North to Nashville

Cindy and I rolled out of bed after our 3:15 AM alarm Sunday morning bleary eyed but ready to start our latest road trip adventure. Before we pushed out we went out and checked on the chickens one last time, we were still both concerned about them not being attended to the way that we have accustomed them to.

We buttoned up the Prius with our stuff. At the last minute I decided I wanted to take my Phantom with to get some cool aerial video during the trip. I wasn’t sure if the case would fit but we found a nice spot in the trunk where it fit without obstructing our view.

I was the driver to start. Normally when a road trip begins I am pretty alert despite the normally early time of day. Well that was not the case this time, I felt exhausted, almost dangerously so at certain points. Luckily I kept us on the road until our first Dunkin Donuts stop around the Sarasota area. I did two cups of coffee in the morning to help battle drowsiness.

I did some experimentation with the speed/mileage equation with the Prius. I found that 3mph in cruise control speed made a big difference in mileage. When I had the cruise set at 77mph my mileage was dipping down to around 42mpg on average. Later in the day setting the cruise at 74mph resulted in an incredible average mpg of 48.5 for the second tank of gas.

Speaking of gas, it’s so pleasant to pull into a gas station almost empty, after travelling around 400 miles and only spend $30 to fill it. A full tank in the party van would get us roughly the same 400 mile range, the big difference is it would cost close to $100 to top it back off.

The big trade off we made was the smaller amount of space we have available to us. I was worried that driving 875 miles in a sub-compact Prius would be incredibly uncomfortable. Luckily it hasn’t been bad. At first we thought that folding the rear seat down would be the way to go so we could use that area as a pseudo bed. After test fitting my 6’3” frame in the back I realized that wouldn’t work. Instead we let the seats in their normal configuration. Cindy can lay across the back seats. I found if I fully recline the passenger seat I can actually nap a little bit with an assist from the pillows we brought along. I also find the passenger seat acceptable for typing the blog entry as I am right now or playing some Plants vs Zombies. Despite a total of 14 hours on the road yesterday, which should be our longest travel day, comfort was not a major issue which is great.

As usual I saw some interesting people and places along the drive. When I stopped for gas in Jasper, Tennessee I found my curiosity turned to annoyance. For some reason half of the gas pumps were not working. Every tank that was working had a vehicle parked in front of it with nobody pumping gas, what the fck?

As I saw some very “interesting” people walking back out to their vehicle I assumed that either these people had not mastered the skill of paying for your gas at the pump with a credit card or they don’t qualify for a credit card. I saw one particularly odd man walk into the store to presumably pay for his gas walk back out to the car to pump it and then once again return inside for some unknown reason. Finally I found an open pump, gassed up and got the hell out of there.

Sunday afternoon we listened to the Eagles game on my Sirius radio that I brought along. Listening to the broadcast was frustrating at times. The satellite radio uses a short range FM transmitter to broadcast to the car radio. This normally works fine. However if there is a strong local radio station on the same frequency it makes listening pretty miserable. During the game we had varying levels of interference.

Early on it was just as good that we couldn’t hear it, the Eagles were playing like shit against the Jaguars, whom they were favored to beat pretty easily. The first half ended with the Birds down 17-0. Both the defense and offense was playing rotten.

In the second half the team did something I am not accustomed to for the Eagles, they made adjustments. They dominated the second half, scoring 34 unanswered points to win the game 34-17. It was great to listen to, I’m sure it would have been even better to see.

We pulled into our hotel in Nashville at 5:15 CST, meaning we covered the 875 miles in almost exactly 14 hours. We didn’t stay in the room long at all, just long enough to unload our stuff and freshen up a bit. Although Nashville wasn’t a focal point of the trip we figured we should go downtown to check stuff out.

The drive to town was less than 10 miles. Once we got into downtown Nashville I swung into the first open parking lot I found. It was one of those self service deals where you pay for your parking ahead of time with a credit card. I was not pleased with the pay schedule.

The machine for the first spot we parked in was locked up and not working. I had Cindy drive to the adjacent lot where the machine was working. So I started the process of paying for spot number 50 that we were parked in. I was presented three and only three options, one hour for $8, two hours for $15 or 24 hours for $32. WTF???!!! What a crock of shit. The purposeful removal of any options between 2 and 24 hours was ridiculous. If you are going downtown to hang out they know that two hours is probably not going to be long enough. Not allowing a per hour rate is a blatant rip off. Fckers.

Walking down Broadway in Nashville reminded me somewhat of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. There were small bars every couple of doors, most of which had live music playing and various street performers. We had dinner at a nice sports bar kind of place that was doing 2 for 1 draft beers. We sat in the open air part of the place next to the sidewalk. We both enjoyed our meals, I cleaned my plate completely of the two fish tacos, rice and beans.

The two Angry Orchard draft beers that Cindy drank hit her pretty hard, she was in full silly mode. We walked up and down Broadway for awhile. We saw a number of those human powered rolling bars. Basically there are 10-12 patrons at the bar, seated on stools with a set of pedals underneath them. There is one person that steers the rolling bar. I am not sure if the whole deal is powered exclusively by pedal power or if it is backed up by a battery propulsion system. Regardless it looks pretty fun.

Cindy and I went into a number of souvenir stores as well as scoring some local homemade ice cream before we headed out. We both were quite tired obviously. Sleep last night was very welcomed.

Today we were up and back on the road by 7:15 AM. When we stopped at a rest stop we both were greeted by a refreshing cool air. The local humidity free temperature of 63 degrees felt refreshing and crisp after trudging through another sweaty, hot Florida summer since April.

We are on route to the St Louis Arch which we should get to around lunch time. Although I saw it before, Cindy never has. It is an amazing structure and well worth revisiting. After that we have several more hours on the road until we reach our sleeping destination for the day, Kansas City. So far so good.

The online and growing photo album is here.