day two
12 June 2008
Day 2: Sunday, May 25 Abingdon, VA – Nashville, TN
Original Departure Time: 10:00am
Adjusted Departure Time: 11:00am
Actual Departure Time: 1:08pm
Total Mileage: 303 miles
Nashville. Wow.
In a way, I feel kinda bad – so many of you guys wrote in with so many good suggestions for the city, that as we drove in, I was armed with a folder full of emails, your hints, suggestions and places to go highlighted on the pages, ready to be used to attack the city. However, in the long run, we wound up spending six hours on one block, the last two hours of which I can tell you about only in one word: Wendy’s. Or maybe three words: Wendy’s. For real.
But we’ll get to that. Last night, probably because it was the Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend, we had a difficult time finding a hotel. I don’t know if Abington, VA is a hotbed of activity over the holiday, but we used the Garmin to call several hotels before finding one with room, a hotel that no doubt has been featured in an episode of “The First 48” or “Unsolved Mysteries” at some point in its existence. If I closed my eyes hard enough, I could practically see the mustachioed homicide detective leaning over the stabbed body of the middle-aged crackhead between the beds.
Because I was the most pro-Nashville of the three of us and wanted to make Nashville as enjoyable and painless as possible, I booked a hotel in advance for us, a nice Marriott (with a pool!) near Vanderbilt. I figured a little splurging was in order, despite the impending hefty fine for my dad’s reckless driving ticket, to celebrate our first real, touristy stop on the tour. And splurging it was, since I had to book two rooms. As we did last night, for the duration of this trip, my brother and I will be sharing a room while my dad will get his own. This is both out of respect for my dad as the elder of the group, but also a practical matter.
You see, my dad occasionally yells in his sleep. A few weeks ago when I was home in Philly, I had come in from a night out drinking and was taking a piss upstairs in the bathroom next to my dad’s bedroom. It was then that I heard yelling, his yelling, gibberish floating out from whatever dream (or nightmare) he was having. I’ve heard this before and it always happens the same: I’m drunk, taking a piss; I hear him yelling in his sleep; it subsides; the next day I ask him about it and he has no idea; four hours later he says, “You know what? I did have a nightmare last night.” So hearing it on this night two weeks ago didn’t disturb me, but being in the same room as a 50-something 250 pound man while he’s yelling in his sleep is not something I’m interested in. Thanks, though.
(Speaking of thanks, I’d like to thank both my dad and God. For all the good traits that my dad and Jesus could have passed down to me – toughness, great mustache, calmness, not being scared of bugs and lightening, not being mezzofinook, etc – I get night terrors, as evinced by the night a few months ago when I awoke, thought I saw someone in my room, and jumped out of bed to tackle this person – only to slam myself into my closet. So thanks for that. I don’t need a mustache anyway, I guess.)
En route to Nashville, I texted my buddy Tom. I went to BC with Tom, where his exploits were so magnificent that I dare not write about them, lest I melt your brain and computer (not to mention get Tom immediately fired and make him permanently unmarriable). Tom now lives in the San Fran area, but spent two years in Knoxville and many a weekend in Nashville – and yet I forgot to ask him for suggestions about the city. So about 100 miles away from Music City, I shot him a random text looking for advice. He called me back immediately, saying that he happened to be in Knoxville that weekend visiting his lady and suggesting we meet up in Nashville for a night.
Now I realize that I say this as someone who experienced Nashville for the first time – someone who, when he asked his friends for suggestions for the city, specifically said he wanted the tourist experience – but Nashville was awesome. Four reasons:
1) The women. Good lord – I have to date a Southern woman. This is something that just has to happen, even if for a little while. They are the perfect antidote to the bicoastal blues. I’ve spent the past few months being intimidated by women in NYC (because of their coolness/aloofness) and women in LA (because of their bronzeness and the plastic in their boobies) and here are the women of the South, smiling, saying hello, chatting up the tourists from out of town, the two brothers driving cross-country with their dad, sipping their beers, smiling right on back. Just a lovely collection of ladies in those Nashville bars. I’d have to check on this, but I think it’s the first time I’ve ever talked to a woman in a bar without knowing she’s looking at me thinking, “So this guy obviously wants to fuck me. How should I go about toying with him/crushing his self-esteem before I go fuck someone better-looking/richer/more fit/on the Clippers?” Instead, we were treated to some good ol’ fashioned friendliness from the opposite sex. Just lovely, lovely, lovely.
Between Hillary’s run and the “Sex and the City” movie, I feel like all the women in my life have turned it up to 11 in the empowerment/aggression/in-your-face-you-go-girl-fish-needs-a-bicycle department. And while I’m all for women going out and getting it – I’ve openly stated on several occasions that I’m looking for a woman who’s both smarter than me and makes more than I do, mostly so I can take up smoking and start to gain weight professionally – sometimes you just want a nice, easygoing smile with your beer at the bar, you know?
So a Southern woman. I’ll take one, please.
[I’ve actually semi-dated two Southern women in the past. One of whom I met at just about the worst time in my life, when I was more concerned with things like seeing how many beers I could drink without getting up from the couch to piss than with, like, girls and stuff. The other was much younger than me and once sent me a text message confusing “right” and “write.” I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was on the level of “thats write!” Not the best way to get into Uncle Jason’s pants, since half my text messages contain semicolons and paragraph breaks. But she ultimately won because she later blew me off in such a spectacular fashion that once the statute of limitations expires, I’ll surely write about it. Not my finest moment. Not at all.]
[And no, “much younger” does not mean eight. Just wanted to clarify.]
2) The cost. We went to dinner at some BBQ joint before hitting the bars. There were five of us – the three Mulgrews, Tom, and his lady, Kimberly. We each got an appetizer and main course and had maybe ten or twelve beers and another few cokes. The dinner, with tip included, was less than $200. $40 a person for all that food. I’ve ordered a goddamn cheeseburger and Manhattan for more than $40 in NYC. And even if I did it every day for the rest of my life, after coming of age socially in NYC, I will never get used to paying under $4 for a beer in a bar. Every time I ordered a round, I’d have $60 ready in my hand for our five drinks. And each time the bartender said “$21” or whatever, I’d reflexively look at the drinks she’d be putting on the bar before me to make sure everything was included. It just does not compute. It’s like kissing a girl for the first few times; you’re tentative, unsure if what you’re doing is right, more than slightly confused – but you realize you’re onto something good. And you want to do it again and again. I’m still in the “confused” part of my development – coincidentally, the same stage I’m still in with the kissing – but it will hopefully pass soon. Because I sure like it.
3) The dudes. (Bear with me) All I’m saying is that it’s nice to stand at the bar waiting for a drink and not have to compete with some meathead muscling you out and stinking like Drakkar and his girlfriend’s vag, which he fingered on the way into the city on the LIRR. Again, a simple “how you doing?” really goes a long way.
4) The vibe. No pretension here, among the drinkers at least, who were there to listen to music and get drunk. If everyone wanted the same thing when they went out and acted accordingly, the world would be a much nicer place.
And that’s about all I can say about Nashville. My brother, who is four years younger than me and still very much in his shot phase – not to mention in much better shape than I am – went on some sort of shot-ordering mission toward the end of the night and I vaguely remember the last hour or so, and then leaving and hitting Wendy’s. I vividly remember waking up this morning with a fairly significant hangover and finding a slew of hamburger wrappers on the side of my bed. There was also an empty chili container, which makes sense, since Wendy’s chili is among my top twenty favorite things of earth. There were, however, no cracker wrappers to be found, and since I consider crackers absolutely necessary for Wendy’s chili, I can only surmise that I put the crackers, wrapper and all, in the chili and consumed them that way. I’m 90% confident this happened.
Westward, we go.
Original Departure Time: 10:00am
Adjusted Departure Time: 11:00am
Actual Departure Time: 1:08pm
Total Mileage: 303 miles
Nashville. Wow.
In a way, I feel kinda bad – so many of you guys wrote in with so many good suggestions for the city, that as we drove in, I was armed with a folder full of emails, your hints, suggestions and places to go highlighted on the pages, ready to be used to attack the city. However, in the long run, we wound up spending six hours on one block, the last two hours of which I can tell you about only in one word: Wendy’s. Or maybe three words: Wendy’s. For real.
But we’ll get to that. Last night, probably because it was the Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend, we had a difficult time finding a hotel. I don’t know if Abington, VA is a hotbed of activity over the holiday, but we used the Garmin to call several hotels before finding one with room, a hotel that no doubt has been featured in an episode of “The First 48” or “Unsolved Mysteries” at some point in its existence. If I closed my eyes hard enough, I could practically see the mustachioed homicide detective leaning over the stabbed body of the middle-aged crackhead between the beds.
Because I was the most pro-Nashville of the three of us and wanted to make Nashville as enjoyable and painless as possible, I booked a hotel in advance for us, a nice Marriott (with a pool!) near Vanderbilt. I figured a little splurging was in order, despite the impending hefty fine for my dad’s reckless driving ticket, to celebrate our first real, touristy stop on the tour. And splurging it was, since I had to book two rooms. As we did last night, for the duration of this trip, my brother and I will be sharing a room while my dad will get his own. This is both out of respect for my dad as the elder of the group, but also a practical matter.
You see, my dad occasionally yells in his sleep. A few weeks ago when I was home in Philly, I had come in from a night out drinking and was taking a piss upstairs in the bathroom next to my dad’s bedroom. It was then that I heard yelling, his yelling, gibberish floating out from whatever dream (or nightmare) he was having. I’ve heard this before and it always happens the same: I’m drunk, taking a piss; I hear him yelling in his sleep; it subsides; the next day I ask him about it and he has no idea; four hours later he says, “You know what? I did have a nightmare last night.” So hearing it on this night two weeks ago didn’t disturb me, but being in the same room as a 50-something 250 pound man while he’s yelling in his sleep is not something I’m interested in. Thanks, though.
(Speaking of thanks, I’d like to thank both my dad and God. For all the good traits that my dad and Jesus could have passed down to me – toughness, great mustache, calmness, not being scared of bugs and lightening, not being mezzofinook, etc – I get night terrors, as evinced by the night a few months ago when I awoke, thought I saw someone in my room, and jumped out of bed to tackle this person – only to slam myself into my closet. So thanks for that. I don’t need a mustache anyway, I guess.)
En route to Nashville, I texted my buddy Tom. I went to BC with Tom, where his exploits were so magnificent that I dare not write about them, lest I melt your brain and computer (not to mention get Tom immediately fired and make him permanently unmarriable). Tom now lives in the San Fran area, but spent two years in Knoxville and many a weekend in Nashville – and yet I forgot to ask him for suggestions about the city. So about 100 miles away from Music City, I shot him a random text looking for advice. He called me back immediately, saying that he happened to be in Knoxville that weekend visiting his lady and suggesting we meet up in Nashville for a night.
Now I realize that I say this as someone who experienced Nashville for the first time – someone who, when he asked his friends for suggestions for the city, specifically said he wanted the tourist experience – but Nashville was awesome. Four reasons:
1) The women. Good lord – I have to date a Southern woman. This is something that just has to happen, even if for a little while. They are the perfect antidote to the bicoastal blues. I’ve spent the past few months being intimidated by women in NYC (because of their coolness/aloofness) and women in LA (because of their bronzeness and the plastic in their boobies) and here are the women of the South, smiling, saying hello, chatting up the tourists from out of town, the two brothers driving cross-country with their dad, sipping their beers, smiling right on back. Just a lovely collection of ladies in those Nashville bars. I’d have to check on this, but I think it’s the first time I’ve ever talked to a woman in a bar without knowing she’s looking at me thinking, “So this guy obviously wants to fuck me. How should I go about toying with him/crushing his self-esteem before I go fuck someone better-looking/richer/more fit/on the Clippers?” Instead, we were treated to some good ol’ fashioned friendliness from the opposite sex. Just lovely, lovely, lovely.
Between Hillary’s run and the “Sex and the City” movie, I feel like all the women in my life have turned it up to 11 in the empowerment/aggression/in-your-face-you-go-girl-fish-needs-a-bicycle department. And while I’m all for women going out and getting it – I’ve openly stated on several occasions that I’m looking for a woman who’s both smarter than me and makes more than I do, mostly so I can take up smoking and start to gain weight professionally – sometimes you just want a nice, easygoing smile with your beer at the bar, you know?
So a Southern woman. I’ll take one, please.
[I’ve actually semi-dated two Southern women in the past. One of whom I met at just about the worst time in my life, when I was more concerned with things like seeing how many beers I could drink without getting up from the couch to piss than with, like, girls and stuff. The other was much younger than me and once sent me a text message confusing “right” and “write.” I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was on the level of “thats write!” Not the best way to get into Uncle Jason’s pants, since half my text messages contain semicolons and paragraph breaks. But she ultimately won because she later blew me off in such a spectacular fashion that once the statute of limitations expires, I’ll surely write about it. Not my finest moment. Not at all.]
[And no, “much younger” does not mean eight. Just wanted to clarify.]
2) The cost. We went to dinner at some BBQ joint before hitting the bars. There were five of us – the three Mulgrews, Tom, and his lady, Kimberly. We each got an appetizer and main course and had maybe ten or twelve beers and another few cokes. The dinner, with tip included, was less than $200. $40 a person for all that food. I’ve ordered a goddamn cheeseburger and Manhattan for more than $40 in NYC. And even if I did it every day for the rest of my life, after coming of age socially in NYC, I will never get used to paying under $4 for a beer in a bar. Every time I ordered a round, I’d have $60 ready in my hand for our five drinks. And each time the bartender said “$21” or whatever, I’d reflexively look at the drinks she’d be putting on the bar before me to make sure everything was included. It just does not compute. It’s like kissing a girl for the first few times; you’re tentative, unsure if what you’re doing is right, more than slightly confused – but you realize you’re onto something good. And you want to do it again and again. I’m still in the “confused” part of my development – coincidentally, the same stage I’m still in with the kissing – but it will hopefully pass soon. Because I sure like it.
3) The dudes. (Bear with me) All I’m saying is that it’s nice to stand at the bar waiting for a drink and not have to compete with some meathead muscling you out and stinking like Drakkar and his girlfriend’s vag, which he fingered on the way into the city on the LIRR. Again, a simple “how you doing?” really goes a long way.
4) The vibe. No pretension here, among the drinkers at least, who were there to listen to music and get drunk. If everyone wanted the same thing when they went out and acted accordingly, the world would be a much nicer place.
And that’s about all I can say about Nashville. My brother, who is four years younger than me and still very much in his shot phase – not to mention in much better shape than I am – went on some sort of shot-ordering mission toward the end of the night and I vaguely remember the last hour or so, and then leaving and hitting Wendy’s. I vividly remember waking up this morning with a fairly significant hangover and finding a slew of hamburger wrappers on the side of my bed. There was also an empty chili container, which makes sense, since Wendy’s chili is among my top twenty favorite things of earth. There were, however, no cracker wrappers to be found, and since I consider crackers absolutely necessary for Wendy’s chili, I can only surmise that I put the crackers, wrapper and all, in the chili and consumed them that way. I’m 90% confident this happened.
Westward, we go.
