Road Trip Recap
Note: This is a personal post, and not related to my work as a developer, startups, or normal content on this blog. Last month, I took a road trip of a lifetime with some great friends of mine. The trip spanned a grand total of 2,293 miles, which we did over the course of 4 days. If you want to check out the exact route, here it is. We took a road trip to watch my USF Bulls take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, in South Bend. By all accounts, things went pretty well. Despite the historic win, the trip itself was an adventure itself.
The Setup
We rented a Toyota Prius for our cross country adventure, which was extremely comfortable, and insanely fuel efficient. We setup wifi tethering, my cousin installed a 400 watt power converter, and we added a power strip to support all devices. I also wrote a little web application to transmit my GPS signal so that my friends & family could follow along. We ran 3 laptops, charged 4 phones, and a tablet during the trip. During the course of the trip I pushed closed to 3000 lines of code, watched a few movies, and streamed my internet playlists round the clock.
The Unknown
We hopped in the car from Tampa on Thursday evening. We had two plans, make it to Notre Dame by 3:30 kick off on Saturday, and stop in Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniels distillery. We had no hotels, no plans for food, a sense of adventure and a slight disregard for personal hygiene. After briefly stopping by in Downtown to Atlanta, we made it to Chattanooga near 3am and quickly hit passed out. The next morning we were out the door at 9am on our way to the Jack Daniels distillery. Tennessee is a beautiful state, and driving through the blue ridge mountains was really enjoyable. My roommate Nick loved it so much, he got us lost and we drove around until I got us back on track. The distillery itself was amazing, and really made me appreciate the depth of work that goes into producing Jack. Having brewed my own beer before, I loved the smell of barley and corn that wafted through the air. After trying to steal a 500lb barrell of whiskey, we bought a commemorative bottle and hit the road to Nashville. In Nashville, we pulled over for lunch at a place called Burger Up, thanks to a tip from a twitter friend. Burger Up turned out to be the best burger I have ever had in my life. If you’re ever in Nashville, make the stop. Their burgers are good enough to convert vegetarians.
The Win
Notre Dame really is one of the premier places to watch a game in the country. Having been to games at FSU, UF, and the Big House (all of which I consider top ten stadiums in the US) Notre Dame trumps them all. The football culture coupled with the beautiful campus make it a must see for any football fan. Their fans are probably the classiest in the country as well (you could call them the anti-UCF fans). Despite almost having the game canceled twice due to huge storms, it was a great win, and a wonderful time, and as always, go Bulls.
Sounds like a fun trip. The longest football road trip I’ve been on was to Baton Rouge for LSU. There was a huge traffic jam on I-10 so all the cars were stopped dead, and the fraternity and sorority buses pulled over on the side of the road. The guy who was driving us pulled over behind one of the fraternity buses I got out and did a keg stand on the side of the highway waiting for the traffic jam to be over.
I am officially excited for coming up to Jacksonville.
Ooh, thanks for the tip. I’m going to be in Nashville next week and seeing Lindsay too. Hope you’re doing well, Toni!
If ever there was a car on the road that yelled “GEEKS!”. your must have been it. Looks like a fun trip, I’m glad you didn’t get caught up as human sacrifice in the rally in Indiana.
That rally was definitely the scariest moment of the trip