Midlife Road Trip And PubClub.com Roll With The Tide On An Alabama Football Weekend
By Kevin Wilkerson, Special To Midlife Road Trip
Not an exotic travel destination, a blogger’s convention or even a chance run-in at a random location.
It took a University of Alabama football game to bring Midlife Road Trip and PubClub.com together, a meeting of like minds that began on several Twitter chats and evolved into being seated across from one another behind a plate full of Dreamland ribs.
Rick Griffin and myself finally met up in person and conducted a two-day Tweet-Up at various places around Tuscaloosa and the Alabama campus. I was there from California at the invitation of a friend, “Bama Jerry,” and with two PubClub associates, Soul Cole and photographer Jack Fleming. Rick goes to nearly every Bama game from his home in Atlanta.
The PubClub team was there primarily to do a series of live broadcasts for PubClub’s new social media show called PubClub LIVE! Soul Cole is my co-host of and Jack – when we can get him – is our videographer and photographer. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. And is a big Ohio State fan.
We first met up with Rick the day before the game at Tuscaloosa’ s legendary rib joint, Dreamland, where you don’t need Waze to find it; you just stick your nose out the car window because you can smell it for about two blocks.
My first (and lasting) impression of Rick was that he’s as friendly and quick-witted as he is on Twitter. He’s pretty much always smiling and you had better be on alert so you don’t miss one of his clever lines.
After devouring those dreamy ribs as if we were about to go on Survivor – as they say down in these parts, man, that’s good eatin’ folks! – we went to the campus where Bama Jerry took us inside Bryant-Denny Stadium and up to his Sky Box. With all of Rick’s success in the travel world while I’m like the guy in the back of the room jumping up and down waving my arms to get my site noticed, I have to admit I felt a tad bit of one-upmanship in that I would be watching the game in a Sky Box while Rick was in the stands.
But that was only for a fleeting moment because Rick is so easy to be friends with that I would have loved to have had him up there with us.
We then went to the National Championship coaches statues in front of the stadium where we had Jack take our photo in front of Nick Saban.
By this time, Bama Jerry was tugging us by the ear to go get a drink so we popped into the closest bar to the stadium, Gallette’s. While Soul Cole, Jack and myself charged to the counter like a freshman at our first frat party to get near the stunning bartender and suddenly go live, Rick and Bama Jerry cooly cruised up like calm and collected seniors.
I must say that Rick is not quite as wild as myself and the PubClub LIVE team. For one thing, he’s married. Happily.
And while he certainly enjoys his libations, you won’t find him hanging around until last call. I tend to toss ‘em back more like a college student. Hey can I help it if I’m a product of my environment!?
Soul Cole and Jack took that one step further while in T-town by hitting the streets after the bars closed until the only person left was our Uber driver. One night, unwilling to accept the fact that Tuscaloosa has a set closing time of 2 a.m., they walked some 20 minutes down a deserted street to try and find a local’s dive bar so they could have one more drink. Thankfully, it was closed.
It was great meeting and hanging out with Rick. And, of course, having having him be a part of a few of the PubClub LIVE broadcasts. He’s a real pro at that kind of thing and the highlight was, no doubt, of him gently “scolding” me on my eating technique of those awesome Dreamland ribs.
You can watch all the videos by going to Facebook and searching for PubClub LIVE!, and see photos and prose of the trip on the PubClub website.
Kevin Wilkerson is a University of Alabama alumni. He now lives in San Diego where he continues to act like a college student while he publishes the lifestyle blog PubClub.com and co-hosts PubClub LIVE!
All photographs courtesy of Jack Fleming
