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.