Downtown Milwaukee boat rentals

An afternoon pontoon cruise on Lake Michigan

What do you do when your lovely and insanely talented coworker leaves for a new job? Why, celebrate her and wish her all the best — on a boat! Let me explain: Last Friday was my coworker Melody's last day at work. She's off to conquer the design world, and though she'll be seriously missed, what more can you say? Go do great things, girl.

To ease the transition, our boss Scott treated our team to an impromptu "Farewell Melody!" party on a boat Friday afternoon — sweet in every sense of the word. The boat was a so-called "party barge" (pontoon boat) through Riverwalk Boat Tours & Rentals, fitting up to 10 people and available to rent at an hourly rate. All we had to do was sign our lives away in waiver and voila! The boat was ours for two hours. Boat pick-up happens near Old World Third Street. Easy peasy.

We feasted on Cousin's Subs (chicken salad = never again), Colectivo donuts (yep — they sell raised donuts every Friday!), and margaritas. Our other designer, Jenny, played barkeep while Melody manned the music; a little Beirut really set the river-cruising mood. "I feel like I'm in Italy," Scott said as he commandeered the party barge.

The weather was a little chancy — a fact my phone reminded me of repeatedly with push notifications like "100% chance of rain in 15 minutes!" I swear that had never happened before. Luckily the rain held off and the worst we had to endure was some misting and the chill of the lake (the lake was noticeably colder than the river).

Before heading back to land, Scott made sure we set off the drone. Newsflash: Drones are kinda freaky. The whirring, the fear of it breaking, the watchful eye... We girls had never been so up close and personal with the drone before, so we maintained as safe a distance as possible when you're stuck all together in the middle of a lake.

Determined to get a group pic, Scott set the drone in flight with Pete, our Illustrator, on hand to catch and release it. No pressure, Pete! There were a lot of shrill screams from the peanut gallery, but we got our group photo and the drone lived to fly another day.