I go to school at the University of Florida. The school is in Gainesville, FL, a small-ish town in North-Central Florida. Gainesville has all the trappings of a typical college town: it's in the middle of nowhere, a pretty sizable population of townies (ACR's as well call them, short for "Alachua County Residents), as well as a plentiful supply of alcohol in the form of liquor stores, restaurants, clubs, and bars. There's only one thing missing from this veritable cornucopia of alcohol options: the 40 oz. For a reason that no one I've talked to has ever been able to pinpoint, Florida law prohibits the sale of beer bottles bigger than 32 ounces. It boggles the mind, really, as us students never have a shortage of options when it comes to beer - it usually comes in the form of a keg (which holds 124 cups of beer, if memory serves me correctly). But the novelty of a 40 oz is definitely still alive.

There's a solution to this problem: Georgia. Gainesville is about 45 minutes South of the state line, so it's definitely a manageable drive. Oftentimes throughout the few years I've been here, some friends and I are sitting around bored with nothing to do on a weeknight. Invariably, someone mentions it: "Hey, let's go on a beer run. TO GEORGIA." Screw our 8 AM classes the next morning - if it's out in the open, it's bound to happen. So a few of us pile in a car and head off into the night. This is the story of one of those nights, and one of the mixtapes that accompanies us.

On this particular night, it was a Saturday around 11 PM. My travelling buddies were friends Andrew, a pothead from New Orleans, and Chris, an eccentric-bordering-on-uptight, country-loving Southerner from Bradenton, FL, a small "Southern" suburb on the outskirts of Tampa. And then there's me, a slightly preppy and slightly indie kid. We're all good friends, however, and the mood is genial. Andrew is driving, bringing along plenty of pot to make our journey up I-75 a little more enjoyable. Chris is in the back with the cooler of beer providing comic relief, and I'm riding shotgun, put in charge of the music. I have to tread these waters lightly, though: with this kind of crowd, "indie" music won't exactly fly. The standard fare will be southern rock, with sprinkings of other stuff mixed in there, hoping they won't notice too much.

This is the story of our journey to get beer, just in a bigger size.