Rocking Boats and Roasting Past Presidents

On Saturday, August 16, the Peoria Jaycees held its annual Rock The Boat event. This is a 2 hour excursion on board the Spirit of Peoria Riverboat with a party and band in full swing. The cost is $35 and covers all the food and beer. And again, Rachel's Hippo was the top bill. And again, they played very well. They did Cheap Trick's I Want You To Want Me, which I don't think I've seen them play before... maybe it's new for them.

Anyway, during the cruise, I was witness to a ruckus. A female ship worker (she was in some officer's suit, who knows, she could have been the captain) was trying to control another woman who was becoming physically irate. The ship officer was also assisted by two other guys who were undoubtedly Spirit of Peoria employees. The woman who was being restrained was noticeably intoxicated. They eventually got her into a stairwell where they talked with her and to calm her down. At this point, she stopped resisting and just broke down and started crying. With running mascara, she looked very similar to Ozzy Osborne.

At the end of the cruise, boat officials were escorting off a gentleman who was also very intoxicated and was probably on the verge of causing trouble. I don't know what the full story on this one was either. But once off the boat, we discovered that the woman and this guy were a couple of some sort. The Peoria police were waiting at the dock when the ship arrived. Upon reaching the squad cars, the police were forced to use pepper spray on this guy.

The Spirit of Peoria's crew handled these scuffles very well. The Rock the Boat event I thought was organized really good and at least most everyone had fun.

The boat docked around 10pm, which is still early. So a few of us decided to meet up at the Camel Club on Galena Rd. Buffy and I were first there before anyone else. At this time, we were kind of hungry, so we turned around and headed to McDonald's for a bite. I had the top down on the car as we headed through the drive thru. Waiting for our food, I looked up and noticed a very sizable spider in a web underneath the soffit. Looking at the color, size and shape of it, it appeared to be a black widow. If you recall, I had a black widow in my back yard that I wrote about on this blog a couple of summers ago. Since then, I have found another 6 black widows in my yard (just this summer alone). "How can you tell?" asked Buffy. I claimed it looks similar even though I couldn't see any markings yet. Once we had our food, I pulled the car up and stopped right underneath it. I saw what looked to be some red markings on it. Face it, Peoria has been invaded by the black widow.

We returned to the Camel Club, eat our dinner, had a drink or two, listened to an odd mix of music on the old 45 juke box and hung out with friends.

This past Friday night was the Jaycees annual Homecoming where we honor the immediate past president with a party and some type of roast. For the last few years, I've fried chicken for the event. I get a few good comments and many enjoy the dinner. We can thank Uncle Charlie for giving me my fried chicken prowess. I also stepped up to run the karaoke machine since Shane Hoadley was ill and couldn't make it that night. He could have at least let us use his bigger karaoke equipment instead of that small, 5 inch screen that no one could see. But another good time was had with the Jaycees.