Road Trip...

I’ve got less than a day and a half left at work this week. This is significant for two reasons. (1) I’ll be leaving early Friday afternoon to travel up to Gainesville for my first trip to The Swamp this season in order to attend the Auburn-Florida game airing at 8 pm on ESPN. To say I’m pumped about this would be a huge understatement. (2) After I return home from Gainesville on Sunday afternoon with a vicious hangover and much lighter in the wallet than when I left, I’ll be walking into a week’s worth of vacation from work. Not just any week of vacation either, this is a free week of vacation. You read that right. I’ll be off work all week without using a single vacation day. How is this possible? Well, my office is undergoing a major expansion and renovation project that is going to leave our building powerless for the better part of next week. As a result of this, I’ll be at home all week with little to no work to do. Even our company’s email server will be down so I won’t even have to correspond with anyone who could possibly ask me to do actual “work”. Sure, something could come up where I might have to exert my self for, oh, 30 or 40 minutes but the chances of this actually happening are extremely slim. Originally, I was slated to travel to Baton Rouge next weekend to see the Gators take on LSU but that has recently fallen through. As much as I’d love to attend one of the premier venues in college football for a CBS night game that promises an (cliché alert) electric atmosphere it’s probably just as well considering the way the young Gator defense looked on Saturday in Oxford.

Anywho, this will be my first weekend in Gainesville as an adult. By that I mean that this is the first time that I’ll be going to Gainesville and not crashing with any friends of mine. I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Personally, I feel like 12 years is a pretty nice run to have in terms of having a place to crash for college football weekends. As it now stands, my old roommate Vitas, our friend Roman, his old roommate Chris (both Auburn alums) and I are renting an RV (with shitter and shower…huzzah) and setting up shop on UFs campus, just a few drunken stumbles from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. The last time I attended a game with either Roman or Chris was the now legendary “Ronnie Brown Game”. If you’re familiar with this game, it was another ESPN 8 pm game between Florida and Auburn during the first year of the Ron Zook era. During the second quarter of this game, with Florida in control, Cadillac Williams broke his leg, making the way for an unknown redshirt sophomore named Ronnie Brown. Brown wouldn’t stay unknown for long, as he seemingly turned into Walter Payton before our eyes and hauled Auburn back into the game with the help of a young and inexperienced Jason Campbell. In what would become an all too common occurrence during the Zook era, the Gators lost control of the game as Auburn surged in the second half behind what seemed like 30 broken tackles by Brown. If not for an amazing blocked FG by Bobby McCray and an equally amazing third down Rex Grossman TD pass to Taylor Jacobs in OT, the Gators could’ve possibly ended up the year below .500, as the weight of a historic blowout at the hands of LSU (just a week earlier) and the collapse against Auburn may have doomed an already pathetic Gator season to historic lows. Fortunately, this was not the case. Later, on Auburn’s first possession of OT, former Bear Ian Scott scooped up an Auburn fumble to secure the victory. What followed the end of this memorable game ended up being one of the better nights of my life, as Roman, Vitas, Chris, my roommates Federico and Gomez and I all retired to the Salty Dog Saloon (my favorite dive of all time…I’m coming Salty Dog and I pissed off. Well, not really. I can’t stay mad at you.) where we proceeded to drink copious amounts of liquor and harass everybody who came within a five foot radius of us (which is basically anybody who had to walk to the Salty Dog bathroom). I won’t bore you with the details of our night at the Salty Dog other than to say I received a thank you email from Roman upon his return to Atlanta for, as he put it, “the best night after an Auburn loss…ever.” Personally, there was never a higher compliment issued to me in my many times playing host to friends whilst in college.

This weekend promises to be interesting to say the least. Roman no longer lives in Atlanta or with Chris. He’s married, Chris is engaged and I live with my girlfriend. However, I’m starting to get the feeling that this may mean the weekend is going to end up being even wilder than our last time together. We’ve got a number of other friends coming up on Saturday for the all day tailgate (Good God 8 PM games are amazing.) that will include an 11 foot HDTV screen, two other TVs, truckloads of liquor, a few well timed papal elections and, of course, more young Florida & Auburn coeds than you can shake the proverbial stick at. I plan on taking some pictures so that I have something to post with my description of the weekend’s events and to give you, my faithful readers (reader?) a frame of reference. Hopefully this weekend will end up with a convincing Florida win and maybe some celebratory shots and harassment at the Salty Dog. If not, there’s always the chance that I might hunt down Todd Blackledge and kick his Joe Pa loving ass all over University Ave. I mean, I have all of next week off. What’s a few days in jail, right?

Update: Our Buddy Schmitt is now coming up tomorrow night after he gets off work so it looks like we're gonna have the 11 ft. screen and all the other good stuff (including a BBQ and a tailgate tent starting out on Friday evening. This weekend just keeps getting better.)