortunately so we ended up making two trips from BA down to Tahlequah but it was well worth it. Saturday was overcast and a little bit chilly on the lake which is the main reason we made a return visit on Sunday and Sunday is the main reason for this blog so I’ll get to the funny part.
A little back story to set everything up. Most lakes allow you to make reservations for camping spots in advance. We had made reservations on Ft. Gibson lake for the 4th of July, but with all of the rain we’ve had Ft. Gibson has been a little less desirable than other surrounding lakes. So the opinion was we’d like to camp at Tenkiller if we were able to find one of the few spots that are first come first serve. Sunday’s mission was simple find one of those spots at one of the many campsites around the lake.
As Heather and I are arriving at the lake we pass David and Susan who are just leaving on a reconnaissance mission by car to stake our claim. We pull up to the current campsite and start relaxing for the day. A short while later we get a phone call from Susan telling us they just found a great spot but they’re in a standoff with some other people for the spot. The apparent campsite rule is you can’t pay for a spot until you have a tent setup. So Susan instructs us to grab a tent throw it in the boat and get it to the new spot ASAP. She also tells us that the people they are in a standoff with have people bringing a tent by boat as well. My Dad, Heather and I look like we’re doing some crazy Chinese fire drill by securing everything at the campsite and running down to the boat holding ice chests, towels, a wiener dog and a tent. We load the boat in record time, pull anchor and prepare for hyperdrive. We had a general idea of where the new campsite was from the water but weren’t 100% sure as we pull up to one site we ask some swimmers where we are and they tell us “Cookson” which is the wrong spot. Back to hyperdrive and on to the next site which was luckily the right site as we see David coming out to meet us and get the tent.
I don’t have any pictures of any of this because we were so rushed getting everything finished up. The good news is that we secured a great spot for the 4th of July and will be headed out there sometime this weekend. We hope everybody has a great holiday weekend and be safe!
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
Heather and I have been rather busy over the last couple of weeks with a little bit of travel and dealing with the daily grind. We spent Mother’s day weekend in Dallas with Heather’s Dad Tom and Nancy and had a great time. We headed down on Saturday and after dealing with the wonderful traffic on Highway 121 finally arrived in Grapevine around 6pm. We sat around the house and got caught up on all the latest happenings then headed out to dinner around 8pm. Tom and Nancy took us to Boston’s, a sports bar, located right down the street from his house as a little one year anniversary gift. I’d never been there before and I’m always down to try some new food, plus it was free – Thanks Again!. It was a pretty tasty meal with Heather and I both giving their calizone a try.
The next day we headed out to catch the Rangers take on the Oakland A’s in what looked like it was going to be a close game but ended up being a blowout loss for the Rangers. There was a lot of action and a high scoring game which always makes them more enjoyable, well that and the hot dogs. The sun was brutal with us both leaving the game with a nice touch of pink, OK mine was more of a lobster pink than Heathers. I guess that’s the blessings of being pale white with a complete absence of tanable pigment (yes tanable is a word!). View all of the pictures from our Texas trip.
I’ve been in Orlando, FL since Sunday the 19th at the annual ACCM conference. This is the first time my company has been to this conference but I don’t think it will be our last one. I’m traveling with one of the owners of the company and our marketing minister. The conference is being held at the Gaylord Palms Resort which is PLUSH! You know you’re in for a treat when the first thing they hand you at check-in is a map of the resort. I’ll upload some pictures when I get back into town for everybody to gawk at them. I get back into town on Thursday evening and then get to prepare for a fun Memorial Day Weekend.
We are headed out to Ft. Gibson Lake to do some much anticipated camping and boating with my family for the weekend. Heather didn’t do much of this while she was growing up so she has a lot of catching up to do. We’ll be hanging out at Blue Bill Point from Saturday through Monday and crossing our fingers that we don’t have to deal with any rain. I’m so pumped it’s finally SUMMER!
I’m still working on getting Heather to contribute to the site and I think she’s getting closer each time I bug her about it. If you’re tired of hearing from only me you should be sure to let her know that you want to hear from her too! Feel free to voice your opinions in the comments. Oh.. We will also be viewing Ironman sometime in the next week which I’m absolutely pumped about doing. I’m thinking blog review of the flick, world famous movie reviews brought to you buy Peather.
We hope everybody is doing well and look forward to spending some time with you all at some point this summer.
Heather and I got to head out to Sin City for a few days so Paul could attend a conference for work. We headed up a couple of days early to do some site seeing before the conference started. The evening we arrived we had tickets to see Cirque du Soleil’s “O” which was absolutely amazing! The humor, acrobatics and aww factor left you speechless numerous times. I was pretty skeptical due the crazy ticket prices but I put those aside since everybody I knew who had seen the show raved about it. The only regret we have is we wish we would have attended the day after we arrived because we were so tired by the time the show started.
Before we went to “O” we walked down to the Tropicana casino to check out the Bodies Exhibit. Heather was really eager to see this during our visit and I was again skeptical. I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy walking around looking at a bunch of preserved dead people. I’m not talking about plastic things that look like people, we’re talking actual preserved bodies. Lucky for me the bodies looked different enough that I could convince myself they were fake so I could look at them without tossing my cookies. It actually ended up being a very interesting exhibit with an abundance of facts and tidbits about the human body and how it all works. They have exhibits all across the US, if you get a chance be sure to check it out.
Once the conference started I was stuck in classes all day and the hotel asked Heather if she would help them hold down some of the chairs by the pool. We did get to sneak out a few nights and check out some more of Vegas. We had dinner at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville (pretty tasty), Top of the World (restaurant located at the top of the Stratosphere, it spins slowly so you see the entire skyline of Vegas) and The Buffet at Bellagio (all you can eat sushi, prime rib, shrimp cocktail, sirloin, swordfish, salmon, desserts and on and on!). Of those three restaurants I would hit up The Buffet again in a heartbeat and a nice little tip is to get there early or wait in line forever. We got lucky and went for dinner around 6 o’clock and had immediate seating. When we finished the line was probably 50 feet long with nothing but hungry people.
This was also our first time away from our girls which made coming home even more exciting. Our summer plans are filling up pretty fast with trips planned for just about every month. Paul is heading to Orlando next month for another conference and then we are both planning a trip to Washington, DC in June. What we’re trying to get across here is that if you want to book some Peather time this summer you need to get it scheduled ASAP! We hope everybody is doing well.
Vegas Pictures <- Be sure to check out all of our pictures from the trip.
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