The Adventures of Ben & Bear

As I mentioned in the previous post, Ben and I traveled across the country to Ft. Benning, Georgia because Ben had to report to the first phase of his officer training. So, he drove down from Ft. Lewis, Washington to hit up San Luis one last time for awhile and then we took off on our adventure.

Day 1 - Monday

We planned on leaving to go down to Ben's house in Claremont at around 1000 but we slept a little later than expected because the weekend caught up to us. We eventually hit the road around 1130 or so and made our way down south. It took us about 4.5 hours because of traffic in Santa Barbara and LA but all in all an uneventful trip. Went out to dinner with his family in Balboa. We went to PJ's; real good pizza and beer. Towards the end of dinner I started following the UCLA/Tennessee on my phone. After dinner we headed out to Balboa Island to check out the houses and get coffee. The houses over there are awesome. As we walked by Ben and I would stop at every house that had the football game and watch for about five minutes. Then we would catch up to his family and find the next house to watch. It made it real exciting to watch the game, especially when it went to overtime. Tennessee eventually lost, :( but it was a good game.

Day 2 - Tuesday

Tuesday was a lazy day. Ben and I sat around his house just watching TV and getting ready for our trip. We changed our destination plans about 10 times because of the hurricane and women, yes women. Our final plan was to hit Las Cruces, Austin, Nashville, and then Ft. Benning. We hit the sack early to get ready for our departure.

Day 3 - Wednesday

We got up around 0630 to be ready to leave by 0800. Ben's mom cooked us a great breakfast of eggs and bacon, we packed the car, and headed off. About one block in, Ben realized he forgot his Bluetooth so we had to turn back for that. We hoped that would not be an omen for the entire trip. We headed out I-10, which we would be on until about Austin. We hit traffic in Redlands area because a burned up Brinks truck. I would later hear that someone in the same traffic jam had seen bullet holes in the truck and that it was stolen. Who knows, but cool story.

Our trip was sponsored by Red Bull, David Sunflower Seeds, Aquafina water, and Wintergreen Lifesavers.

Well, we drove through a lot of desert. Arizona had some pretty parts to it. We stopped for lunch in Phoniex at a BBQ place called El Paso BBQ. (Our goal was to eat at places we have never heard of and preferably non-chain restaurants) It was really good food. They had jalapeno corn bread. We almost felt like hanging out there for a few days that food was so good. But, we hit the road again, headed to New Mexico. Let me tell you. New Mexico is nothing special. At one gas station we stopped out, there was absolutely no one there; at 1900. The pumps were working so we filled up, but is was scary. It felt like we were about to become the opening scene of the Hills Have Eyes III. There was also a car that had about 10 cop and boarder patrol agent cars around it. We think that they busted coyote trying to run illegals across the boarder.

We finally arrived in Las Cruces around 2100, checked into our hotel, and looked for a place to eat dinner. We were pretty full from lunch so it was alright that the only thing open was a place with just bar food. The place was called Farley's and it was pretty cool. Kind of like Applebees but a little better. For some reason though, they were huge Steelers fans; in New Mexico. It was a little baffling. After we had some bomb nachos and good beer, we headed back to the hotel to get sleep for the next leg of our trip.

Day 4 - Thursday

We left the hotel at around 0630 to allow ourselves more time in Austin. After hitting El Paso, there was absolutely nothing until we got about an hour outside of Austin. That part of Texas is boring and long. It is so empty that the speed limit is 80 mph. We saw tons of roadkill and got stopped at a boarder patrol checkpoint. Nothing too exciting happened during this leg because there was nothing around us. We got into Austin at around 1700. We checked into our hotel and then took a walk downtown. We was the capital building, 6th street (with all the bars), and the Colorado River at the south end of downtown.

We ate dinner at a BBQ place called Stubs. They had some good food too. I drank Lone Star beer. The state beer of Texas. I actually like it more than Coors Light. We watched the Giants vs Redskins game at the restaurant and met a guy who lived in Austin. He told of a couple of places to hit up to line dance and have fun. So, we headed back to the room to change and headed out at around 2200. The first place we went to was the Broken Spoke. It was an old fashion honky-tonk. The did nothing but two step and a few swing dances. They did not allow any actual line dances. It was a great atmosphere though. People were nice, but it was a little older crowd. After Ben danced with a couple older women, we decided to head to a place with people our own age. We took a cab to the Midnight Rodeo, or as the locals call it, Midnight Rope-a-Hoe. It was a crowd of people our age and it was huge. It was a little like a mix between the Grad on a Wednesday night, hip-hop, and the Grad on Thursdays, line dancing. It was a lot of fun and we met some interesting people; a couple of Longhorn girls, arena football players, and soldiers from Ft. Hood. We closed down the bar and dreaded getting up the next day to drive 14 hours to Nashville.

Day 5 - Friday

We got up at around 0800 on Friday morning, feeling the effects of the previous evenings activities. We jumped in the car to start moving and stopped for breakfast a little north of Austin. It was a small hole in the wall BBQ that has some good breakfast tacos. After getting some good grease in our stomachs we head back on the road. This was going to be our longest leg of the trip. It took us by Dallas and then we stopped at some random western wear place to check it out. Ben got a hat band and we kept moving. We passed through Texarkana on the Texas/Arkansas border. The drive through Arkansas was pretty uneventful as well. It was green but I really wasn't impressed by Arkansas. We finally passed over the mighty Mississippi in Memphis. It was beautiful. We were hungry because we didn't eat lunch so we looked for a BBQ place in town. Our GPS took us through a scary part of the city to a place that did not exist. So we moved a little north and found a place in a safer neighborhood. The food was good like every place we had been before. We talked to the waitress for a while and she said we should got out with her and her friends but we told them we were headed to Nashville. We still had a three hour drive ahead of us. The last part of Friday felt like it took 10 hours. It was dark and I really could only see the road and the cars around us. We arrived at our hotel in Nashville at around 0100 in the morning. We checked in and went straight to bed, knowing we had all day to explore the city.

Day 6 - Saturday

Because we had gotten up so early the day before, we slept in till about 1000 on Saturday. We then got up and decided to walk downtown. We hit up the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was awesome. Got to see the progression of country music, see cool memorabilia, and listen to some good stuff. Ben and I both got a shirt to remember the trip by. We then walked around Broadway. This street is awesome. Every five feet there is a bar or honky-tonk that has live music, good food, and great people. We stopped in to a few western wear stores and got new cowboy hats. We also went into a boot place that was having a sale on cowboy boots. It was buy one get two free. Yeah! Buy one pair of boots and get another two for nothing. So, Ben and I chipped in together and got some boots. Ben got 2 pairs and I got a pair of $300 boots. That's $900 worth of boots for $300. That is a steal. The are freakin' nice too. After that we ate lunch another great BBQ place that had Peyton Manning's University of Tennessee jersey on the wall.

We headed back to our room to drop of our stuff and take a power nap before we went out for the evening. Around 1900 we went back out dressed for the evening. We were in search of a bar or restaurant that would be showing the UFC fight. Our hometown hero Chuck Liddell was fighting. After a couple of places saying that no one would show that in town we found one. We paid the $5 cover and went upstairs and waited. We were about an hour and a half early for the fight so we watched a little college football and got to know the people around us. Of course being who we are, Ben and I talked up Chuck and how he was going to dominate the fight. His fight rolled around and we were cheering our guts out. Until the fatal punch. Chuck took one right on the chin that knocked him harder than I have ever seen him get hit. Ben and I looked at each other with open mouths. We needed to leave now!

We headed back onto the strip and jumped in one of the honky-tonks. We met two bachelorette parties and hung out with them for a while. We then moved to another bar and stayed there till closing, 0300. Again we made friends easily and partied with our third group of girls there for a bachelorette party. As the night drew to a close we walked back to our hotel room and crashed, dreading the drive down to Georgia.

Day 7 - Sunday

We planned on being out of the room by 0900. We woke up; again feeling the effects of the night before worse than ever. We both took showers and were getting ready to go when Ben found out he did not have to report till midnight. That gave us plenty of time to make the 5.5 hour drive. So we made the decision to go back to sleep for a few more hours. Greatest decision of our lives. We eventually got out of the room at 1100 but sat outside the hotel for an hour waiting for the valet to bring the truck. Everyone was trying to leave and there was only limited space and people to help. Finally, we got in the truck and headed out to Ft. Benning. We stopped along the way for lunch because we needed some grease in our empty pit of a stomach. We tried Hardees. It is owned by the same people as Carl's Jr., but everything is completely different. Either way it was a God send for the body.

We rolled into Georgia around 1800 or so. Ben checked in to the headquarters and they told him to report to housing. He decided to wait till after dinner so we went to Applebee's to get some food and watch my Colts play. Yeah, that didn't turn out too well. We left at the end of the third quarter. We headed back to base at around 2330 and Ben went to check into his room. When he got there, he found out that he was really supposed to be there by 1200 and not midnight. That caused a little problems, but he eventually got a room. Unfortunately, that meant I had no where to crash. So, with my infinite wisdom I decided to sleep in the back seat of the truck. It would only be for a few hours, he was taking me to the airport at 0400, so it would be no problem. Wrong Answer! I have never sweat so much in my life. I had almost every window down to get air through the truck but it didn't help at all. I could only sleep for 15 minutes at a time and then I would wake-up again. Finally, 0400 rolled around.

Day 8 - Monday

Ben woke up and took me to the airport at 0430 for my 0600 flight back to LAX. The flight from Columbus, GA to Atlanta, Ga was only 25 minutes long and I had a whole row of seats to myself. The flight from Atlanta to LA was miserable. I sat in the middle seat for 5 hours next to a drunk. I slept for part of the flight due to my lack of sleep from the night before. The rest of the flight, I did my best to look busy so I didn't have to talk to the crazy drunk guy.

I finally arrived in LA and then took a bus to the train station for my final part of the trek. I was taking a train from LA to San Luis because it was only $27 for the ticket compared to the extra $200 to fly. I got to the station with a 4 hour wait for my train. I thought I would check in early so I could just sleep and have no worries. I wanted to keep both my bags because the train has a lot more storage space than a plane. But the guy at the ticket counter convinced my to check in my one bag. Well I did against my gut feeling. Turns out...listen to your gut. The train left on time and I found a seat by myself. It was a long trip, about 5.5 hours, but it wasn't too bad. I just read and slept. When I arrived in San Luis at around 2100 I waited for my bag to come off. Yeah, it wasn't there. They had lost my bag somewhere along the route. This upset me a little because I knew I should have brought the bag on with me and it also contained my $300 pair of boots, or really $100 pair. The guy at at the ticket counter said he was sorry and he filled out a form and said he would let me know when it came in. (As I write this now, I am about to leave to pick up the bag). My mom was there to take me to my house. I grabbed some food and called it a night. Work started back up the next day.

Overall, great trip. Saw some cool places, met some cool people, and did some cool things. My favorite place overall was Nashville. I can't wait to have the opportunity to go back there.