We leave for Kentucky on Friday.
Five of us from the Alligator staff will pile into a rented minivan and make the 11-hour drive from Gainesville to Lexington.
We're going to cover a football game, presumably a pretty good one.
But I feel pulled to the land of bluegrass and bourbon for a different reason altogether: horse racing.
Specifically, the mint-julep drinking, big-hat wearing brand they have on display at Churchill Downs.
Lexington is home to two historic racing tracks: Keeneland, which has been hosting live races since 1936, and The Red Mile Harness Track - the second oldest horse racing track in the nation.
My request for a detour to one of these tracks has been met with opposition by the rest of the alligatorSports team thus far, but I take solace in the fact that I have 700 miles to change their minds.
Now, you might assume the only reason for an excursion of this nature is to indulge in the handful of vices to be had at such a place.
But this pipe dream, I assure you, is purely academic.
One of my favorite pieces of writing was penned at a track and since the chances of me finding my way to the Kentucky Derby any time soon are laughable at best, this is probably as close as I'm going to get.
Hunter S. Thompson's 1970 article "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is regarded as one of the most influential pieces of modern journalism and one that I have grown to love.
Thompson was sent to cover the annual Kentucky Derby for a short-lived magazine called Scanlan's Monthly.
After a few days of writers block, he hit deadline without a coherent story for his editor.
Thompson tore pages from his notebook, numbered them, and sent them to the magazine.
The first-person subjectivity that characterized these notes became the beginnings of the Gonzo style of journalism he was known for.
Thompson's article was described by one critic as "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."
He depicted the whiskey gentry that he met that weekend as "a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis."
In a naive attempt to capture the inspiration of a hero, I would also like to rub elbows with the people of Kentucky.
I want to sit trackside while million-dollar horses race by and sip cocktails next to pearl-wearing southern matriarchs.
I want to find myself standing in line at the betting window with an exuberant business man lighting a cigar throwing down a $100 bill on a race in front of me and some poor soul with $1 in his pocket still trying to win his money back behind me.
And perhaps amidst the bustle of the track I might be able to see a little bit of what Thompson saw.
So somewhere between an Atlanta layover for Gladys Knight and Ron Winan's Chicken & Waffles and an overnight stop in Chattanooga, I'll try one more time to plead my case to visit one of the horse tracks and get a chance to experience the best Kentucky has to offer.
If I'm lucky, the others will cave. And who knows, maybe I'll even pick a winner.
