Friday, March 27, 2009
SBRT Day 15-17: Boulder, CO
I don’t know about you, but when I drive to the “Mile High City” of Denver, I have certain expectations. I expect there to be mountains, or at the very least hills. The reality, however, is just flat flat flat flat BAM! mountains. And the BAM doesn’t actually happen until the far side of Denver—apparently you get to the mile-high altitude very gradually throughout Kansas and the east side of Colorado. Weak.
Luckily, we are staying in Boulder, which is on the west side of Denver and a little more nestled into the foothills of the Rockies. Our host is our college friend Casey, who is working as an engineer and living with her aunt to save money. As we sit down to a few margaritas in the rooftop seating of a Mexican joint with a beautiful view of the mountains, she talks shop about dimensions of satellites and frustrations about thermodynamic thresholds. Steve and I are very impressed and have the all too familiar feeling that Industrial and Operations Engineers experience of not being real engineers. After dinner, she describes in impressive detail all the bars in the area and their strengths and weaknesses. She’s been keeping up her collegiate lifestyle well.
The next day Steve and I hit the Coors factory. I avoid the term “brewery” because to me a brewery is much less mechanical and much more experimental. Everything is industrialized, with mechanical assembly lines constantly outputting 30 packs and kegs at blazing speed. The free tour only takes us around about 2% of the gigantic campus of buildings, but it ended with 3 free beers. They know where our priorities lie. Afterward we meet Casey and a few of her Boulder friends for happy hour beer and tapas. They’re weird and fun, and they’re nerdy in ways that complement our nerdiness. When we figure we’ve offended the high class people around us with our crass and loud jokes, we head to Casey’s friend Scott’s apartment. His roommates are brewing beer, which is cool to watch, and we play drinking Chutes & Ladders. Why is it so great to bastardize all of our childhood activities by making drinking games out of them?
On our final day in Boulder we figure we should take advantage of the mountainous landscape and go on a hike. We decide to do the classic man thing of pretending that we’ve got experience and trying a tough hike, when in fact we each have more fingers than hiking experiences. We definitely feel the altitude—breathing gets tough before we even get into the foothills. Quickly we discover the strategy of taking frequent breaks to catch our breath and look at the view, and the hike is a great time from there on up. Afterward the park ranger tells us that we hiked about 1/3 of a mile towards the sun. We’re proud of ourselves. Back at Casey’s, we grill a few burgers and ears of corn while she bakes cookies. We hit the road with full bellies and two tupperware containers of deliciousness.
SBRT Day 13-15: St. Louis & Kansas City, MO
Since we did want to be like Kerouak in spirit but not so much in sleeping conditions, we immediately started contacting people between Charlotte and Kansas City asking if we could crash with them. We ended up staying with Steve’s dad’s poker buddy Andi, who is married with two kids living in St. Louis. In the morning Steve owned their trash talking 7 year old in a racing game and we headed off to the Big Dance.
The game was held at the Sprint Center in KC, which looks like a big reflective doughnut. Our ticket included two games, in the following order: 10 Maryland vs. 2 Memphis and 10 Michigan vs. 2 Oklahoma. For those of you unfamiliar with seeding, that means that Memphis and Oklahoma are big favorites to win. After Maryland got the crap beat out of it, it was our chance to beat the odds. A few Maize-clad ladies sat down in front of us, and Steve & I joined up with them to try to infiltrate the Michigan fan section in the lower level of the stadium. The ladies got to stay, we got kicked out. About 8 minutes into the game we tried again but again failed. Eventually we went back to our section that had a few Michigan fans, a few more Oklahoma fans, and a bunch of people that had stuck around from the Memphis game and didn’t really give a shit either way. We were loud. It was great. Since some of you may not have seen the game, I will painfully write out the words: we lost. Steve & I dejectedly drove to a hotel on the west side of town and looked on the bright side with a dip in the hotel hot tub.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
SBRT Day 11-13: Charlotte, NC
Charlotte is a beautiful city. It is clean, modern, young, and alive. This is the consensus that Steve and I come to as we wander around the downtown area before meeting his cousin John for dinner. We eat at an Irish pub (what? crazy!) called Blackfinn and learn about life after college a little farther down the road. Then we head to the apartment building of Steve’s friend Sara, where we’re going to crash. It has a workout room, a couple of lounges, a balcony with a beautiful cityscape view, and a pool! She tells secondhand stories of skinnydipping adventures in said pool, and I tell a firsthand one from a similar pool. I’m a story topper. Deal with it. Steve catches Sara up on tennis team gossip as I giggle at South Park and we call it a night.
The next day we spend watching college basketball in a couple bars: Ed’s Tavern first for its pool and multitude of TV’s, and Tavern By The Tracks for the Michigan game because it’s a Michigan bar. When we get there, the Michigan-ness is weakly represented by the decorations, moderately represented by the existing patronage, and strongly represented by our arrival. Our group easily doubles the Wolverine fandom in the bar, contributing about 30 maize and/or blue articles of clothing and 9 cheering, screaming, and beer-drinking mouths. And while we might not have been directly responsible, I like to think that we helped Michigan to its glorious victory over higher-seeded Clemson.
When we return to Sara’s, we decide to make our first Kerouakian long-distance lark: we’re going to the Round 2 Michigan game versus Oklahoma, in Kansas City. This will almost certainly disrupt our road trip plan, and we’ve discussed some possible options, but we agree with certainty that it’s worth it. So Kansas City, March Madness, and the greatest Michigan basketball season in 11 years (at least)—here we come. GO BLUE!!!
PS We forgot to get a picture in Charlotte, so when we met my friend Chelsee in Nashville for lunch, we headed over to the Baylor mansion to snap a quick pic, shown here.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
SBRT Day 9-11: Raleigh, NC
So I’ve got this tradition of writing about each place that we visited while we’re in the car on the way to the next place, and it seems to be going pretty well. But on this car trip from Raleigh to Charlotte, we’ve been listening to the new Adam Carolla podcast, and I can’t stop listening long enough to write anything of value. So here are the cliffs notes of Raleigh: Steve’s friend Brandon put us up, the first night we got drunk and told stories of bad decisions, the second night (St. Patty’s) we went to Brandon’s soccer game and drank rum and cokes then went to the bar with the team, where my favorite moment of this stop occurred: people were smoking in the men’s bathroom, so I bummed a smoke, then decided to give the guy one of our road trip custom shot glasses. So now this random dude in Raleigh has a shot glass with my face and Steve’s face printed on it.
The picture below is from the Duke campus, which we hit up on the way out of town. Here comes Charlotte, the former home of my favorite athlete of all time, Muggsy Bogues.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
SBRT Day 7-9: Washington, DC
With delicious Philly cheesesteaks settling in on the walls of our arteries, we pull in to a cozy little suburb of Washington, DC known as Alexandria, VA. It kinda blows my mind that all the suburbs of DC are in different states. Our host, Tyler, will be at a St. Patty’s day festival for a couple more hours, so Steve & I decide to explore downtown Alexandria. We’re searching for wireless internet, TVs with college basketball playing, and food. After passing about 20 antique stores and 0 wifi-enabled cafes or bars, we were directed to a wifi hotspot in a little cafe/grocery store with bar-appropriate signs like “Beer: It’s what’s for dinner” on the walls. After catching up with the rest of the world, we headed to a bar called Rock-It Grille for some dinner and college basketball.
Little do we know, there is much more than burgers and hoops in store for us at this place. As we finish up our meal, a DJ starts setting up in the corner of the bar, and announces that karaoke is going on tonight! (Now if you aren’t aware of my undeniably unhealthy obsession with karaoke, I’m not really sure what you’re doing reading my blog. My name’s Baylee, I’m on a road trip, I love karaoke. Nice to meet you.) So after carefully considering the venue, the crowd, and my unusually high level of sobriety (for karaoke, that is), I decide to try a challenging song: Hook, by Blues Traveler. It’s fast and melodic, so the sober part is good, and it’s sort of twangy, which matched with the 3 or 4 cowboy hat wearers that aren’t getting laughed at in the bar. I come up fourth, and immediately realize why karaoke only happens in bars, and only after most people are already drunk. Although Steve makes a valiant attempt to convince me otherwise, I am certain that I bombed. It’s probably not the first time I’ve bombed a karaoke song, but it is the first time that I’ve been sober and have therefore noticed. I vow to prove myself a karaoke master before the end of the night by putting on a better performance.
In a while Tyler and Hoffy (another friend living in the DC area) show up to the bar, with Irish car bombs in tow. In addition to being St. Patty’s Day weekend, this drink is appropriate because Irish car bombs are what Hoffy bought my on my 21st, which was probably one of the most recent times I’ve drank with him. So with those and a couple beers under my belt, I belt out Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. It is well received and I feel that I can move on from Alexandria with my karaoke rep intact.
The next day is laid back—college basketball, Steve hits up the driving range for a couple hours, etc. We order a pizza for dinner, and another friend from college, Mary, joins us to catch up. She tells of her Teach for America job where kids throw chairs out windows, and we all get a little perspective on both our high school experience and our jobs. When she leaves, we bust out the Scategories and wrap up the evening with some classic family fun.
The next morning we head out from Tyler’s into Washington DC proper for the first time. Steve drops me off at the national mall, and I walk around the big monuments and take pictures while he meets his brother for lunch. The picture below is taken from inside of the half-dried up reflecting pool. It’s representative of the state of our nation in a vaguely depressing way that I can’t put my finger on. Someone else give it a shot in the comments.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
SBRT Day 4-7: New York, NY
After making a stop at the Yale campus, we make our way into New York City. We drop off our stuff at my friend Brett’s place and head into town for dinner. We walk around the lower east side, hitting a couple happy hours and trying some sweet potato sushi. FYI: “2-4-1” beer deals at Asian fusion restaurants in NYC only apply to when you drink both beers yourself. So we’re a few beers deep when we meet Amy and Johnny, Steve’s college friends, for dinner at Lombardi’s in little Italy.
As I’m writing this in the car on the way to Philly, Steve brings up how unimpressive New York pizza was, and I agree. So it turns out Chicago style is not only my preference in terms of life, but also pizza. But the dinner is a lot of fun, and I manage to embarrass Steve multiple times—a surefire sign of a good outing. As we leave the restaurant, Amy points out a “famous” dessert place, so I immediately run over and grab something. By the time Steve comes out, I have already returned with an ‘Epic’ sized dessert from this place, which is basically a super sweet rice pudding with chocolate chips and cherries. We share it as we walk to the Continental, a bar that we have chosen for its any 5 shots for $10 deal. It is extremely divey—very dark interior, black & white cartoons projected onto the back wall—but we make the most of it. We take advantage of the deal twice for a few ill-advised rounds of tequila, then decide to leave the bar on an upswing of drunkenness. On the subway ride back home, Steve and I have a discussion on a new kind of prenuptial agreement: if either person gains >40 pounds within the first year of a relationship, the other person has the right to end the relationship without feeling bad about it. Everyone else on the subway hates us.
The next day we lazily wake up and head into town for a day of basketball. Not playing basketball, silly! College basketball! Michigan played at 2:30, so we hit a Michigan bar called Professor Thom’s to watch the glorious and decisive win. We stayed there till about 7, then headed next door to Finnegan’s to play pool. A long lost friend from high school, Jenelle, met us there and showed us how much we sucked at pool. A random 40-some year old dude joined in for a few games, and he told stories of hitchhiking cross country when we told him what we were up to. Steve kept referring to him as his uncle. I bought us all a round of tequila. It was weird but great.
On our final day in NYC, we drove to my friend Mo’s place in Brooklyn to pick up 144 custom-made shot glasses. Steve & I bought these as gifts for all the people that we run into, and especially those that we stay with, along the trip. They’re amazing. You want one, I know. Well, let us stay with you then. Then we hit another sports bar called the Village Lantern for the Michigan game at 6:30 (which didn’t go as well as the previous day’s game) and some beer pong. Steve & I tear it up and won 3 games in a row. My superb beer pong abilities attracted the attention of a little lady named Lauren, who I talked with for a while. When I brought up my future job at BigMachines, I was astounded—she had actually heard of them! My little 100 person industry specific enterprise had contacted her for PR, as she works for an industry magazine. Amazing! We all went to a club for a little while, but eventually the night must end. I walked her to a cab, and as Steve & I walked to the subway I picked up a thoroughly unimpressive Big Mac.
It’s Saturday morning, and we’re driving to Philly to pick up a Philly cheesesteak at Pat’s, where the cheesesteak was invented. Then we’ll continue down to Washington D.C., where American democracy and independence were invented. Then we’ll go to a bar, where bad decisions are invented.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
SBRT Day 2-4: Boston, MA
When we get to Boston, we meet up with Kip & Steph, college friends of Steve. With them we travel to the Harvard area to meet up with my college friend Tim. He’s a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Harvard, so it goes without saying that he’s ready to party. We go to an Irish pub (yes, a trend is forming) called John Harvard’s to enjoy some brews and sandwiches. After that we decide to head back to Tim’s dorm room to play some drinking games. Let’s take a moment to enjoy the fact that Tim lives in a dorm room…….OK, now we can come back to the fact that he’s smarter than anybody writing or reading this can probably ever hope to be. So I guess it all evens out.
After a few games of “Shoulders” and “3 Men in a Boat”, the five of us head out to another bar, where we tell stories and all get to know each other better. After closing out the bar, we tried to get some late night Mexican, but the place was closed. Weak, Harvard, very weak. So we bid adieu to Tim and headed back to Kip & Steph’s for a nightcap and some rest.
The next day started with a bit of irony: while the rest of us slept in, Kip had to get up at the asscrack of dawn to go to work. Kip was easily the drunkest of us the night before. So when we awoke at a leisurely noon, we reveled in that fact a good deal. Then, heading out to a delicious, hangover-curing breakfast, we locked ourselves out of the apartment. So after breakfast Steph dropped Steve & I off downtown to walk around and explore, while she drove to Kip’s work to get the other set of keys. We all met up again later that night to make spaghetti, which was a good rest for our wallets and livers. When Steph started getting ready for bed, Kip and I introduced Steve to the glorious soft core porn/self-hating diatribe known as Californication, and called it an early night.
In the morning, we left as Steph went to work, and found ourselves leaving Boston around 9am. To spice up the trip down to New York, we decided to drive down to the Rhode Island coast and go on a “Cliff Walk” in Newport. Newport is quintessential New England, in that it feels a lot like regular England: loose stone fences surround roadside homes, sheep lazily graze on grassy knolls, and rain quietly, coolly, and constantly blankets the area. The cliff walk is cold and windy, but even with the dreary weather, it is an amazing sight. We soak in the ocean waters (figuratively and literally) and make note of the fact that we’ll be seeing the other marine border of this country in a few short weeks. A German man takes our picture and we head off to New York.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
SBRT Day 1-2: Saratoga Springs, NY
Steve & Baylee Road Trip 2009 Begins! Steve & I meet up at Subway to make our grand plan and schedule, connecting all the dots that represent our friends across the great US of A. We start figuring out travel times and quickly determine that Boston is the first place that we want to go, but decide that with the festivities planned for later in the evening, we don’t want to go all the way (13 hours) in one day. So we search for friends living in cities between Ann Arbor and Boston, and find out that Kate Marcos is living in Saratoga Springs, in upstate NY, right on the way. She is surprised when I call, and even more surprised when I ask to sleep on her floor. Then she surprises me by welcoming us to stay, with reluctant optimism and curiosity. Thus, Saratoga Springs is decided as the first stop on our 5 week tour of the US.
After 10 hours of driving (Steve decides to drive the whole way…I think he’s not completely comfortable with me driving his car, but neither am I) we arrive in Saratoga Springs. We meet Kate and a friend of hers at at small Irish pub called Local. We get some tasty brews and a couple plates of fish & chips and shepherd’s pie and catch up. After dinner, Kate’s friend goes home, and we drive to one of the town’s namesake springs to get a taste. It comes out of a stone fountain under a gondola and tastes like carbonated rotten eggs. Thanks, Kate.
We buy a couple packs of good local beer (Saranac—yum) and head to her place of residence, which happens to also be her place of work. As an intern for a nature conservancy, part of her compensation is a small apartment that is part of the office that she works in. It is cozy, and best of all, it has an extra bed. We put Top Gun on in the background and play cards. After most of the beer and all of the movie had been consumed, we called it a night.
The next morning, Steve & I sleep in while she walks next door to start working. When she’s wrapped up her morning tasks, she tells us that she’s ready to go snowshoeing. This is something we half drunkenly decided to do the night before. With the pretense of checking out the trail allowing us to steal her away from work for an hour, we hit the trail. She points out mouse and squirrel tracks, and we point out how badass she is. We get back to the car, snap a few pics, and hit the road again, with homemade cookies in tow. Kate has set the bar high for host hospitality.
Boston, here we come!
Monday, March 2, 2009
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