The Twitter account self-identifies as “4 Dawgs, 2 Casino Stops and 1 Luxury Minivan”.
It follows four passionate Georgia fans as they travel from Athens to Los Angeles for Monday night’s national championship game.
“Road Trip to the ‘Ship” with the Twitter handle @ATH2LA, was created two days ago, its first post featured four friends in front of UGA’s Butts-Mehere Heritage Hall. They held up UGA foam fingers while posing in front of the minivan they hired Friday morning.
“We’ve got a long way to go and only a short time to get there……Keep your foot on the pedal son, let alone the brakes. Drop everything because we have to run. The boys are thirsty in Atlanta and there’s beer in Texarkana,” the post read, citing Jerry Reed’s lyrics from East Bound and Down in Smokey and the Bandit.
The men, known in the post as Bear, Bob-O, Moe and Worm, traveled from Athens to Tunica, Mississippi, for their first casino stop on Friday.
“We didn’t have a plan the whole time,” Bear, whose real name is Craig Meeks, told the Athens Banner-Herald Sunday as they drove through Gallup, New Mexico, on I-40. “Our only plan was to stop in Tunica.
On Saturday, they drove about 14 hours from Tunica to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with tweets recording stops for catfish in Seminole, Oklahoma, three of the four in deep sleep, a stunning sunset and a stop at a gas station in Groom, Texas. where they received a “Go Dawgs” from several station attendants who claimed they were TCU fans.
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The group has been friends for about 25 years with Worm, Clay McElroy, a Clarke Central alumnus and the only Athenian native. The others have moved to the area and have been living in the Classic City for a number of years.
They came up with this plan last Saturday or Sunday morning after Georgia defeated Ohio State in the Peach Bowl.
“We were at a party on New Year’s Eve, and the next day we woke up and we went to a mate’s in Athens, we were sitting in a bar at his house,” Bear said, “and we all started saying, ‘What if we drove across country?'”
Instead of heading back to Athens after the game, they decided to fly home.
“Originally we were going to do a full round trip, but now we’re going to drive to Phoenix and fly back and drop this van off in Phoenix,” Bear said. “We started looking at the shape of our bodies and decided that we would ride back to Phoenix and fly from there.”
Their amusing updates revolve around nostalgic movie references and humorous song lyrics that depict a moment from their journey.
As of 7:20 a.m. MT Sunday morning, the account posted a photo from their hotel.
“The 4 riders slept more than 5 hours and woke up to a beautiful sunrise in Albuquerque.”
They plan to travel more than 11 hours from Albuquerque to Palm Springs on Sunday. Moe jokes that they should stop on the way to gamble because “Google gets it wrong, ‘due to the polar radius of curvature of the earth’ it’s clearly faster to drive through Las Vegas.’ Moe says, ‘It’s just science.’”
They’ll head into Los Angeles Monday morning, trying to find a spot to tail despite Sofi Stadium’s “no tailgating” policy.
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The Twitter account claims the journey is 2,267 miles and 80 hours long. They also claim to consume “240 ice cold beers” during their adventure.
When they started the Twitter account, they weren’t sure if anyone would follow. By Sunday afternoon there were 770.
With no delays along the way, they will be at Sofi Stadium by 7:30 a.m. Monday night when Georgia takes on TCU to win back-to-back national titles.
