A Mighty Welcome to all . .

"There's a beer at the bottom of the cooler, more precious than a pot of gold."

My very first post on this blog of blogs! I'm so excited! I feel ready for whatever the experience is that we will... take with us after this post. I'm sure it will be... an adventure... a voyage on this... magnificent vessel... into unchartered waters! What if we see sailfish... jumping... and flying across the magnificent orb of a setting sun?

So that was a quote from the movie A Mighty Wind if you didn't already know. If you haven't seen it, go to the appropriate rental station near you, or some illegal downloading website and watch it ASAP. This is not just some cheesy and unimaginative sequel to the American Pie franchise (which jumped the shark a long time ago) that felt it was necessary to keep Eugene Levy on screen to retain some legitimacy. This is fresh, dry humor that everyone should be able to appreciate, especially since Levy appears as a completely out of character character named Mitch who dabbles in folk music and used to play "find the cobra with the hotel chambermaid" back in the day. I thought it was a good fit for my first post.

Now that that's out of the way: I'd like to welcome the few but faithful who may or may not ever check up on this blog from time to time. Its going to be an experiment in laughter and love, that should ultimately lead us to some sort of clarity regarding this ingenious bus idea that Kody has come up with. This bus idea is just another in a long line of attempts to better improve what we in the SEC would call, "the Art of Tailgating." Some Northerners may feel that it doesn't get any better than grilling up some brats on a 12 inch Weber in the parking lot of their college/pro team's stadium in brisk 23 degree temperatures just an hour or two before kickoff. That's fine, to each his or her own. But here in the South, we do it better. A hell of a lot better.

You'll be hard pressed to find a group of tailgaters on the campus of an SEC school that haven't already been there and set up shop at least 10 hours before said game. At Auburn, we have those RVrs who arrive in Lee County on Tuesday afternoon for a game on Saturday evening. What do these people do for a living? Beats me, but it sure beats the stuffing out of those cheeseheads who think they invented devotion to their team. You won't find more fanatical supporters of organized violence with as much fervor and gusto as you will encounter here in the Southeast.

Hence the bus. A new, perhaps more efficient way of getting our drink on hours before toe meets leather on the field, and it would come with tv, music, a bathroom, air conditioning, and coolers that appear as if from nowhere, all on wheels.

But, for the time being . . Considering we don't have a bus as of yet, and considering that any maiden voyage of said vessel is probably a year or two in the future, this blog will probably feature more than just speculation about how to successfully remodel an antique school bus. Primarily, it will feature news about Auburn University athletics programs and our giddyness preceding a fall full of fun down on The Plains. You might see tips on how to set up a totally bitchin' tailgate spot on campus, or how to balance spending time with the family with your budding obsession over recruiting rankings and why one service must be run by Bammers cause they always rank our prospects low.

Perhaps more often than not, at least in our early days, you'll have random updates about Auburn football news gleaned from other sites or completely random opinion pieces. Just be sure to check back from time to time to see how much trouble we're getting into.

You've got to start somewhere

When I was in elementary school the Oxford High School baseball team had a custom bus they used to ferry the team between games. It was a regular school bus except the back end had been chopped off to create something like a truck bed. Needless to say, being seven years old, I thought this was the coolest thing I'd ever seen and it's an image that has stuck with me ever since.

Fast forward twenty years and I'm sitting in class (not paying attention of course) trying to solve the problems that all tailgaters have to deal with; like how to make the experience as little of a pain in the ass as possible. The packing and unpacking and repacking and unpacking can take a lot out of you over the course of the season, and can turn what should be an enjoyable experience with friends and family into an awful chore. Then the light came on. Why don't we create a tailgate on wheels? A rolling party bus replete with a grill/smoker, a bar and a bathroom. No packing and unpacking, a place to relax out of the sun and a place to wizz so you don't have break the continuity of the tailgate to stand in line for half an hour.

Most fans dream of an expensive motor home to make their Saturday dreams come true, but I don't have a lot of money (or a real job for that matter). Plus something like this, while nice, has all the panache of vanilla ice cream. What would be more memorable than an old school bus customized and pimped out with everything a tailgater would need? So instead of taking notes or paying attention I immediately began to sketch out the plans for this vehicle that I would eventually name "Tailgates & Dreams" (seen above). So this is the beginning of the journey, and I don't know where it's going to end. All I know is I've got a fever, and the only prescription is to buy an old school bus and turn it into the ultimate tailgating vehicle.