By Kyle Bender ’12 & Tyler Wade ’12

Whew…it’s been a crazy couple of days for the folks on the Wabash Road Trip as we had our longest day of driving and events in Fort Wayne and Louisville the past two days.

After Mrs. Chamblee cooked us an awesome breakfast, we left South Bend for Fort Wayne on Saturday. We got to The Fort and Tyler met up with his parents at Concordia High School where his brother, Abraham, was playing in an AAU Basketball Tournament. During the basketball games, Kyle took the van over to the movie theatre to catch the latest Harry Potter film. Both of us had fun and it was a great respite in the middle of the road trip.

The trip has brought success! These men, who were classmates at Wabash, had no idea they lived near one another. They spent the evening planning a new Monon Bell watch party location in Louisville.

After the down time, we went to Don Hall’s Factory and saw a small but spirited group of current and prospective students and their parents. We certainly would have liked to have more alums show up for the event, but it was also the Three Rivers Festival so families were probably busy taking in the festivities. We had a great time with the people who did come though and really enjoyed our time in Fort Wayne. After the event, we took our bags to the house of Cameron and Chris McDougal ’12 and then went to see what the festival had to offer.

We were up bright and early on Sunday morning for the 4 hour drive to Louisville, Kentucky. Both of us have an interest in golf so we hoped we could check in at the hotel and then watch the final round of the British Open and catch the US Women’s team in their World Cup Final match against Japan. Sadly, the room was not ready and we spent 20 minutes driving around New Albany looking for a place to get lunch that had a television. That trek was also unsuccessful so we decided to head into Louisville and Molly Malone’s (the location of the event that night) to grab some lunch and watch the end of The Open Championship.

Molly Malones, in downtown Louisville, served as great location for our event. Watching an Irishman win the British Open in an Irish Pub is quite an experience!

There we met up with Jeff Soller ’12, who is interning with the Legal Aid Society of Louisville with Jeff Been ’81. He came back with us to New Albany to watch the World Cup game before we raced back to town to see the final fateful acts of the game against Japan. What a heartbreaker!

After the final penalty kick, Wabash men began showing up with their families for a fun night of fellowship. We had about 20 folks from around the Louisville area come out to share stories of their time at Wabash—classes, football, parties, etc. and to catch up on what they are doing in their current professions. They talked about how Cultures and Traditions would be missed as a class but spoke with hope about the future of liberal arts education at a place like Wabash. It was an awesome night!

We had a great turnout for the Louisville event

After the event we welcomed Soller into our hotel room so he would be closer to work in the morning and had a great time talking about what we have done thus far at Wabash and what lies in the months ahead. It was really sentimental but just another thing to get us excited to be back on campus come August.

Today takes us to Evansville. We stopped for lunch in Corydon, the first state capitol, and are sitting in a Starbucks in EVille waiting for Chris Deig ’12 to tell us how to get to his house. We are excited to see another great turnout tonight here in Evansville and may stop in Greencastle tomorrow on the way to the Mitchum Crock in Indianapolis!