Tuscaloosa is wonderful!

The other night I drove into Tuscaloosa to stop there for the night. After an hour of backwood country roads I finally made it into the town. It's pretty remote. I almost ran over an armadillo on the way in, I wonder how strong it's armor is?

After freshening up in my hotel, I followed the advice of a friend and former Bama student and headed towards "the strip". Right next to campus, "the strip" is where all the students hang out and it was pretty awesome. I went into this pizza joint and sat down at the bar and watched baseball for a bit. It was still early, so I was kind of just killing time. I met some Bama guys at the bar who told me I should go to another place just down the street, as the pizza joint was closing and was dying down.

The second place was a bar that was having a pretty awesome happy hour: $5 bottles of wine, or $3 pitchers of bud light. Needless to say I grabbed a pitcher and set out for the outdoor patio. Upon finding a table to sit at, I didn't even manage to sit down before a girl told me I could sit with them at their table. Southern hospitality ftw.

I introduced myself to the people sitting at the table, a groovy redhead named Molli who had a flower dress on and was listening to music on her iPod, the outspoken brunettte named Allie, and their friend the bouncer who was working, sort of.

I found out that Molli worked at the bar too, but wasn't working tonight. Allie worked for some company with connections to the school, which explained her business attire at 9pm on a Wednesday. After we chatted for a while, Allie offered to take me on a tour of the campus, so we hopped in her beemer and drove through the school.

Bama really does seem like an awesome place to go to school. We walked into the rec center and I was blown away. They had tons of gym equipment, dance rooms, basketball courts, running tracks, video games, a climbing wall room, indoor soccer even, I could go on for hours. After the tour, we went to this other bar that had a live band playing southern rock style covers of reggae bands like Sublime. It was pretty good, and the bar was alive. I couldn't get over the fashion in Alabama. Girls go out to bars with t-shirts and running shorts like they came straight from the gym. And this is totally accepted by everyone. Only in the South.

I had a lot of fun in Tuscaloosa, and I hope I find myself there again one day.