Chances are, you didn’t notice the new link stuck at the top of the page today. But it’s there, hidden in between the schedule and our contact information. I’ve got the first two photo galleries up online, with more coming throughout the weekend.

For now, I’ve only got them grouped by city. That means pictures from the game, the arenas, and the places around town are all stuck in the same place. Eventually, I’ll create albums for photos of each player, each game, and one combining all the arenas. Then you can skip the stuff you don’t want to see and get right to what you are looking for.

But in the meantime, click the link above and you can get started with the shots from New York and Phoenix. I’ll get around to the others sometime after I bring you the Baylor preview.

I want to apologize for the recent lack of post-game updates. Much to my surprise, there are actually quite a few of you who check the blog regularly, and I know how much it sucks to visit a favorite page and see no new content.

I knew when I started this journey it was a pretty crazy idea, but I really had no idea of how physically draining it was going to be until this last week or so. Between the start of classes, holding a job, and actually travelling to the games, it’s starting to take its toll. But I wouldn’t trade this for anything — including a few extra hours of sleep each night — and I’m going to continue to bring you updates as often as I can.

Hopefully later tonight I’ll get my post-Villanova thoughts out on paper. But of course, homework comes first, and for some reason I have an insane amount for only having attended the T/TH courses once so far. So maybe by “later tonight” I actually mean “very early on Tuesday morning.” But it’ll be there for you to mull over as you down the morning coffee. And sometime this week you can also expect a ton of pictures to be available. I got a lot of work on the gallery pages done while flying to and from Philly, so by the end of the week you’ll at least be able to see the photos from New York, Phoenix, Houston, Tennessee, and a few home games.

So again, thank you for reading. And I must once more offer my apologies for failing to bring you timely post-game updates for the last three games. But keep coming back, because I promise I’ll be here all throughout conference play and into the post-season.

So the comment feature is fixed for those of you using Internet Explorer. Of course, for you IE folks the layout and colors still look like a baby vomited up pea soup. And for that I apologize.

If any of my readers happen to be HTML or CSS geniuses and would like to offer some help, please feel free. I might give you a piece of gum I chewed, which will definitely fetch a pretty penny on eBay. Or I could just give you a public thanks in this space.

But in the meantime, for all of you who have e-mailed or IMed to say the comment feature doesn’t work — problem solved. Talk amongst yourselves. I’m all verklempt.

It’s been brought to our attention that readers accessing the site with Internet Explorer are seeing a mangled version of the page with all the useful links shoved to the bottom. We’re working on the problem, but in the meantime you can still see the page as intended by using the Firefox browser.

It’s possible that this IE issue is also related to the problems some have been having with the comment link. If you’ve tried unsuccessfully to leave a comment and are using Internet Explorer, drop us a line at contact@longhornroadtrip.com to let us know.

Thanks again for reading, and for letting us know about the problems!

Three years ago, as I waited in the rain outside the Frank Erwin Center for a game against Oklahoma State, I saw a small group of people folding up tents at the front of the line. A few weeks later, when it came time for the game against hated OU, I decided to follow their lead and spend two nights outside in a sleeping bag. I met many of the hardiest Longhorn basketball fans, who opened up their tents and tailgates to me. These guys led me through my O-Zone indocrination, taking me on road trips to Stillwater and Atlanta. Some people join frats or rush sororities. That spring, I pledged South O-Zone.

Over the two following years, I was front and center at practically every home game. I made road trips seemingly everywhere — Norman, Waco, College Station, Lawrence, New York, even Atlanta again. Some of my friends began to notice a disturbing trend. When I left the state of Texas to see the Horns play basketball, they’d always lose. To Oklahoma State in Stillwater and Xavier in Atlanta. To OU in Norman, Kansas in Lawrence, and the Aggies in College Station. To Duke in New York City, then the Sooners and Cowboys again in Oklahoma. By the time we made it to Atlanta in March of this year, I had an 0-8 record at out-of-state UT basketball games.

As a Red Sox fan, I’m used to having the “cursed” label thrown in my direction. But as a realist, I also know that the trade of a player in the 1910’s can’t make a ball roll between a first baseman’s legs in 1986. And by the same token, my mere presence in an arena can’t make a basketball team lose. So when Kenton Paulino hit that buzzer-beating three-pointer against West Virginia to propel Texas into the Elite Eight — and erase my “curse” — I felt completely vindicated.

Two days later, we lost to LSU and waited in bitter, cold, windy weather to thank the team as they boarded the buses. And as Brad Buckman thanked us for all of our support, I realized that I had seen that class of seniors mature through their four years on the Forty Acres. And suddenly I had the crazy idea of watching the team mature throughout an entire season, in person.

At the time, I still had dreams of standing in the same place outside the Georgia Dome a year later, congratulating the team after winning their first national title. But over the coming weeks, the entries of LaMarcus Aldridge, P.J. Tucker, and Daniel Gibson into the NBA draft tempered those dreams. Add to that the transfer of one of my favorite players, Mike Williams, and things weren’t looking good. But I had already made a mental commitment to this crazy trip, and I continued ahead in my plans.

As the pieces of the schedule came together, it began to look like I couldn’t have chosen a better year for the ultimate road trip. With games in New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Knoxville, and the usual Big 12 haunts, the 2006-07 campaign offers a great package of road games. And thanks to all of those dream-shattering changes to the roster, this is actually shaping up to be a perfect season to watch a team grow from game to game. With seven young, incredibly talented kids, there is not a single person who can reasonably claim that the team I watched on Thursday night will be anywhere close to the team I see suit up in Lawrence, Kansas on March 3rd.

So that’s how the pieces fell in place. How a crazy, random thought on a cold, depressing night in Atlanta could blossom into an incredible journey. Now, eight months later, I take my first trip of ten outside of Texas. And maybe by March we can make that 1-9 out-of-state record look a little bit better for the superstitious folks out there.