3 Guys, 1 Truck

11:01 AM / Posted by Ryan /

I know that the one of you who throws down on the OPRTA was tragically disappointing by our failure to post this last weekend, for which we apologize. The days we usually spend writing, this last week we spent in a Uhaul trucking it from Tucson to Washington D.C. in a trip that at the last minute went from 2 guys to 3. For those of you keeping score at home here are the top 5 necessities for surviving a cross country road trip. This is the criterion for how we made the list, and in this particular order. Obviously, there are a lot of things that you want to have on a road trip, but if you had to choose between driving three consecutive days in a car with a video game, but not having any caffeine, which way would you go? Admittedly, I am biased in that instance by my long standing addiction, but you get the idea. With that being said, here is our list:

  1. Company - One buddy makes the trip tolerable, two makes it enjoyable. For one thing, it doubles the odds of something ill-advised happening, as whichever over-tired, desperate guy who comes up with the random idea that starts with, "Dude! we should totally..." now has another person who might be the Guy Who is Down.
  2. Windows - Seriously, if you don't think windows should be this high on the list, that's only because you have never driven with out them.
  3. Air Conditioning - And by this we mean the ability to control the temperature in the car. Critical.
  4. Caffeine - I thought for about 13 minutes about bumping this up to number three, given my proclivity to want to drive through the night to avoid traffic and the sun, but then I thought about west Texas, and having to roll the windows down and bath in that wretched stench for hours on end.
  5. Radio - To be specific, satellite radio, though on this trip we managed to have pretty good signal and decent stations for most of the trip.
Company wins out, because you can take almost any discomfort as long as you have someone with whom to commiserate. Honorable mention goes out to Sleeping Space, Video Games, and Movies, who lost out to Radio on a coin flip. Not that we had to make that call on this trip. We did things right. Well, mostly right.

Sleeping Space was the one we were most excited about, because we threw a queen sized mattress and a half-a-dozen blankets into the back of the truck, right by the door. This was more comfortable than a Snuggie right up until we started driving. You know how the back of the school bus would always get more of the bounce when you go over speed bumps than the front? That's because all the weight is up front. Take that same principle and multiply it by 70mph and you find yourself waking up 6-12 inches above the mattress every time you hit a lip in the pavement. You don't want to know what happened when we hit Uneven Pavement sections. One of my dear cousins suggested weighing down the blankets with bricks, which worked out almost as well as picking up the random girl at the bus station to try and anchor with some ferocious cuddling. Less bruises, more lacerations.

On the Video Game front our trip was officially endorsed by ScribbleNautz (the dumbest sounding game that ever turned out to be awesome) and for Movies let's just say that Laptop+Surround Sound Speakers+Subwooffer= a Car/Movie Experience. Watching the newest Star Trek while driving at night actually felt like you were flying through the deep with them. Incredible.

2 moments made better by unlikely circumstances:
  • If you get a chance to watch a high school state playoff football game where a kid breaks off touchdown runs of 80, 55, and 20 yards before picking off a pass and running it back for another score from 35, all in the first 15 minutes of the game, then that is a pretty cool moment that you will probably forget in a few years. If you are sitting next to his dad and get to say, "Excuse me, Mr. [Barry] Sanders, I just wanted to tell you that you are at least 67% of the reason that I like football. Thank you" then the chances of you forgetting that moment go down significantly.
  • Watching your beloved cousin perform the greatest rendition of Oklahoma that South High School has ever seen is nice, but if you get to heighten the experience by adding a kid who looks EXACTLY like a 5'6" Adam Morrison in a cowboy outfit trying so hard to dance that it looks like he is seconds away from soiling himself at all times, then you have reached a place of nearly Nirvana levels of happiness (the Buddhist utopia type, not the angsty/suicidal grunge type).
So there is the truncated account of our 3 day, 2519 mile, 265 gallon of gas expedition across the country. Any stories about crazy gas station attendees, panda bears, tricked out Vipers, and random casinos will have to be shared over a pint, preferably several. On to the OPRTA!

For those of you who have been keeping score at home, you know that we have never done worse than 5 losses in our epic efforts for the 12 team, $2500:1 parlay, which is not terrible (better than every ESPN analyst this year) but we have not gotten close enough to hit the jackpot. This week that changes. Here is your Parlay: Broncos +7, Colts -3.5, Bengals -14, Eagles -9.5, Dolphins -3.5, Seahawks -3, Falcons -13, Panthers +3, 49ers -3.5, Chargers -14, Vikings -11, and the Saints -3. Enjoy. As always the OPRTA is brought to you in conjunction with UA CatWrap.

For those of you who have not checked CatWrap out, they are a website that does all sorts of sports coverage, particularly through podcasts, recently breaking the 400 mark on their iTunes subscribers. They specialize in Wildcat related discussions, but they invited me on recently for a Pac-10 basketball preview. It is broken into 2 parts and up on their site now, and Bryant does a pretty good job of not letting me sound like too much of an idiot. Check it out if you get a chance!

Now I am going to go celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving, bringing the neighborhood together for a huge feast, everyone chipping in and lending a hand before I kill them all and take their land. Don't worry, I give all the left over kids a toy slot machine. Enjoy your holiday!

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