Drive to the 405: Day 1 Diary Of Life On The Road By Billy Football (edited by PFT)
Note: This blog is being edited by me PFT for accuracy and clarity as Billy drives us through a torrential icestorm on the way to Memphis. Im sure I will find some half-truths and fuzzy math as I look through it. All notations will be in italics. Also a lot of people are forgetting that my eyes are perfectly normal in this picture. Please remember that
Day 1
Day 1 of the drive to the 405 went just as well as it possibly could. I am currently typing this from the hotel at 3:44 am after we arrived because I drank so much Black Rifle Coffee I am eligible for a USAA membership (editors note- we think it would be a homerun to have Billy do a Robert Gronkowski type ad read were he calls up Black Rifle trying to become eligible to drink their coffee because he plays a lot of warzone). I rather be too caffeinated to sleep than tired at the wheel. We made it to Cincinnati. It was a hairy ordeal, but we prevailed.
The first part of the day was absolute Murphy’s law. A lot went wrong (but enough about the commanders). Liam missed his alarm and couldn’t make it to an interview in time. Honestly, Liam operates like a nocturnal animal and I really doubt there are many people who could do what he does because of how weird the hours are and how he is able to operate at the highest level at 4 am to get the podcast edited and clips made. He also does it with a technical skillset I can’t even dream of. This is why he, unfortunately, he sometimes misses alarms-he’s a deep sleeper. Anyway, he didn’t make a ride and now as punishment he is being sent on the roadtrip with us.
Selfishly I am glad he’s coming because its good to have some more youth in the group. This is a high T caravan (fact) and if you didn’t listen to Tuesday’s episode we had a Oldman vs young man debate of whether to full send Cincinatti on the first night or make a stop in Pittsburgh to not drive late into the night. I wanted to push cincinatti the first night because if we don’t it would threaten the possibility of having a beer on the top of the bass pro shops pyramid the next night, I want that fuckin pyramid beer. Want it Bad. (If you were to make some sort of informational graphic about which types of beers were the best, the pyramid beer would indeed be at the top of whatever type of geometric shape we would end up selecting to illustrate the different levels of beers)
We are currently taking the path pioneers blazed hundreds of years before us. (I think Billy thinks were in Montana) They took on obstacles and challenges our 21st century soft asses could never imagine. Pushing straight to Cincinatti to arrive at 3am in an ice storm pales in comparison to fighting of Native Americans, Grizzly bears (Yes, definitely thinks this is Montana), and unpaved wild terrain. I had to detour the original route I had planned to grab Liam and then pick PFT up to start the trip. I started driving at 12:33pm ET, we arrived in Cincinatti at 3:08am ET.
Thankfully the ice storm was just a rainstorm till the last 4 hours.
We made approximately 2 stops (This is a unusual way of saying we stopped three times) on our journey if you do not count the first stop to fill up the tank at around 2pm ET after picking up PFT with Liam in tow (Ok, 4 stops). We topped up the truck in Northern New Jersey right before the Pennsylvania state border on 84, we miraculously were able to drive the whole state of Pennsylvania on one tank of gas (hot seat Jesus frying up fish for the whole squad) before stopping outside of Youngstown, Ohio which (where) we arrived approximately 11:12pm ET(.) we refueled and got a bite to eat before departing on the full send to Cincinatti. I consumed approximately 10 Black Rifle coffee expressos made with real whole cream before we hit Youngstown. I then stopped drinking coffee once I hit Youngstown. I combined this caffeine load with approximately 500mg of theanine and 1000mg of lions mane mushroom. These supplements tend to have a nootropic effect and I believe provided an amazing balance of focus with cool-calm and collected energy (There is simply no way to fact check these nutritional claims outside of posting it to the bodybuilding forums and waiting for misc to chime in). Between Youngstown and Cincinatti I consumed mostly water. The highway was extremely straight in the final stretch which was huge because of the ice rain (sleet).
(Added a paragraph break here. Let the audience take a breath Bill) The curves of Pennsylvania we took slow in the heavy rain, but would have been absolutely impossible if it was ice. We began the trip with a soothing roadtrip playlist of classic rock and classics such as lunatic fringe and Bruce Springsteen. (PFT also hit his bet on the USMNT to win by exactly 3 points and lost money in the live blackjack table on the Barstool Sports app before quadrupling down on the last hand) The vibe totally changed post Youngstown. It was a different beast of a drive in hours that require a certain psyche to operate in. The choice of music ranged from Metallica to Chief Keef. We were Gorillas in the fuckin Coup, finna pull up to the zoo. Avenging Harambe. The ice was falling the music was eliciting adrenal responses from the entire vehicle. We were men on a mission armed with a Chevy Silverado built like a tank and unlimited black rifle coffee. We all locked in as we passed 18 wheelers that swayed with the wind and sprayed water and iced that blinded us . I guess we were experiencing the rush ice road truckers or truckers in general feel (Billy is mistaking listening to Cheef Keef with meth here). Battling the elements when well armed (Chevy Silverado and Black Rifle Coffee) is sport more than a danger. We are road dogs, warriors of the road.
When you are on the outskirts of hoosier alley (a tornado alley) pushing it through an ice storm with a fat chaw in listening to Green Grass and Hightides while noone is mentioning the obvious possibility that nature once again beats man (he's obviously been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy). I officially name the Chevy Silverado we drive The Pequot, those who know, know.