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. 

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.

Students - An XKCD comic

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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.

YouTube - Head spin trick

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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.

 

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.