bye bye nashville

perhaps he should have watched his speed



whats new everyone? one thing id like to discuss momentarily is chili over pasta. when i told my friend sarah i was going to lexington kentucky, she said i had to try this concoction. apparently its a cincinnatti thing, but it has spread south. heres the thing - they take a plate of spaghetti, cover it with chili, and then dump cheese on it. its called a 'chili 3-way'. adding either onions or beans makes it a '4-way' and adding both would be a '5-way'. get it? ok so i was excited to try it in lexington, but i arrived on a sunday evening and they were closed. so on my way out of town monday morning i tried it. didnt like it. but today, i noticed another regional chain had it, so i gave it another shot and kind of enjoyed it. so i recommend at least trying it if youre ever in this weird part of the country.
nashville is actually a hell of a town; im enjoying it immensely. its fairly spead out and theres a lot of traffic, but its much prettier than i expected. today i started by going to the bicentennial mall park, which is in the government district of downtown. its a fairly new park, and it details the history and landscape of tennessee. its really cool. i then went to riverfront park, which is on the cumberland river. its less a park and more an ampitheater, but it looks like a great place to see a concert. it has stadium seating made of grass (seriously). unfortunately, it also has a bunch of bums sleeping in it. it seemed to be in the 'bad' part of town. then i walked around the city, mostly on honky tonk row and 2nd street. they seem like fun places to go out for some beers and live music.
following the city i went to the nashville zoo, which is just ok as far as zoos go. it was definitely fun and interesting, but ive probably been spoiled living so cose to the bronx zoo all my life. not a bad way to spend a couple hours though. zoos are smellly.
finally, i went to j percy priest lake and dam, which was just a huge lake. theres not much to say aboot that.
so unfortunately, thats aboot it for nashville. i hope i get to come back here sometime, cuz i like it a lot.
tomorrow i head to hotlanta to see mike and shelley. enston and heather fly in friday. thats gonna be great, but one thing im not looking forward to doing this weekend is figuring out where im going once i leave atlanta. see, i had two nights booked on the mississippi gulf coast, followed by two nights in new orleans. bad timing. ill tell you how that ends up going soon. be good...

you may say i aint free, but it dont worry me...

nashvilles parthenon in centennial park - a massive structure and full size replica of the ancient greek building.



well i promised daily blogging (to whom i wonder?), but its been two days. my one excuse is that there is no internet in this hotel. BUT, quality inn across the way is nice enough to have a strong signal, so if i keep my door open (this is an exterior corridor hotel) i can get online. anyway, yesterday started with some news-watching, after which i decided to head to nashville and at least beat the storm there and then ride it out. at this point predictions were still dire. the drive was pretty bad due to torrential rain, but otherwise uneventful. after checking in, i went to opry mills center and the grand ole opry, both of which were neato. then i went back to the hotel and prepared myself for the storm of the century - which consisted of me getting the flashlight out of my car. predictions were we would get a fierce tropical storm this morning lasting into the early afternoon. well, i woke up at nine and it wasnt even raining. it was a little windy and a bunch of leaves were on the ground. but like i said, this is an exterior corridor hotel, so a major storm would have woke me up. i hate how weather channels have to make everything sound like its going to kill you. so i had expected to spend today reading by flashlight and watching movies on my portable dvd player, but like i said, no rain, so i made the ballsy move of going out for the day, even though the badass hurricane was overhead! i went outside of town to beautiful radnor lake preserve, which is a giant lake with trails around it. i hiked aboot five miles and took a bunch of pictures. then i went to centennial park, of which a piicture is above. it wasnt a nice day or anything, with intermittent rain, but i had fun. afterwards i drove around some more and got dinner from steak-n-shake, a regional chain. i cant remember where i read it was great, but it sucked. i dont like milkshakes, but it was the best part. i figured i had to get one at steak-n-shake. anyway, its now 12:30, and i have a big day of nashville-exploration planned, so im out. im sure nobodys reading this.

hi!

me, angel, rob, and bagel on the front steps of hartranft hall, where we all lived and met in summer '96.







ok. here we go...
tonight i find myself in lexington kentucky, worrying aboot some stupid weather system. but let's backtrack a couple days for the moment. i had intended to post every day, but i got distracted. so ill just do a brief timeline here and then pickup from where i am now.

friday- drove to beautiful penn sate university. met old friends rob, angel, and bagel, and new friend mike. as expected, we started drinking as early as possible, and continued until late. several bars followed by college pizza. one fun thing i forgot aboot psu is that every downtown night of drinking is finished by getting a slice of either acme or college pizza, both at the reasonable (and surprisingly stable) price of one dollar. thats that.

saturday- i woke up significantly earlier than everyone, so i took a walk around town. half the stuff i remembered isnt there anymore. three of four favorite record stores are gone. sad... met back up with everyone and took a bagel-guided campus tour with a brief stop at sunset park. some of my best psu memories are at that park; it was nice to see it hasnt changed much. campus is a little different - we just drove through most of it due to time and bad weather. ideally i would have liked to just walk around campus for a day, but we had to get drinking. some things are more important. we started our evening with dinner and drinks at the rathskeller, minus angel who was at a bachelorette party. food there is awesome - i would eat there every day if i could. we then went to the greatest bar ever, the phyrst. heres the recipe: cheap beer, silly band of old people singing bluegrassy songs, and tables pitted against each other in rhythmic shouting wars. awesome. the angel-attended bachelorette party ended up meeting us there. the bride apparently remembers me from when i was a student, but i could not do the same for her. she was fun and very drunk; towards the evenings end she ordered me to buy her a shot of tequila, then proceeded to throw up and leave the bar before doing the shot - so i made rob do it. the rest of the night was uneventful - closed the bar down, got college pizza again, and went to bed.

sunday aka today- woke up way earlier than everyone, which i had intended to do. had to shower and leave without saying goodbye. i would have loved to stay for breakfast and goodbyes, but i had a nine hour drive to do. so nine hours drives are fucking boring. also, i had four hours sleep after being bombed, so i got very tired and had to stop for coffee and peeing four times. but i got to lexington at 6pm. i turned on the tv to check things out and was bombarded by the most dire of storm warnings. apparently new orleans is going away forever. geraldo keeps calling the storm 'biblical in proportion'. hes a massive douche. so i went to check out lexington a little, visiting campus and the town. but it was getting dark so i picked up some dairy queen dinner and went back to my lovely baymont inn. ok, dairy queen is gross. i tried their new chili lime chicken strips, which i had been excited aboot ever since seeing the commercial (not sure why). it tasted like a vagina. anyway, im supposed to go to nashville tomorrow, which is in the extended projected storm path, so im gonna wait for tomorrow mornings news and figure it out from there. i might have to head east to avoid being blown away.

anyway, i hope to post to this daily (semi-daily?) from here on in i hope this takes less the form of a list, like this post, and more of ramblings and musings. well see how that goes. goodnight.