Tuesday wasn't going to be a fun day. 855 miles from Houston, across southern Louisiana, all the way north through Mississippi, and about halfway across Tennessee to Nashville. Translated: about 13 hours in the car.
Again I got to drive through more remnants from Bonnie in Texas and Mississippi, which slowed me down considerably.
I finally got to Nashville around 8 pm, found a room for the night, then looked into some local music. A website mentioned a bar called The Station Inn, considered one of the best bluegrass venues in Nashville. Playing tonight was a group called Westbound Rangers - four guys, probably just out of college at Vanderbilt. One acoustic guitar, one string bass, one mandolin, and one banjo. Perfect!
The banjo player had a big bushy beard and also played the kazoo. The bass player was wearing a tie dyed t-shirt, overalls, and of course he was barefoot!
To blend in a little better, I even drank PBR (that's Pabst Blue Ribbon for the uninformed). The sad thing is they charged the same $4 for PBR as they would charge for Fat Tire. That's sad.
My favorite song of the night was a bluegrass version of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition".
If the video doesn't play, click here to go to one of their other YouTube videos. Trust me, it was good.
Wednesday morning started with breakfast at the Waffle House. The last time I went to one of these places was in Pascagoula, MS. What I remember most was the fine coating of grease on the menu and I've been traumatized since. But since it was right next to the hotel, I decided to give it a shot and sat at the counter.
I got a ham and cheese omelet and it was actually pretty good. When I got in the car, I looked down at my shorts and noticed they were covered in grease.....like, mechanic grease!!! And they were fairly new shorts too! Never again will I eat a a Waffle House.
The windshield was installed in pretty good time and I had a decision to make. Head northeast to Cleveland for the Yankees/Indians game at 7 pm or east to Salem, VA and maybe catch a Salem Red Sox game. Cleveland had severe t-storms in the forecast and I would have driven through storms all the way. Salem had a 30% chance of scattered t-storms and not much rain to drive through. I opted for Salem and hope to get to a Washington Nationals game on Thursday in DC.
Besides having much more traffic (and therefore, stress) to deal with, I surpassed 9000 miles on the trip - currently at 9300. I'm thinking I may fall about 100 miles short of 10,000 for the four week trip!
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