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we are still alive. just really behind. currently in Chicago.

possible mega-ultra-recap-post in near future. otherwise, we'll see you in NYC.


-jerone

And what a birthday it was!

So we make it into Scottsdale, AZ on Friday night and pull into the cul de sac (that's right, I said cul de sac) of Mr. John Mineiri and his lovely wife Nancy. We are greeted with a sign in their front garden reading "Reality Time-out Bus Parking" in true Mineiri fashion. Everyone should know that we often call Mr. John Mineiri "John MacGyver" because he is just that...a superhuman who can run up mountains and fix our leaky bus with duct tape and a match. Anyway, Rob was looking forward to going on a hike with Mr. MacGyver and then hitting the Scottsdale bars more than he was looking forward to his new Brianna Banks video. So at the crack of dawn (or ass crack of dawn as Jerone usually says) we woke up to embark up Tom's Thumb...it's not what it sounds like...Tom's Thumb is a mountain in the outskirts of Scottsdale. As Mr. MacGyver ran up the mountain, we attempted to keep up and successfully made it to the summit. Taking in a gorgeous view for 10 minutes at the summit and with no water breaks on the way up or down, the 4 of us destroyed the Thumb. We tried to go to a cool water-park afterwards, but it was closed...so Mr. Mineiri took us to the next best thing: Dos Gringos Bar. We did a midday barcrawl, and due to our dehydration from climbing a mountain, we were a bit drunk to say the least by 3pm. We returned to the Mineiri's to power nap, and woke up to sizzling steaks and mashed potatoes. After rejuvenating ourselves with food, we attempted to rally for the night out.
Starting with a redbull vodka, we began the birthday fest at a cool club known as six (or nine upside down). We began a new pubcrawl and hit about 4 places before returning to six. Yah, I don't remember much else, but I do have a spectacular image of Abhi doing his headshake breaking-neck-dance and, once again, getting the hottest girl in the club to dance with him. Waking up was, for lack of a better word, excruciating, but we were able to get up in time to go inner-tubing (or inter-tubing as Jerone usually says) once again. We headed out to the Salt River for our second tubing adventure of the trip. We packed our cooler full of beers (and cantaloupe?...Abhi's idea, go figure) and headed down the 2 hour long journey. We ran into a bunch of different characters, but my favorite one was the lady who asked Abhi if he had ever seen the movie Harold and Kumar. We all kind of looked at each other open jawed to see if she was taking it where we thought she was...and she did. She followed up this statement with a number of inappropriate black jokes which made us more puzzled at where she came from. Regardless, we had a blast tubing and headed up to Sedona to visit another one of Rob's family friends with a daughter...ahem.
Sedona was gorgeous and we really just walked around town, getting cool gifts for people and followed it up with a beautiful hike down to a river for swimming. The water was cool and the mountains were breathtakingly striking with the sunset's reflection on the already flame-red rock...that was the most ridiculous sounding sentence I could've written, but you get it...it was beautiful. We ate like kings with the DePasquales (Rob's family friends) and headed out that night to the grandest canyon of them all: The Grand Canyon. That's it for now, but a preview of things to come: We're in VEGAS!!!
-The Cap

Roofus develops some bad habits

So leaving Dallas at rush hour made our trip from there to Silver City New Mexico a solid 11 hour drive. This was made all the more ridiculous by our 6 PM to 5 AM time frame(seriously Herzog, Odessa?). We rolled into the campground and proceeded to sleep off the road-weary for a couple hours till the blazing New Mexican sun sweated us out of our sleep. Now every parent tells their child to "do as i say, not as I do". Unfortunately our baby bus Roofus chose the latter and picked up some of our bad habits. In addition to the aforementioned leaking of rainwater, during our fairly rough and curvy drive to the Gila Indian Caves, Roofus chose that moment to start smoking, heavily, from the engine. Not good. We put our engineering degrees to work, opened up the hood, hemmed and hawed until a passing motorist pointed out that we were bone dry on coolant. A trip to town, 30 bucks of coolant, 4 surplus army jackets, and a delicious meal with a delicious waitress later we were back on the road to the cliffs. Roofus then proceeded to start smoking again, this time from the wheels. Again, engineers to the rescue. We stopped the car, poured some water on it, and haven't been bothered since. After a short hike to the awesomely sweet Gila caves we showered up and tried to go out in Silver city. Two things impeded this. 1: trying to find anywhere that was open after 9 PM. This includes restaurants, bars, and foodstores. 2: every fucking idiot in a pick-up that drove by seemed to want to fight us, seriously, everyone. Now wanting to dirty our knuckles in a round of fisticuffs, we choose to head back to our campground and get shitfaced watching the stars.
The following day we set out to hike the nearby catwalk on our way to Scottsdale. What's the catwalk you say? We never found out. 4 Miles away from our destination Roofus proceeded dump gallons of neon-green coolant and again, start smoking from the engine. So inventory of Bus problems: leaks water in the rain, dashlights don't work so we can't read our speed at night, leaks coolant, can't fill up gas very fast or it spills from....somewhere. We weighed our options, decided against spending another night in Silver City, made a heroic drive to Arizona stopping every hour or so to refill coolant, and arrived just in time for Herzog's bday.

Sooooo...they have finally forced me to post on the blog. Not that I dont love all of you (truth be told, i'm not even sure I know everyone who is reading this), but I have tried my best to stay away from emails, phones, etc. That being said, let me do my best to fill you in on the rest of our Texas experience.
After floating the river with the Mexican we got word that my buddy Bernie was visiting another friend of mine (Joe Johnson) in San Antonio. If you want to learn where the Texan stereotype is fulfilled, meet Joe Johnson. Joe met up with us and led us back to his place which was beautiful. After showing us around Andrew and Jerone immediately made themselves comfortable in his movie theater. Abhi and I paddled around in the pool with Bernie, Joe, and his little brother. After hanging out for a while the Johnsons took us out to a great Mexican meal. We strolled around the Alamo and Andrew took another 4,000 pictures of himself in front of another famous building. Fast forward through another night of partying and we find ourselves being sent off from the Johnsons after having a great breakfast, having our bus looked at, and a cooler full of fresh venison sausage, jerky, and salami. All from animals murdered by Mr. Joe Johnson himself. All were delicious and VERY helpful later in the trip...story to come...
As we left San Antonio we headed to Dallas so I could meet up with my buddy from High School. I used to be best friends with this guy Nick but he left H.S. after freshman year and I really havent spoken with him until now. We didnt get to his place until 9ish at night. We ran through the shower drill as usual and spoke with his rents/cousin. His mom cooked us a BOMB meal and we ate as much as we can, only leaving leftovers because we knew we would be back from it later in the night. Nick took us out with a couple of his buddies who were really chill to a local bar. Interestingly enough, Texas cards (and has bouncers) EVERY night of the week. Needless to say, Mona would NEVER have made it in TX. Being that I have not seen this guy in a while, we all shot for the stars. We got absolutely hammered. Once the bars closed down we went back to the bus to drink/smoke for a few more hours. We were sitting on the roof, beers in hand for a while then realized we should probably get down when Nick fell through the emercency exit and crushed all of our food products. To cap off the night Abhi takes off his shirt, gets the biggest firecracker we had (3 ft long) and runs into the median of this highway road. Immediately Jerone and I realized our friend was about to blow off his hand but we also realized he was not goign to give up so we told him he could keep his shirt off and light the firecracker so long as it was planted in the ground. If you are asking yourself 'where was andrew during all of this?" ...he was cheering Abhi on. The firecracker goes off, we go to sleep, wake up, eat a savage burger and cheese fries and head out. Side note: Everyday Italian is a GREAT show. We could not leave until we watched a few episodes.
Texas was really good to us but once we hit the road we wanted nothing more than to get out of TX. This was not an easy task because TX is fucking HUGE. Not to mention, Andrew wanted to stop in Odessa to see the "stadium" from Friday Night Lights. We got there in the middle of the night, pulled into the parking lot only to realize that this "stadium" was a low-end H.S. football field. This was the most ridiculous stop we have made yet. TO celebrate we had an Andrew Herzog photoshoot then gunned it as far as we could, leaving us in New Mexico. The drive was rough. We all drove and in total we made it over 500 miles straight through the night.
There you have it, my first blog post. Post something witty to show that someone is reading. More stories to come...
Best
RC

a/j banner refresh

I'm thinking we'll change the banner each week... yeah? hence the retirement of "banner A," posted here for our records.

-jerone

Floatin, Floatin, Floatin down a River

As if Roel had already not helped us out enough in guiding us through Texas, he proceeded to lead us to New Braunfels, TX which is home to the greatest invention known to mankind since our bus...floating the river. We drive for awhile south towards San Antonio, and come upon the town of New Braunfels where they offer inner tube-ing down a number of rivers. A couple rights and lefts brought us to the parking lot where one can rent an inner tube (for both oneself and one's beer...that's right, they have inner tubes for beer). We proceed to get our tubes and hop into the cool, crisp, light green river for our day of floating. It was very difficult work, sitting in the inner tube and letting the current carry us, but we got through it. Along the river are a couple of "tube chutes" that are amazing whitewater rapid-like chutes. We, of course, linked arms and went down the chutes together...and all flipped over together. The entire float took about two hours at which point we had to reluctantly get off of the river and into a shuttle bus to take us back. I would VERY highly recommend doing this activity to anyone who is hanging out around San Antonio or Austin; it is just shy of heaven. That's it for now, but here's a short preview of what's to come on our blog: our bus, named Rufus or Bruticus, has finally hit a roadblock and overheats because it goes through antifreeze faster than Jerone goes through hard liquor!
-Cap'n

After going to prison, we broke into Darrell K. Royal Stadium

All I have to say is TEXAS...FIGHT! After going to prison "just the four of us" all made it to Houston, TX to meet up with our friend Roel Garcia. After eating our first of many meals at "Whataburger" we met up with Roel at his home, ditched the bus, went into our 30 min planned routine of showers and changing, and headed out for the night. We set out to have a nighttime tour of the city and also wanted to meet up with one of Rob's good friends, Shannon at a snazzy bar in midtown Houston. We all got to the bar and immediately ordered beers (because I guess they drink beer in Texas?). We successfully linked up with Shannon, realized we were too tired to keep drinking, so we told her we'd meet up the next day. Roel gave us a wonderful driving display of the very spread out neighborhoods of Houston, and per my request, showed us all of the stadiums in the city. Although Rob, Jerone, and Abhi were completely passed out for the tour, I know they enjoyed it.
Bright and early the next morning (1pm) we set out for Austin, TX in order to find the burnt orange in all of us and see the lovely campus of UT. On the way, Roel made sure that we stopped in the Southside Market which is home to the Elgin Hot Sausage. If that sounds ridiculous to you, let me assure you, it isn't. This sausage was just about the most flavorful sausage any of us have ever eaten (except maybe Abhi, what?)...in all seriousness, this is the best BBQ, and if you're ever going to Austin, swing by the Southside Market in Elgin, TX...mmmmm. Upon arrival in Austin, we realized that our lovely host Cathleen would not be able to meet up with us until late, so we began touring the campus. Immediately I asked Roel where the stadium was, and he assured me we'd get there. After a lovely walk, we moseyed our way over to the gigantic Darrell K. Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium. What a sight. Our crew had our hearts set on getting onto the field despite large construction going on in the stadium (and the stadium being closed during the summer). But would that stop us? Oh no...we successfully located an open door to the stadium (that was clearly a maintenance door) and immediately went into James Bond-stealth mode (Jerone went into ninja mode, but it was comparable). After noticing the sign that said "roof access" we began our ascent up 10 flights of stairs. We got to the 11th floor, and sure enough, we were on the roof level of the stadium. We walked around for awhile up there, took some pictures, but still no access to the field or seats. At least one hour later, we were still opening every door we could find, walking into every locker room, and sneaking around every corner just to get onto the field. Eventually we wandered into the construction zone and after Abhi wheeled around the ramps of the stadium with an office chair he found, we realized that we would not be able to get on the field. That pretty much concluded our campus tour, so shifted our focus to our night out in Austin. From what I can remember, the two highlights of the night were 1)Taking flaming doctor pepper shots that consisted of the bartender blowing fire over all of the glasses from his mouth and singeing our eyebrow hair and 2) A wet t-shirt contest with all Austin locals? Anyway, all in all Houston and Austin were a blast and were a great start to our Texas chapter of this trip.

We go to Prison

So moving on from the last post, Nawlins still has a lot to it's name. After much research we've concluded that the downtown and French Quarter are as bumpin as they've ever been. Also, I think I'm going to stop saying Nawlins because after a couple days here, not one person has understood that "Nawlins" refers to their city. Anyways, before I forget I must point out the single greatest factor contributing to the party-icity of N.O.; no open container laws. This manifests itself in the delightful tradition of buying the largest drink you can carry at the cheapest bar, than carrying it down the street to the place with the best music. Our favorite of the latter category: Pat O'Brian's Piano Bar. Here two pianists (heehee) playing giant copper plated pianos will sing the song of your choice. We did have to leave after drunkenly singing along to our own request of "Just the Four of Us". We even had a Mardi Gras-esque moment when some people on the balconies kept waving beads and hollering at us. At least thats what Rob claimed when we turned around to find him shirtless. Leaving the debauchery behind we set out on a loooong drive to Houston by way of the Angola State Prison. Figuring that we'd try the easy way to prison we decided to pay a visit to one of the most storied penitentiaries in American History. What drew us here was the famous Angola Prison Rodeo(check out the rodeo events). Though it was out of season the lady in the prison museum was nice enough to keep the museum open late for us as well as show us a video of the Rodeo's "Greatest Hits". It's hard to describe the moral roller-coaster that goes with watching a convicted murderer get gored by a ginormous longhorn. The rest of the museum was equally morbid with long exhibits on failed and successful escape attempts and the bloodshed each entailed while the prisoner-built hearse loomed in the background. After Andrew bought some prisoner-made hot sauce at the gift shop we headed out to Houston. All in all, prison wasn't so bad.

-abhi

Nawlins, Raw

So it's been a couple of days but hey, life moves slow down here. We've been in nawlins for the past couple days and it's been both real fun as well as just plain real. Rob's cousin Chris has been our host with the most these past couple days. In addition to letting us crash with him he's also been driving us around town to show us the city. Let me just say goddamn. If y'all though reconstruction on Ground Zero was moving slowly, take a look at the lower 9th ward in N.O. Since we didn't really want to be tragedy tourists we didn't take a lot of pictures. Take it from us though, parts of the city look like scenes from "28 Weeks Later". I'm talking handmade street signs, blocks with maybe 2 out of 50 houses occupied, closed gas stations still displaying $2.00 gas from years ago, abandoned houses with "3 dead cats, 1 trapped dog" spray-painted on the doors. Chris kept pointing out what looked like open fields but proved to be old neighborhoods, recognizable only by the remnants of the foundations. Speaking of, Chris had some completely insane stories from his work gutting damaged houses. Among his finds: roofs hacked through from the inside by those seeking to escape the water, photo albums by the dozens, a pearl-handled .38 revolver, tons of creepy waterlogged catholic imagery, living room furniture floated onto roofs, and memorably, a kitten. The dissonance between the gravity of the current situation and our lack of awareness was quite disconcerting. The partying (which we'll cover later) was great but the devastation of the 9th ward is what will stay with us.

-abhi

New Orleans

we made it to NEW ORLEANS...WOOOOOOO!!!!! In all seriousness, though, I am extremely happy that we made it here considering that when we first began the trip, the bus was shaking after we floored it from 0-60 in 25 seconds. People have been more than hospitible and kind...and suprisingly, nobody that we have stayed with has laughed in our faces at the bus. Oh yah, and it gets really, really hot in the South. I'm talking boyband hot.
-The Cap (tain Zog)

Nawlins (New Orleans).

We just got into Nawlins a few hours ago. We will be staying with Rob's aunt out here for two nights. Unless we change our minds.

Now some statistics (harper's index style) for any interested parties:

99% ... chance of finding at least 1 shirtless individual on the bus at any given time

85% ... chance of finding at least 2 shirtless individuals on the bus at any given time

75% ... chance of finding at lease 3 shirtless individuals on the bus at any given time

65% ... chance of finding all four of us sitting around shirtless on the bus at any given time

12.24 ... cumulative liters of sweat perspired by Rob and Andrew (1.75 liters daily)

1 ... night of sober sleep since the trip began

1563 ... total miles driven thusfar

11 ... states passed through (counting NY)

10 ... states visited (sorry Delaware)

2 ... bottle rockets fired out of a moving vehicle

1 ... burnt Andrew finger as a result of firing bottle rockets out of a moving vehicle

659 ... times "fuck! it's fucking hot!" uttered in the bus

25% ... of total bus population contends a good possible name for the bus could be "The Enterprise" (subhead "boldly going.") (75% of total bus population ignorantly opposes me...er...him.)

50% ... of total bus population seems to think Rufus, or the "roofie-mobile" for short, is somehow an acceptable alternative

3/4 ... of bus population uses a purple or pink toothbrush. peculiar.

54.54% ... fabricated and partially fabricated statistics for our blog

3 ... leaks in the roof of the bus

4,563 ... insect carcasses plastered on the front of the bus

100% ... satisfaction rating for the road trip so far.



And now, a recap since Atlanta pt. 1, aptly titled...

Atlanta pt. 2 (followed by all the other stuff after Atlanta):

The headlights and tires were indeed fixed. However, the leaks in the roof, lightless console, and heat-spewing-a/c appear to be hopeless endeavors.

We set off to explore Atlanta for the day, with Abhi's exuberant and very pregnant cousin Shri as our guide. Andrew really wanted to check out the World of Coke. Despite weak attempts to fend him off, we ended up going anyway (I wanted to see the aquarium). It turned out to be quite a bit more than anyone bargained for. While Andrew maintains that he "thought it was going to be the actual factory," it was a no more than grandiose and meticulously plotted propaganda machine whose sole aim was the indoctrination of innocent youngsters into a Coca-Cola-consuming-robot culture. (more on this later, perhaps)

Afterwards, we went over to Emory to meet with one of Abhi's highschool friends, Mick Larson (brother of Jay Larson, with whom we stayed in Durham, NC). We went to a local blues joint called Maddy's (near Emory) to meet with Ajay, Ami, and Kavia (Abhis cousin-in-law, niece, and cousin, respectively) and ate some devastatingly delicious ribs. We had a couple of pitchers of a local brew called Sweetwater that we thoroughly enjoyed and then made the blues band come back to our bus to sign the map. Later that night we did the usual shenanigans (went to a bar called Fontaine's(?) ) and ended up passed out in assorted locations around Mick's house and driveway. Quote of the evening-- Rob, half jesting: "I know I'm eye candy. I don't care for what sex."

The next day (yesterday) we woke up early and drove out to Birmingham, Alabama. We were greeted by Sharonda and her friend Helen, who took us to eat at a bbq place called Dreamland (more delicious ribs). Then we checked out the 16th Street Baptist church, which we found very moving. The church is an incredibly powerful civil rights monument (more on this later, perhaps). We also paid a visit to the world's largest cast-iron statue, Vulcan. Meh. Although we were supposed to spend the night with Sharonda, we realized that we hadn't had a chance to see much of the more rural backcountry around here. So, after some discussions in the early afternoon, we decided to truck it out to Mississippi for the evening. We looked up a campground that was semi-on-the-way to New Orleans and hopped back on the bus. After taking a quick dinner break for some local fast food (Milo's), we were soon coasting down a quiet country road in Quitman, Mississippi. We eventually found the campgrounds and staked out a spot right near a small lake. Possibly the best nighttime drive ever.

This morning we packed up and set off for New Orleans, which is where we are now.

That concludes this update.

-jerone

Atlanta.

After nearly a week, I am happy to announce that we are now kind of sort of vaguely getting our shit together. This blog, for one thing, but also (and more importantly) the status of our bus and our schedule. On Saturday (in DC) we finally got our temporary license (which will cover us for the remainder of the trip). By tonight, we will have hopefully have both headlights and new tires (apparently it was a miracle that the tires we'd been using hadn't blown apart on us). Unfortunately, we have yet to fix the air conditioning. While just sweating it out hasn't been so unbearable thusfar (shirts are extremely optional), the impending trek westward might require some sort of cooling system to keep the four of us from melting. Also, the console light does not work, which means at night the driver has no idea how fast he is going. Very safe, especially when the bus' alignment is completely fucked. Lastly, we're estimating the mileage of our home-on-wheels to be about 10 mpg. But honestly, seriously, legitimately? The bus is fan-fucking-tastic. (see photos)

Now, a quick recap of the trip so far:

After leaving Rob's place on the 31st (after an incredibly inebriated send-off party hosted by the ever hospitable Cohans) we drove down to the Jersey shore to stay with Rob's fantastic grandma for two nights (jersey boardwalk, seashells, & shuffleboard). The next day, we drove to Baltimore for a huge Maryland-crabcake-lunch and a trip to the aquarium before finishing the evening in DC with Glenna Smith and her fantastically hospitable family. After oversleeping our intended departure time by several hours (caused by the extremely messy night prior), on Sunday we drove down to Durham through pouring rain. Then, Yesterday we drove 6 hours to Georgia, which is where we are right now.

For anyone interested, here's our tentative schedule for the next several days:

Tuesday, 5: Atlanta
Wendesday, 6: Atlanta --> Birmingham
Thursday, 7: Birmingham --> Nawlens
Friday, 8: Nawlens
Saturday, 9: Nawlens --> Houston
Sunday, 10: Houston --> Austin

That's it for now! We'll hopefully be more vigilant in updating this Blog in the days to come.
Also, if you dont hear from us for more than 5 days please contact the authorities.

-Jerone

we made it to the JERSEY SHORE...WOOOOOOO!!!!!