A few weeks ago, I went to Nashville with a central goal in mind-see the Badgers beat Auburn in the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl.
But I had other hopes for the trip, personal objectives aside from watching our football team win the bowl game with the second funniest name (congrats, Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl).
Foremost of these aims was to maintain warm relations with my trip mates.
That goal probably seems trivial and easily accomplished for the meek and uncritical and sober. But you are not me, and when Pat pulled into my driveway, I knew we would need to be charitable with each other, mostly because we are so similar.
Pat and I share the character-defining trait of indiscriminate talking. Both of us can go for months without keeping a thought to ourselves. Dropping Pat and me into a Honda Civic headed for St. Louis is like putting two ostriches in a phone booth together for five hours--it looks a lot like fighting, but is actually just us being us.
Five hours later, when we did arrive in St. Louis, I think I can say without offending Pat that while we had not fought, we were ready for some new people to get into the car.
From St. Louis to Nashville we were joined by another Dan, our first Alan and four others in a trailing car.
Alan is fairly quiet and thoughtful. He was a blessed ingredient in a car filled with Pat's stream-of-consciousness inside joking, my unnecessarily profane ruminations on Illinois's lack of hills and valleys and Dan's frequent outbursts following the tune of the apparently never-ending guitar solo playing in his head.
In addition to weird guitar noises and a friendly demeanor, Dan added symmetry. He, like me, is not little.
About 200 miles out of St. Louis we decided Dan and I needed to sit diagonal to one another after the women in the trailer car pointed out that with all the Dans on one side, the car was one not-so-sharp turn from riding on two wheels.
By Nashville, I was proudly still running in line with my goal of not butting heads with any of my friends and trip mates.
That objective was a crucial part of my other goal--to have a good time in a totally unfamiliar city.
I clearly wasn't alone in this aim.
Like Vikings with credit cards traveling in minivans, Badger fans took over downtown Nashville. We were generous and profitable, and when we left, we didn't burn anything down or steal anybody's daughter.
And it was, indeed, a great time. The first night ended with Wild Turkey and a country singer wandering around on a bar proclaiming himself a master of country music of the PG, or \pre-Garth,"" era.
The next night marked my first New Year's Eve celebration of the post-Garth era outside of Southern Wisconsin.
The highlight of that evening was watching Pat invite everyone in the bar back to our hotel to drink beer that wasn't there and soak in our five square foot hot tub.
They never showed. Go figure.
Early morning hotel party or not, I had a great time. The roadtrip was a success--even if I never watched the Badgers beat Auburn.
Dan is a senior majoring in journalism. He can be reached at dlhinkel@wisc.edu.
