Senior Pantalones # 2 - We're conquering the south like General Sherman

So far we've had clear winners for Senior Pantalones. Mark won the title for Day 2 of our trip for suggesting that we take a detour along our course to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, TN and taking on a long stretch of road. His driving shift took us through 3 states because we had to go through Mississippi and Alabama to get back into Tennessee after our detour. Lynchburg is so far south in Tennessee that it was faster to dip back south and than head directly west.

Mark complimented his actions with a collection of priceless quotes.

Mark, after a long night out in Nashville:
"We're conquering the south like General Sherman".

Matt: Where should we go to hang out on Beale St after dinner?
Waitress at Blues City Cafe: There is a cool Irish bar called Silk O'Sullivans. They have a large outdoor area and there are goats in the bar.
Mark: They have Ghosts in the bar????

Tour Guide at Jack Daniels Distillery: Now I'm going to lock us in the barrel house.
Mark: Why is she going to lock us in here?

Congratulations Mark.

Score:
Brendan: 1
Mark: 1
Chris: 0
Matt: 0
Dan: DNP

Next stop: Graceland

Detour #3 – How Booze Is Made

Nashville was fun. We checked out of our hotel and hit the road for Memphis. Mark heard from someone in Nashville that we were close to the Jack Daniels Distillery. A quick unanimous van vote changed our course and the day to add a detour through Lynchburg, Tennessee to learn how Jack Daniels whiskey is made (last night we found out how it tastes).

Our tour was very informative on both the process of distilling whiskey and the history of Jack Daniels. The tour guide had a thick Tennessee accent and colorful southern twang. Her accent was so twangy at times we were clueless if she was talking about the type of wood they use to make the whiskey barrels or how plants absorb sunlight and convert it to energy in a process called photosynthesis. She thought we had an Indiana accent and that she didn’t have an accent because everyone in her town sounds the same and that all of us “War of Northern Aggression" types sound the same to her. (Except for the accents part, the last sentence was mostly an editorial comment to help paint the picture of how we view southerners).

How Whiskey Is Made:
1) Pick quality wood and build Lincoln log type structures that will be set on fire to form charcoal.


2) Use fresh well water from a cave in a mountain on the Jack Daniels Distillery property.


3) Visit the old wooden house where tour guides talk about Jack Daniels’ life. Maybe this has something to do with the aging process but it wasn’t completely clear. Jack died at the age of 61 after he angrily kicked his safe and got gangrene in his foot. A few bits of his gangrene foot make it into every barrel of whiskey (Drink up!).


4) Something happens with yeast to produce a horrible smell that I don’t recommend you inhale if you imbibed the night before.
5) No Flash Photography is allowed on the tour. The tour guide explained flash photography is bad for whiskey because it spoils the color causing it to look neon yellow like Red Bull rather than dark mahogany brown.

6) Drip the yeast liquid that was not photographed using a flash and filter it through the charcoal. This process is pretty much like using a Brita water filter except it produces sweet sweet booze rather than water.


7) Watch another video about how they make barrels. Each barrel is tested personally by Donkey Kong rolling it down a construction site at Super Mario. If the barrel doesn’t break when it gets to the bottom of the stage (or smashed by Mario with a power mallet), it gets filled with liquid booze. We then learned that due to a communication barrier the color of whiskey actually comes from the wood barrel and Not Using Flash Photography…we still don’t know why we weren’t allowed to use a flash.


8) Watch another video about bottling whiskey. It’s all done by old white women with salt and pepper perms.


9) The barrels are stored from anywhere between 6 weeks to 731 days (Tennessee accent). The master distiller who looks like Baseball Tonight’s John Kruk arbitrarily decides when the whiskey has been in the barrels long enough and then makes the booze available for you to drink and forget all of the problems in your life. It’s unclear why they show you barrels after the bottling process, but who are we to question southern tradition.



10) We were amazed to learn that a space center is located near Jack Daniels distillery, so the liquor stores around the world can get rocket delivered whiskey as soon as Kruk gives us it the ok…the moon landing is a cool feat, but the delivery system brings joy to all, I think this needs more press.
Tip: Don’t visit the Jack Daniels Distillery on a Sunday because no booze is served or sold in Lynchburg, Tennessee even if you take a 2 hour detour looking for a sip.

Next stop: Memphis

Senior Pantalones #1 – Have You Met Us?

On a day where everyone drove and everyone shared the decision making, it looked like the collective awesomeness of the group would make it hard to single out Senior Pantalones. We pulled into Nashville around 7pm with a clean van having driven through rain for most of the day and went to hunt down some food. Our dinner of sub-par pork BBQ sandwiches at Rippy's, Yazoo Nashville microbrew beer and live country music was capped by writing Brendan’s cell phone number on the check for our waitress while he was in the bathroom.

Throughout the night while we enjoyed country music and drinks, Brendan keeps exchanging text messages with a mysterious person. Using his insider information, he is able to deftly navigate us to cool bars like a Nashville local. Sunday morning when we woke up and rubbed the crust from our eyes, we asked Brendan who told him about the bars we went to. He said he was getting tips from a random Nashville number that kept texting him. Clearly Brendan left an impression on our waitress when he suavely ordered “A pulled pork sandwich with french fries”.

Congratulations Brendan on your lead off Senior Pantalones victory!

Score
Brendan: 1
Chris: 0
Mark: 0
Matt: 0
Dan: DNP

Detour #1 – James Madison University

If you are going to travel, you need directions. That’s not a Chinese proverb, just a fact.

Two hours into our trip, it was time for breakfast and to get our travel plans we decided to fill up on Shmiscuits, Schmagels and Shmuffins at Sheetz. After eating, we drove through Harrisonburg to consult a wise bronze mentor, James Madison and receive our official itinerary. Our seemingly simple task of picking up our directions quickly proved harder than expected. James Madison decided to impose a test of ‘worthiness’ and said that “You Shall Not Pass Until You Defeat Me in an Arm Wrestling Contest”. He is a big deal former president guy and now made of bronze both of which make him a formidable opponent even for a super hero.

Thankfully we had been doing our Over The Top road exercises to strengthen our biceps and forearms since leaving from D.C. Those two hours of training paid off as after a 9 minute long back and forth arm wrestling match, Captain America finally pinned the bronze fist of James Madison.

As promised, James Madison turned over the AAA Trip Tix with turn by turn directions for the whole trip.

In a surprising move, he also agreed to let the travelers meet his pet Duke Dog and learn how to be fierce in the face of adversity. Duke Dog nearly bit off Chris’s head but he was eventually tamed.

The travelers received a hand shake and “Good Luck” from James Madison and a nice hard bronze lick from the Duke Dog. Then they loaded back into their van and pushed off on the highway towards Nashville again.

American Land Ho'

Hark! I sense adventure on the horizon. Yes, using my Super Sight I can see that this requires investigation.

After a quick Congressional Appropriations meeting to acquire funding I, Captain America, and the Patriot Force must embark on a three week ‘Quest for Awesome’ to explore the Heartland. The bill labeled “Lewis & Clark Part II: Let’s Get This Party Started”, breezed through the House but just squeaked by in the Senate. For a brief moment when the budget line item for Giant Foam Cowboy Hats was called into question. Senator Byrd (D), WV balked at paying for 11 Giant Foam Cowboy Hats when only 5 people are part of the American Re-Discovery team. Party lines were instantly divided, but upon finding out that the Giant Foam Cowboy Hats were made in the US, a bipartisan decision was reached that the team of adventurers would be outfitted with 315 of the hats.

The excessive order was placed in the interest of stimulating the economy. The team bought a car top carrier to store away the hats, loaded their gear and departed.

Destination Fun #1 – Nashville, TN

Goodnight Metro

In the great off white room
There was a telephone
And a black keyboard
And a print out of a Timesheet

And there three needy clients waiting in a line
And two new projects
With a pair of emails

And a large cup of coffee
With a packet of sugar

And a clean white bowl full of instant mush
And a room with a conference call where people whisper "Hush"

Goodnight Metro
Goodnight great off white room
Goodnight telephone and black keyboard
Goodnight Timesheet

Goodnight clients
And Goodnight emails

Goodnight coffee
And Goodnight sugar

Goodnight SmartTrip
And Goodnight Instant Mush
And Goodnight to the Bossman whispering "Hush"

Hello Stars
Hello Clean Air
Hello Moon

Senior Pantalones: A Daily Quest for Awesome

Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em was a dominant album in 1990 topping the music charts for 21 weeks straight. The nation was wrapped in MC Hammer's rhymes as he danced his way into our hearts with his flashy trash bag pants. For nearly half a year, Hammer was "Mr Pants".

While it's unlikely that any hip hop albums will be released by the crew in our van during the course of the trip, that's not to say that great things still won't be going down. A winner will be announced each day in our Daily Quest for Awesome as one of us gets to wear the 24 hour title of "Senior Pantalones". The honor can be won for any significant accomplishment such as eating the most food at dinner, driving the longest stretch of road of the day, successfully pitching a tent, buying the most rounds of drinks or being the most accurate on the shooting range.



The privileges that come with being dubbed Senior Pantalones are many and include everything from deciding which Arby's we stop at for lunch while driving, having first choice of who he wants to share queen bed with, to deciding where he goes in the line up of hung over morning showers. Similar to how they help individual achievement stand out in the Tour de France, our Senior Pantalones will have to carry around The Trophy of Glory, a 8 inch marvel of marble and plastic topped with a gold-painted hot rod. You can't get a beautiful trophy like this anywhere, no way. You have to go Goodwill to buy them.

The person who has accumulated the title of Senior Pantalones the most over the course of our trip will take home The Trophy of Glory as our Champion. Keep checking in to see is leading the Senior Pantalones and by all means, please gamble on this competition.

To Beard or Not to Beard

Its widely known that Beardliness is next to Manliness which is next to Godliness. But the question before us is whether Beardliness should be a staple of Roadliness. Many great explorers have had facial hair as a prerequisite for travel like Marco Polo, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt and B. A. Baracus to name a few. The advantages of road beards include saving dozens of minutes that it would take for 5 guys to shave, added warmth for the cold camping nights in the northern US and sheer awesomeness in appearance. Three weeks is a sufficient amount of time (if not too much time) to grow a road beard, however, there are other factors to consider.

1) Anonymity. Keeping my civilian alias of "Steve Rogers" has always been an important factor in being able to live my true life as Captain America. My suit, shield and mask serve not only as driving factors in haute fashion but also help prevent people from being able to match my two alter egos. My nose, mouth and chin are the only visible parts of my body and covering them with a beard would make it too easy for people to match Captain America with Steve Rogers.

2) Class. Would you wear flip flops to the white house? No. When I get out in the heartland, I want to look my best and having an unkempt travel beard is unquestionably not classy.

3) Klingons. Oops, I meant Cling-Ons. While there is a huge difference between an alien warrior race from Star Trek and remnants of Cheetos that you can't get out of your travel beard, it is certain that neither of these similar sounding words are something you want to encounter in your travels.