Tennessee Trip

[umassbluangel]

August 16, 2006

Liz and I left at 1:30 from Massachusetts. She said that it should only take roughly 12 hours to get to Nashville but Mapquest said it should take 18…. So we’ll see.

There was a ton of traffic along the way and it ended up taking us 18 hours.

Score one for mapquest… for the first time ever.

So four interesting things happened along the way:

1. We went to a gas station in Maryland and I had to go to the bathroom. It was one of those things where only one person can go int at a time. So I pushed on the door and it flew open and there was this woman standing up, totally naked on the bottom and I SAW EVERYTHING!!! It was horrifying. Well she comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later and walks up to me and goes, “I am so sorry! I was putting in a tampon!” I almost threw up… Department of Too Much Information.
2. Liz and I were having a conversation outside a gas station and she said, “Where do you think cigarettes will be cheapest? Here or some other state?”. I answer with, “probably Tennessee.” This guy, who obviously did not hear Liz ask me that question, gets out of his beat up pick up truck and in the hugest southern accent says to me, “What? You don’t know where you are? You’re in Maryland! Can’t you tell by all the red necks?” And I was like “OMG wtf?”. It was awesome. He had everything you could ever hope for in a red neck: missing teeth, pick up truck, ridiculous accent, and a mesh trucker hat.
3. In Tennessee Liz goes, “look behind you.” So I looked in the rearview. Nothing. So she’s like, “no, look behind you.” And so I looked at it again. Nothing. She goes, “No turn around and look.” So I did and it was a Mac truck that has painted vampire teeth onto it’s grill so that when you looked at it it looked like a huge tiger was coming to eat you. And it looked hilarious. I will have video of this up.
4. We saw two different spiders on two separate occasions the size of a ping-pong ball with fat thick hairy legs. I almost cried.

August 17, 2006

We got there at 8 in the morning and I slept until 5p! Yikes. Then we made some dinner and headed out to the main road in Nashville. We ended at the Bourbon Street Blues Bar. It was awesome. We saw Ronnie Balker and he rocked. Hardcore. On the way to the bar though we walked by the world famous bar Tootsies and there was a little crowd gathering outside because Kid Rock and Pam Anderson were inside. So I got to see them. I took video. Apparently we later found out that they got married at that bar that night. You know how they are getting married in four different places around the world? Well, we were there for one of them. Here is the article sent to me by
umeggles:
http://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1228589,00.html

August 18, 2006

We are now on our way to Memphis, TN and you better believe we are going to Graceland and will listen to “Walkin’ in Memphis”. I have never been a real Elvis fan although if he’s on I won’t change the station. I expected Graceland to be HUGE. I had been there once before with Meghan but it was at night and we couldn’t go inside and it was sort of lame. But we toured it and hung out IN THE JUNGLE room. Sweet. It was emotional to be at his grave and hear all about his life and stuff. Then we, of course, went to Beale Street. Followed by an immediate devouring of the BEST BBQ in the world at Rendezvous. I am not hooked on ribs for life. And of course, we sang “Walkin’ in Memphis” as loud as we could on some street and taped it. Videos to follow. Finally we came back to Nashville and watched Mean Girls.

August 19, 2006

It’s Rachel’s boyfriend’s birthday today so we went gift shopping for him and baked a red velvet cake for him. We stopped at the Starbucks that Rachel works at which is apparently frequented by Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Then we went to eat at the Cheesecake Factory where I drank my first Mojito, which was AMAZING. And while I was briefly online, on a whim, I checked my favorite artists’ tour schedules and it just so happened that Marc Broussard was going to be in town tonight… so we went to the world famous Ryman Auditiorium to see Bela Fleck (I LOVE BANJOS!) and Marc Broussard. It kicked ass. It’s also really a huge coincidence because I showed Liz some of Marc’s stuff on the drive down and I had it stuck in my head the whole time and I had been humming it which led me into a Dave Chapelle skit that was related to one of his songs. And then I kept singing this one line of Marc’s over and over. And then randomly I check the website and out of all the places in the entire world, he is in the town I am in the night I am in it. Crazy. I am surprised that they really don’t card down here for beer. It’s weird. Oh and Josh Kelley is in town in two nights and had I known that I would have prepared myself to be here an additional night but alas we will not be seeing him.

August 20, 2006

It’s our last day here in Nashville so we want to make the best of it. We just hung out by the pool for about 3 hours in Rachel’s apartment complex after spending the morning making crepes. We wwent to the the Grand Ole Opry which is a bran new building and we found out that actually the Ryman Auditorium was the OLD Grand Ole Opry… We grubbed it up at Bob Evans (a chain) and ate the famous biscuits and gravy. So goooood. Then we came home and watched A lot like love. And we played Apples to Apples with some Sangria and Mudslides. It was hilarious and a great way to end our time in Tennessee.

August 21, 2006
We are now on our way home. I have to say that this was by far one of the best trips I’ve ever taken. It was so relaxed yet we still did so much. The ride home ended up taking LONGER than the ride down - for no reason. There was less traffic and we stopped less. Weird. I got home at FOUR AM... we left at SEVEN AM. Granted, we did lose an hour since we were in Central time zone... but still!!!