After several frozen cocktails at Under the Volcano on empty stomachs, converted Houstonians Jeremy C. Little (a publicist) and Colin “Dabbo” Dabbs (a junior high history teacher) finally decided to do it. Eight days, 10 Major League ballparks, the Budweiser brewery, and enough fried food to give Carlos Lee the gout. It’s the Great American Bro'd Trip and this is the account of day two.

DAY 2: MUSKOGEE, OK — SPRINGFIELD, IL: 501 miles

We've got a Golden Ticket ... Barely

As painful an executive decision as it was, thank God we skipped the drive-through caverns — although the people on the billboard seemed to be having a really great time in their open topped red Wrangler. We also had to bypass the world’s largest chair (actually kind of bummed about that one). Thanks to the monsoon that swamped Oklahoma this morning, we got a slow start on our trip north to St. Louis for a tour of the Budweiser brewery.

Rolling into the Gateway City 15 minutes before the brewery closed, we made the last tour with only one minute to spare. It was like somebody decided to combine Christmas with St. Patrick’s Day then handed us a hundred bucks. See? Good things can happen to bad people.

The tour itself was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory minus the overt child torture porn. Fun fact: In order to consume all of the beer in one beech-wood aging vat, someone would have to drink one beer per hour for 137 years. So it’s basically 137 years of college.

Someone hand me a snorkel and tell my parents I died how I lived.

Dabbo Pees on Busch and the Euphemism of 'Manifest Destiny'
No disrespect to the St. Louis Cardinals, but the man was out of options, we had just spent an hour at the Budweiser Brewery hospitality room, and let’s face it, there aren’t many structures in St. Louis that haven’t been peed on.

In spite of Dabbo mistaking it for a fire hydrant, Busch Stadium is a beautiful, intimate ball bark that was much smaller (always a pleasant surprise) than I expected it to be. It would have been great to see a game there, but alas, the Red Birds were out of town. I did manage to locate a brick commemorating the construction of New Busch Stadium that reads: "October 27, 2004; 11:40 PM; Thanks Red Sox; Royal Rooters of Red Sox Nation."

Once a Masshole, always a Masshole.

We then hoofed it to the Gateway Arch and the Museum of Western Expansion, a delightfully sanitized version of America’s systematic extermination of the indigenous population of North America — a topic only barely touched upon by an almost comically sad-sounding animatronic Native American. I have never — and never will — apologize for America’s ambitious expansion, but we should at least be honest about how it was achieved.

Tailgating at the airport HoJO
It was the only way to close out a day marked by a brewery tour followed by public urination and a whitewashed U.S. history lesson. For my 28th birthday, my friend Jay “Doogie” McMurrey went halfsies on a really sweet Coleman tailgating grill that he not-so-secretly wanted for himself. In spite of my initial suspicion at his obvious motives, It’s already turned out to be wicked useful.

Case in point, Dabbo and I grilled up some really sketchy burgers in the parking lot at the airport Howard Johnson in Springfield, Illinois at one o’clock in the morning. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so fancy.

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Milwaukee in the morning ....