The View From Wisconsin

The trip down was basically uneventful, though it was (as always) long. We took the "Western Leg" that routed us through Illinois down through Bloomington/Normal and Champaign/Urbana. Gas prices trended downwards as we headed South, to where they were only $3.049 at a few stations in Tennessee. We even saw a station that still had gas at $2.999.

I ended up being awake for 22 hours in a row, and I slept for a grand total of eight hours afterwards, and it felt great. We went out and did some stuff in Nashville – after touching base with some of my friends here in the city. For the first time ever since I started coming to Nashville, I actually went to the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was a nice place, but about halfway through my head started to hurt. I think it was probably a combination of factors – coming in and out of air conditioning, still being over-tired from the trip, having on a different pair of glasses, and on top of that I hadn't eaten in a long while. We ended up getting turned around in West End by the Vanderbilt campus, and I got really angry with Sarah because I was just feeling so horrible and needed something to eat. We had lunch at the Subway on 21st Avenue South across from Vandy, and worked our way back East.

We worked our way over to my friend Lisa's workplace on the east side of Nashville. Her animation studio, Magnetic Dreams, is expanding a bit, so they had a lot of empty space that was in the process of being remodeled. We set up plans to meet at Sam's in Hillsboro Village, which was (ironically) right where we had been over lunchtime.

Sam's was your basic sports bar, if a bit more geared towards the college fan (since it is located blocks from the Vanderbilt campus). It was great to meet some of the people that I only knew as names on the boards. The only issue was that both Sarah and I were still wiped out from the previous day, so we didn't end up staying to watch the Ducks take the Western Conference title from Detroit.

Wednesday was a bit of a "catch-up" day for us. We went downtown to look around at the Hard Rock Cafe for a bit, but didn't find any t-shirts or stuff that suited our fancy. Apparently, they no longer make the Hard Rock Cafe-brand boxer shorts, something my sister Annie had specifically requested.

We had our second visit to a Cracker Barrel that evening with another good friend, Patty. She and Sarah really hit it off, and by the time we were back at the room, it was time to get our stuff ready so we could leave in the morning.