At some point, a lot of buddies have that talk, a moment of inspiration when one says to the other, "Wouldn't it be great to get an RV and just drive around the country going to football games? We should do that."
And you both agree that someday when you've saved up the money, won the lottery, found a pot of gold, followed Pacman Jones around to enough strip clubs with a Dustbuster, you'll really do it.Joe Lusk and Nate Thompson had that conversation. Had it several times, actually.They met at West Point in 1998, both played running back on Army's "sprint" football team, an intercollegiate sport played by Army, Navy, Penn, Princeton and Cornell, where all the players have to be under 165 pounds two days before the games. They'd starve themselves, then go eat cheese fries at Outback after the weigh-in.Nate was from Phoenix, Joe from little Reedley High in Central California, where his mother taught his yearbook class. They were best friends through college, then reunited in flight school at Fort Rucker, then became roommates when Nate bought a house in Enterprise, Ala., with a V.A. loan. And they kept coming back to that football road trip -- How great would that be, huh? -- even as each headed for a tour in Iraq.Joe, as it turns out, never made it to Iraq, wasn't even overseas for two weeks. His mother, Susan Lusk, had to watch the video the Army gave her, the one that shows an Apache helicopter flying into the ground during a training exercise in Kuwait.Her Joe was the gunner on that chopper, and nearly five years later, she still isn't sure whether she'd rather it was her son who died, or have him survive the way the pilot did, to live his life in a coma, then a wheelchair, and now with brain damage, divorced and at his mother's house. Not that Joe's mother had a choice.That pilot called her a few months ago to apologize. He can finally speak now, but he doesn't remember anything about the crash or much of his time in the military."I don't even know if he remembers Joe," Susan says.It was awkward, neither knowing what to say, and they hung up with Susan getting no answer to the question she'll carry around forever: "What the hell happened?"That is a strange background to start the dream road trip that two buddies imagined, but Nate Thompson never really had time for sadness. A year after Joe's death, after returning from Iraq, Nate flew to Fresno to spend time with Joe's family and walked off the airplane wearing a vintage peach tuxedo with a ruffled shirt."I wear it for special occasions," he says.They could have sat around crying, but instead rented a limo and went out on the town.So it really wasn't a huge surprise when a few months ago, Nate called and said he was doing the trip. He would start a Web site and he would rent his cousin's RV and he would travel to see a game at every one of the 31 NFL stadiums. In one season.It sounds a little insane until you think about the logistics of it, and then it sounds entirely insane. The Chargers' Qualcomm Stadium, is 3,000 miles from Gillette Stadium and Bill Belichick's sweatshirt. The Dolphins' Land Shark Stadium is 3,300 miles from the Seahawks' Qwest Field. But Nate is doing it, mile after mile, city after city, with his brother and a friend along for the adventure. During Week 1, they saw the Titans and Steelers in Pittsburgh on Thursday, then the Broncos and Bengals in Cincinnati on Sunday, then drove all night to New England to see the Patriots and Bills in that wild game Monday.It's only Week 6 and according to the Web site (31stadiums.com), they've already driven 11,449 miles. It's just plain crazy, and because it wasn't crazy enough, they're seeing as many college games as they can. Already, they've watched Florida State vs. Miami, Ohio State vs. USC, Florida vs. Tennessee, Notre Dame vs. Washington and Washington vs. Arizona. Those are games on a sports fan's bucket list.Nate is funding the trip with the money he made in two Iraq tours. He snagged a lot of the tough tickets early, and the rest he's buying online or at ticket windows or in parking lots. The Packers-Vikings game at the Metrodome cost the most ($160).The trip is to remember Joe, of course, and because you don't put things off, and also to raise money for his friend's memorial fund. (Joelusk.org.)White smoke started pouring out of the RV this week in Santa Rosa, but if the mechanics fix it in time, Nate will be at Saturday's Fresno State game against San Jose State.It's the trip sports fans dream of, the one he and a friend imagined. It would be perfect, if only he had his co-pilot.