The thick, pixilated line of neon pink – Mapquest.com’s default suggestion for the quickest driving directions from Syracuse to Phoenix – branches from one coast to the other, educing, from a bird’s-eye map of America, the image of police tape strewn around a grizzly crime scene. The message: Do not cross.

Trespassing through this country, you see, has its consequences. Thirty-six hours in the car. Roughly 2,400 miles of state-maintained roadway. Money burned on gas, food, oil changes, lodging, speeding tickets, roadside beef jerky stands, newsstand Maxim issues, new CD mixes, and – let’s hope – at least one or two pine-scented air fresheners.

The impetus for such a trip, I admit, seems elusive. Certainly there are some prerequisites. It doesn’t hurt to have an SUV. (Greater interior volume means a less concentrated stench.) Likewise for a sharp sense of adventure. (You’ll know what I’m talking about once you get to Arkansas.) And lastly, for this week and this week only, it helps if you’re the kind of Syracuse University student who owns a stalker-mad love for this school’s basketball team. (‘Hakim Warrick’s middle name? Easy. (ITALICS)Hanif(ITALICS).’)

To be sure, only a handful of students here fit all those qualifications. Student tickets for the NCAA Tournament regional games in Phoenix went on sale Monday at the Carrier Dome’s Gate B, and it’s safe to say Supply scored a quick, technical knockout against Demand.

Two ladies working at the ticket window had stockpiled 178 student tickets behind their little – and very unnecessary – glass veneers. But not surprisingly, when I ambled over to the Dome that afternoon, only about a dozen people were there.

Anyway, when I approached one of the ticket buyers, introduced myself and told him I thought he was crazy, he didn’t argue.

‘Yup, we’re a little out of our minds,’ said grad student Andy Sullivan, who was planning a Phoenix roadie with younger brother, Chris, and his buddy, senior David Kemmerer. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m a slave (to Syracuse basketball). It’s more like I’m an indentured servant.’

Sullivan and Kemmerer had already purchased their tickets – $100 a pop – but they hadn’t patched together much of an itinerary. That became alarmingly apparent when they started talking about travel plans, presumably for the first time.

‘We’re probably gonna leave Wednesday,’ Sullivan said. He looked to his buddy for a second opinion.

‘Sure. Wednesday at noon,’ Kemmerer said.

‘We’re gonna get in my brother’s Jeep – a Cherokee,’ Sullivan added. ‘And our parents didn’t buy that Jeep – that’s important. Put that in your article. It’s his actual, real car. I don’t want people reading this thinking, ‘Oh, these rich kids…”

‘Anyway,’ Kemmerer interrupted, ‘first we’re gonna go down to…’

‘Nashville maybe?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘I figure we can go down south first, maybe then go to (Interstate) 40.’

‘How many hours is this again?’

‘I’m thinking about 32. It said 36 on Mapquest, but that’s way too long. You can literally go 100 miles per hour in Texas.’

‘Dude, we’re not going through Texas.’

‘Well, whatever. We can do five-hour shifts driving. All nonstop.’

‘Gatorade bottles for urinals.’

‘Sunflower seeds for eating. Lots of sunflower seeds’

‘Oranges, too – for good luck. And plenty of Cheetos bags.’

To the man, though, nobody gathered before Gate B on Monday had difficulty rationalizing the transnational escapade, even if it required skipping class or missing work or composing ambiguous ‘Family emergency’ e-mails. (Beware professors and bosses.)

‘It’s an equation you can’t ignore,’ sophomore Colin King explained. ‘Arizona ladies, ‘Cuse basketball and golf. That equals memories for a lifetime.’

Said Lorenz Hartmann, who planned to find a plane ticket to Phoenix: ‘If the games down there are amazing, it could be something you remember until you’re 80.’

A few sophomoric entrepreneurs came to Gate B on Monday with hopes to repeat a ploy many students successfully executed a year ago. During the Orangemen’s championship run last March, some students purchased tickets and then auctioned them off to scalpers or die-hards, often for thousands of dollars.

This time around, however, tickets aren’t issued in advance. They must be ordered under one specific name, and that person – showing ID – must pick them up in Phoenix.

Kemmerer and his crew expect to arrive there Thursday, possibly dreary and tired but certainly excited. There’s only one thing, really, that could thwart a good time:

If his parents find out he’s going.

‘It’s like a tattoo,’ he said. ‘You wait six months and then you tell them. ‘Uhh, mom, see this tattoo? It’s not marker.’ I’ll wait until after graduation. Then they won’t be able to say anything to me about it.’

Chico Harlan is a staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear infrequently. E-mail him at apharlan@syr.edu.

Published on March 23, 2004 at 12:00 pm