We landed in Raleigh around 10:30 and were greeted by Joe’s old friend from high school, Maria, who was kind enough to let us use her apartment for the day. Once we got cleaned up, we thought it would be a great idea to hit up the UNC campus and see if we could blend in with college kids (we can’t).

This is really the first serious sports campus we had been to on the trip. UNC is a massive sprawl of a campus that’s probably bigger than Buffalo. It’s HUUUUGE. It’s also breathtakingly beautiful. The way they’ve managed to keep that old southern style of architecture even when designing the new buildings is a testament to the pride of UNC.

We headed over to the stadium to check out where the Tar Heels play. Walking into a REAL college football stadium for the first time is a bit of a “whoa” moment. You can’t help but look around at all the empty seats and imagine tens of thousands of students filling them. All wearing Carolina Blue, screaming at the tops of their lungs for their team! The team that win or lose, is part of the very fabric of their being. You can almost hear the chants, screams, boos, and cheers, while your eyes scan from the end zones to the nose bleeds.

All this walking made us pretty hungry, so Maria decided we should grab some eats at “Top of the Hill.” They brew their own beer there and we all sampled the Blueberry Wheat. It was decent, not as good as our local Ellicottville Brewing Company – Blueberry Wheat, but it was tasty. After looking at the lunch menus we decided it would be best to order a bunch of food and just split it amongst the table. So the group partook in: Sweet Potato Cheese Fries, Smoky BBQ Chicken Pizza, Nachos, and the Baked Crab Dip.

Let’s start with the best, Sweet Potato Cheese Fries. WHOA. They were just amazing, the melted Cheddar & Gorgonzola combined with the creole ketchup made them irresistible.

Next up was the BBQ Pizza. The pizza was alright, the chicken was very tender and Monterrey Jack cheese with BBQ sauce covering made a great combination of flavors. The menu mentioned jalapenos, but we didn’t feel any real heat from them.

The crab dip and the nachos were both tasty but neither came close to being remarkable. As far as nachos go, I’d give them a 7; but oh… the sweet potato fries! They really raised the bar a little too high for an average plate of nachos to reach.

At this point we were all pretty full and it was time to take Clark and Steve to the airport to head to NYC.   When Steve and Clark landed in JFK they ended up at a #tweetup with @blakeeb and @ChelseaRoberson!

Joe stayed in Raleigh to catch up with Maria for the night, they hit up a great Jazz band at a local Martini bar and then retired for the evening. Joe was happy to sleep in a big bed (Or any bed at all for that matter).

See y’all in Phoenix!

Note: Sorry for the delay in the blog posts. We had to crash for a few days after the trip. Also, Clark misplaced about 8GB worth of images(FOUND IT!), so that delayed some of the post-production. We will try and give you something new to read each weekday from now until we run out of content. Thanks for your patience!

- Joe and Clark

The Associated Press - Will DDoS you to the Stone Age.

Joe and I met with Carolyn Thompson of the Associated Press this morning at a local coffee shop. We knew AP would bring some traffic… well we thought we knew. According to Google there are 1450 different versions of her article on-line right now, on domains stretching from Forbes to CNN to Yahoo even several international news sites. The traffic volume has been torrential and has basically acted as a huge DDoS attack on the site.

Unfortunately, all the attention ground our site to a halt. We’ve spent the last five hours trying to work with DreamHost to get our server on-line and responsive. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, we really do want to share our adventures with you!

At this point, I believe we may have been migrated over to a private server. Things seem to be running smoother, we hope they stay that way.

Thanks for all your support,

Joe and Clark

Once we landed in Houston we hopped in a cab and headed to the House of Blues to hang with the ETID guys for a little while before the doors opened for the show. House of Blues is a great venue. The backstage area was filled with delicious treats and drinks. Each dressing room has a full bathroom in it so we took this opportunity to shower up and get nice a pretty for a night of rock ‘n’ roll.

After sound check our friends Keith and Jordan Buckley wanted to go bowling so we took a quick cab ride down to the University of Houston and hit up their student center bowling lanes. Any time there are this many type-a personalities in a room everything turns into a competition. Tonight was no exception. Teams were formed (Team Awesome: Jeremy, Joe & Keith vs Team Mitch: Steve, Clark & Jordan). Things started out tight by the 3rd frame we were only 4 pins apart. As more balls were thrown Team Mitch began to pull away and Team Awesome was starring defeat in the eyes.

This is when men are sperated from the boys. Jeremy dug deep and threw hard chalking up 4 consecutive strikes. Combined with solid rolls from Joe and Keith Team Awesome rallied like the Bills against the Oilers, came back and left the field of battle victorious.

It was time to head back to the venue and get ready for the show. Now I’m not much for hardcore (my favorite band is Pearl Jam) and truth be told I’ve never listened to ETID before The New Junk Astetic came out. Man was I blown away by their live show, absolutely incredible. The fans LOVE them and I can see why. When they started playing the 2nd to last song I decided now was my opportunity to really be a rock star and stage dive. I waited for the guys to settle into a spot so I didn’t fuck up their performing with my antics. Once I saw a clear path to the crowd I ran out, jumped off and hoped I didn’t get dropped. The fans held me high and handed off towards the back. IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE.

Now the boys at ETID really know how to close a show, they take fan involvement to a whole new level. Keith requested security back off and the fans leapt on to the stage, one by one then 10 by 10 and before you could blink everyone was jumping up and down singing along in one of the most magical moments I think I’ve ever witnessed. People connecting with each other in absolute jubilation though the magic of music. Music my friend wrote. Talk about a mind blowing experience.

We hung out backstage for a while, then we heard that a bar called Dirt wanted to take care of the ETID boys and set up a tab for the night. Well now, a dive bar, it’s called Dirt, I’m with rock-stars and people want to pay for my drinks? SIGN ME UP! Keith arranged for a fan to take us there and off we went.

I knew this was gonna be the kinda bar I wanted to be in when we pulled up. Dirt parking lot, no windows, loud music and by the mystical powers of the universe that rule dive bars the address was 222 (223 being the address of our hometown dive ‘The Pink’). This place was sooo “Almost the Pink” it even made it to the address. Things start to blur up a little here but everyone had a great time. Jeremy passed out in a booth and Steve tried to wake him up by pouring hot wax on his arm (it didn’t work).

Eventually the lights came on and it was time to bounce. Which worked out well for us because we had a flight in 3 hours. We hitched a ride back to the airport, passed out for a few hours and jumped on the next flight.

Upon arrival we were greeted by our hosts for the evening Dean and his co-worker Jake. These two fine gentlemen work at the Customer Service Center for JetBlue in SLC. They informed us that everyone back at the office was excited to see us so naturally we wanted to get there as soon as possible so we could be greeted like celebrities.

Once we arrived everyone made us feel right at home, we even took a shower in the office locker room! After some meeting and greeting the folks at JetBlue wanted to take us to a Salt Lake City staple, the Cotton Bottom for some Garlic Burgers. We obliged.

Let me say a couple things about the Garlic Burger. It is a delicious and unique burger, one I had never experienced before. It also brings with it some SERIOUSLY noxious fumes when combined with any carbonated beverage. If you’re planning on talking to a girl within 7 hours of eating one of these you might want to consider a different meal choice. Just saying.

When we were finished indulging in some of the coldest beer on the planet and those deadly garlic burgers we headed to an AMAZING Irish Pub called Piper Down for some seriously good live music.

Salt Lake City really surprised us. It was the last place I expected to have this much fun. The people were super friendly and the scene was incredible. Then again you could have fun in any city when you’re hanging out with people as friendly and awesome as the folks at JetBlue.

See ya in Houston!

As we finalize our last-minute packing, nerves are running high—as is the excitement. Our story was featured on the front page of The Buffalo News this morning!!

We’re down to mere hours until our first flight, anyone place bets on whether Joe will miss it or not? We should be at The Buffalo-Niagara International Airport by 6 a.m., feel free to see us off, as we embark on our 31-day adventure. [Will the TSA even allow such a thing anymore? If not, feel free to post on our Facebook wall.]

We’re excited that so many people have offered ideas for our time in their cities. If we’re visiting your city and no one has given us the low-down on where the real hot-spots are [wink wink], please let us know!

Reduced Price Party

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors it’s now only $10 at the door to come party with us at the Bon Voyage celebration tomorrow night!

Come celebrate with the cast and crew of Twelve Hours in a City. We’ll be filming for our first episode and keeping the club hectic until the owners kick us out in the wee-hours of the morning!

Who: Clark / Joe / Steve / Jeremy / Friends / Family / Fans
What: The official Bon Voyage! party for the Twelve Hours in a City crew.
When: September 3rd, 2009 – 9pm until we drop.
Where: Social (228 Franklin St) Buffalo, NY
Why: Party with the crew of the show, help $end them on their way, win merch from our sponsors!

This party is not to be missed, a fun filled evening at the newest club in town. This one will be recalled in local lore for years to come. Make sure you’re a part of it!

See you there,
Joe and Clark

This video outlined the fundamental concept of this project so well, that we don’t feel the need to provide written content; we are only doing so for the benefit of the web spiders. This is the social media revolution; you either get it, or you don’t– or as a mentor of ours used to say “You’re either on the train or in front of it”.

Enjoy,
Joe and Clark

Crest of Tau Kappa Epsilon

The gentlemen in charge of TKE.org were kind enough to feature our project on their home page news feed. Clark Dever is a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon and is looking to utilize his network of over 250,000 TKE Alumni and 280 Active TKE Chapters at campuses across the country during the Twelve Hours in a City project.

“One of the benefits of being a member of the largest (read: The Best) collegiate fraternity in the United States is the bond that you have the privilege of sharing with men all over the country. I have utilized the hospitality of fellow Tekes on several trips when I have ended up in an unfamiliar city. I have never been disappointed by the charity that they have shown me.
Frater Greg Bacorn’s Barron Games was the first business to sponsor us when we came up with the idea [for Twelvehoursinacity.com] and TKE’s at UC San Diego have already volunteered to take us around when we visit their area of California. I missed Conclave this year, so I plan on using this trip to meet TKE’s from all over the country.”
-Clark

If you’re a TKE, we appreciate you visiting our site and checking out our project. We hope that you add our facebook page or RSS feed . Please take a moment to tell your friends about the project or to reach out to us, so we have the opportunity to meet you on our trip. If you’re an undergraduate and you’re not a TKE, you should check to see if your campus has a chapter. If it doesn’t, you can always start a chapter with some friends (Clark did: Founding Father, Epsilon-Chi)!

We are sorry for leaving you hanging these past three days– You know that you’ve been bad at updating your blog when your Mom sends you a worried e-mail.

How come you haven’t posted anything new on your site since the 24th?

Hope you are doing ok.

Love,

[Clark's] Mom

Media Update:

We have been VERY BUSY. We’ve had two radio interviews and three web/magazine articles this week. If you missed them check out our In The News section. We apologize, but we have spent a lot of time working on media relations and scheduling our itinerary instead of updating our site. We are still finalizing the second and third leg of our trip, we’re hope to book our tickets tonight.

We are planning a Bon Voyage Party in Buffalo, NY for Sept. 3rd at Social (228 Franklin St); We’ve been working with Susan Cope (@SusanLynnCope) and After Dark Entertainment (@ringerrr) to set this trip off with a bang!

Wiki Update:

You have been amazingly helpful on our Wiki, but there are still quite a few cities without any local intelligence! We could also use some help getting the pages organized using sections (Like in this article: BUF).
A gentle reminder about our TravelTips and InteractiveGames pages, both of those pages need your love and creativity.

Sponsorship Update:

We have been working very hard at finding people to sponsor us. Despite the fact that the tickets are only $599 plus any fees we may be assessed. The costs associated with four guys being on the road and connected to the internet for 31 days straight add up really quickly. We already have several small businesses as Official Sponsors and in talks with a few national brands. That being said, we are still in need of your help! So please give us a call if you would like to be a part of this great project.

We are happy to announce that Ambiguous Clothing has offered to outfit our team for the trip, they have some rad designers and we are stoked to be wearing their threads. We’ve also been offered shirts from City Love Clothing (@tonycitylove), so we will be rep’ing Buffalo with their excellent designs for at least a few days of the trip. Also, nuBound (@nubound) has sponsored us with a trips supply worth of their Recovery supplement. It’s built for marathoners, so we’ll see if it helps keep us healthy and active. Last but not least, Dunkin Donuts (@DunkinDonuts) has taken pity on us and offered to supply us with Coffee after the long Red-Eye flights heading east, “America runs on Dunkin” and now so will we.

Training Update:

The gentlemen from True Blue Buffalo allowed us to follow them around as they filmed a segment at “The Anchor Bar” on Tuesday. So a special thanks to Nate Peracciny and John Paget for sharing their (hard earned) wisdom on documentary film making.