Memphis to Knoxville via Nashville

We awoke at a reasonable hour and headed to see the one and only sight that Memphis has to offer, the home of Kitschy Americana – Graceland – Home of Elvis. After paying our admission fare and standing in a freezing cold line for about 20 minutes, our tour of Graceland began. After looking through his house, which was really weird and listening to various stories about his life, we were promptly back on the road and ready to head towards Nashville. It is fair to say that Graceland was not my favourite tourist destination. At all. Apparently I’m the only one that didn’t like it.

But first, despite repeated protests from yours truly, at the decree of Marvin McIntosh we headed to IHOP (the international house of pancakes) where he proceeded to gorge himself over the obligatory game of BB. After playing cards for a couple of hours, we loaded into the Trailblazer and headed towards Nashville, home of country music and “our Nicole” and “our Keith”.

En route, we made a stop at Ross’ Discount Clothing warehouse to find some cheap warm clothes as the mercury had hit 32 Fahrenheit and was dropping rapidly. Whilst I managed to buy a flock of ducks masquerading as a jacket for the bargain price of $60 (marked down from $225), Wonderboy was somewhat bamboozled by the magnitude of options and settled on some thermals.

As we drove in to Nashville, Carl was charged with trying to find us a place where we could eat fried chicken near downtown Nashville. He managed the fried chicken OK, but the place he found for us to eat was a full half hour outside of Nashville. He and Emily just don’t seem to get along. After another massive healthy meal – half a fried chicken, 3 scones and 4 supersize glasses of pepsi each – we proceeded to play more cards while we killed time and worked out whether Dana had made his flight or not.

After working out that he had made it, we went to the airport, got him and then commenced the drive to Knoxville. Needless to say, the drive was filled with chat – much of which centred around a bizarre argument about the relative stupidity of smoking and drinking. Apparently I was being argumentative – an opinion I disagreed with and was prepared to argue with.

We eventually arrived at Dana’s mum and step-dad’s place where we said our hellos, played a couple of games of pool and crashed – happy for the follosing things:

1. The sheets we were sleeping on was not plastic
2. The roof over our head was not of the motel 6 variety
3. There was no chance that drifters would pilfer all of our worldly possessions during the night
4. That the next day would involve exactly zero driving
5. And that there would only be a maximum of two of us in any given room.

That’s all for now,

Jez