The memory of the car ride is still vivid, even if the destination and the reason we were all there in the first place have been forgotten.
It was the middle of October in 1997, I was 13-years-old, and the Louisville football program was smack in the middle of one of the lowest points of an existence that had already endured its fair share of valleys. My parents were driving me somewhere in our old blue Lincoln Town Car -- affectionately referred to as "The Big Blue Boat" -- and we were on Herr Lane right by my old stomping grounds, Wilder Elementary.