On the Road Again

“So to take a picture, the camera has to be on …”

- Our friend Julie, explaining what she has recently learned about digital cameras.

So my vacation schedule over the last year or so closely resembles a Super Bowl schedule. I seem to be rotating through a few choice cities instead of visiting the entire U.S. Like the Super Bowls always seem to be held in either New Orleans, Miami and San Diego (which in German of course means whale’s vagina) – I find myself constantly in Vegas, Chicago or Kansas.

That means it’s Super Bowl time. It’s time for a road trip to Lawrence, Kansas!

On Thursday, Ryan (my best friend and roommate), Bryn (Ryan’s girlfriend), Jasmine (a friend of ours), and I will be making the thrilling 8-hour drive across I-70 to visit my alma mater, the University of Kansas. The plan is to hit Lawrence on Thursday night, spend Friday in Kansas City - gambling, checking out the town, eating, drinking, etc., returning back to Lawrence on Saturday for the Kansas/Nebraska football game, and then heading home to Denver on Sunday.

As I continue to polish my travel writing skills in preparation for my dream job at a travel magazine (and of course the subsequent Pulitzer Prize), I will be keeping a running journal of the trips’ events and posting them when I return. You won’t want to miss it.

Before that though, there are a few things you should know about Kansas trips:

- It’s really, really cheap

One of the reasons we go to Lawrence so often is because it only takes 2 ½ tanks of gas to get there, the hotel split 4 ways for 3 nights is very reasonable, the food is inexpensive (for example, $4.75 for a personal pan pizza and a coke at a ridiculously good pizza place called “Pizza Shuttle”) and you can get drunk on $15-20 a night – I’m not exaggerating. It’s like visiting Vegas during the 70’s.

- A lot of drinking takes place

What do you get when you take 4 fun people from one mile above sea level, bring them down to sea level, stick them in a college town, give them really cheap alcohol prices, and throw-in a rowdy 20-something crowd and an exciting sports atmosphere? The perfect equation for three straight nights of drinking and debauchery. I don’t have any stats to back this up, but we may actually drink more, per ounce, during a Kansas trip than a Vegas trip. Yikes.

- I have the greatest friends in the world, in no small part because they have all embraced the Jayhawks

Usually Kansas trips are planned around 1) home basketball games 2) huge basketball games on TV, in which there is no better place to watch the game other than a Lawrence bar 3) a home football game. Jayhawk sporting events are usually a good time all around and despite the fact none of my friends went to KU, they all pretty much root and support the Jayhawks as much as any student or alumni - so a Lawrence trip is sort of a rite of passage. Which, speaking of …

- I am worried about Bryn and Jasmine

This will be Bryn and Jasmine’s first trip to Lawrence. Judging by Bryn’s drinking performance on her birthday, and Jasmine’s drinking exhibition at the Katrina Drink-a-thon, this could be a rough 4 days/3 nights for those two young ladies - and for different reasons:

In Jasmine’s case; she has a serious weak spot for the boys, which only gets worse (or better if you are on the receiving end of her, um, generosity) when she drinks. If you don’t believe me, scan the archives of her blog for her testimonials. As I stated before, we will be drinking a ton and Lawrence has an ample supply of frat guys, punk rock guys, and guys in clever t-shirts – pretty much Jasmine’s entire target audience. At this point in Jasmine’s dating career, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens. She could have: a sophomore, a junior, and a senior; a blond, a redhead, and a brunette; a guard, a forward, and an assistant head coach; a professor, the mayor, and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, on consecutive nights and I wouldn’t be fazed.

In Bryn’s case; she weighs like 90 pounds and will be drinking her weight in ounces of beer - think about how profound that is for a second. On Saturday night, in just an hour and a half, Bryn drank enough that caused her to puke all over the side of her red Ford Focus and be a waste of space the next day. In an hour and a half! What is going to happen when she needs to do that for 4 or 5 hours straight for three consecutive nights? Will she do her best Frank the Tank impression from Old School and go streaking? Will she sing the classic “You Turn Me On” song from Leaving Las Vegas? Who knows? If you have a moment, please send your thoughts and prayers, c/o Bryn, to the deity of your choice.

Remember the scene in Airplane!, when the flight attendant is asking the passengers over the intercom if there is a doctor on board, at the same time the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot are being dragged down the aisle of the plane, as the passengers look-on in horror. Well, by the end of the weekend, there is a very good possibility that Ryan and I could be requesting a doctor, while dragging Bryn and Jasmine’s bodies out of the state of Kansas, as a bunch of terrified farmers look-on in horror.

Stay tuned to find out.