With a little bit of a sleep in, we were awoken with Vlady preparing some pastries for breakfast and several other additions. Ryan, Miro and I went to the nearby supermarket right on open. This was to get the right meat for the BBQ for the trip we were going on today. Yea, Vlady had mentioned previously how her and Miro wanted to go out on the boat and that Ryan and I were a good reason for this to happen. Here, Ryan and I tried to play a little trick on Miro so we planted some money in a cooler before grabbing it for purchase. At the front end counter, Miro went about putting the groceries in the cooler, to save space, when he noticed that there were a few notes floating around the bottom of the container. He would not move from the front end until one of us took the notes away from the bottom, I eventually grabbed it and we were on our way back to their apartment.
With the meat put in a container with some of the marinate, we filled the cooler with the essentials and went about packing the car for the journey. The drive was mostly a pretty straight run, where at one stage we went through a region, near Branson, that was renowned for some inbreeding and peculiar locals. At the docks, we went about and chose the boat we were going to take out (man, boats are expensive to be hiring all the time). With the boat selected, and our gear onboard, Miro slowly reversed the boat out and we were on our way out onto the man made lake. With the speed limit being no wake, I had no idea what the potential of the boat was. Miro said that we should probably prepare ourselves, then he pulled down the… throttle, and the boat was off and away. We ventured around jumping over other boats’ wakes and having the wind tearing away at our faces. At one stage Vlady received a call from her friend we were meeting further down the lake. This lake was huge, definitely a lot larger then a couple of Melbourne’s largest water reserves stored at maximum capacity. The lake was also contained in both Missouri and Arkansas, with several launching points, several boat hire ports and several islands.
Getting to the point where Vlady’s friend was, sorry name forgotten, we slowly approached the pier where she went about stretching over and leaping onto the boat. Vlady’s friend worked at on of the places that have functions on the lake. One story that still is making me wonder how rich people get rich is that Vlady’s friend does things with the children of people from the million dollar club. The lake is a public entity, with the islands there for anyone to go on them while not affecting the nature within the region. The people from the group wanted to have 140 people on an island that would be lucky to have 40 people on it comfortably. Not only did they want 140 of their own people, they also wanted to have caterers and boat people to taxi people to an from the island. As Vlady’s friend mentioned the impossibility of having so many people on the island, the people of this club then went about asking why don’t the board of engineers go about emptying the lake enough so as to allow for an adequate amount of land to be temporarily inhabited by these people, and those who would be working at the event.
The people of this club wanted the event, from memory, on President’s day (or was it Memorable Day) and pay $100,000 for the displacement of the water and the caterers. Basically the people were told no, but the thing with the people in the working industry of USA is that they say things in the most appropriate and nicest of ways. So, the issue was still being dealt with on the day of the entry, but I think the answer would have been: You can use the island, but you can not book the island as being your own piece of property.
Boating around, we eventually stopped in three places throughout the day. Miro and Vlady were the two that were in the water every time. Oh yea, one time, while I was in charge of the directions, Miro’s hat went flying off of his head, and we had to turn around and he jumped in and collected the hat. Other then that little hiccup, the rest of the time on the water was fairly relaxing and a good way of having the closing end of my trip. We got the boat back with a few minutes spare and drove down to a park region to cook up the meat we had, this was a mixture of a late lunch and an early tea in the end. The Albanian housemate came along after his girlfriend’s graduation and we ended up having some salads, corn on the grill and meat on the grill too.
Well, people had their own way to go. Vlady’s housemate and girlfriend went about going to their next BBQ, also at the lake but at another section. We also dropped Vlady’s friend off at her car. Miro drove us through Branson, the capital of Missouri, where there was a replica of the Titanic (not to scale). The drive back was with us feeling a little bit tired, and a slightly quieter drive then what I had experienced in the past few driving escapades. Back at Vlady’s and Miro’s we had a bit of a sit around, where the aim was to watch the first few laps of the F1. I think it was in Europe somewhere (Monte Carlo). Bed.
