I’m starting this post at a Starbucks again (I’m nothing if not predictable), near West Palm Beach. This is stop one to get a snack and kill some time on my way up to Universal (I can’t check in until 4 pm).
So this is state 5, TN. I made it to my hotel, and it had everything I needed, including a microwave and mini fridge. I have missed baths so far, but I’m holding out for Universal! Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this one, I reminded myself to several times and kept forgetting. I went to Nashville to see the country music scene so that was my main focus. I had booked shows for all of the 3 nights I was there. I was umming and ahhing over whether I wanted to do the Opry & the Ryman. However, when I saw that Charles Esten was one of the players at the Opry it was settled. So that was Wednesday night – the Grand Ole Opry radio show, live at Opry House. I pre-booked parking – as a side note parking is really expensive in the US – I’ve spend a lot of money on parking so far! However, this parking was probably worth it as it was a nice easy walk over a bridge to the theatre.
The Opry was great. I think it was 8 different performers, who did or 2 or 3 songs each. Except one who was a comedian, who in general was very funny! I really enjoyed all of the performers and am glad I decided to go. Charles sadly didn’t reprise his role as Deacon or sing any Nashville songs, but he did talk a little bit about the show. I definitely like his original music too. An interesting fact was that he doesn’t do all of his guitar work on the show. He does all of Deacon’s vocals, but apparently a lot of the guitar playing is done by somebody else, which I didn’t realise!
After this it was back to the hotel, some food and then sleep. My throat was definitely hurting now and I was hoping this cold would hurry up and go away. (So I’m at Starbucks again, Fort Pierce this time. What!?! It’s a good place to kill time and while I’ll probably get one at Universal I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on my Stawberry Açai Refresher. Although with the new Starbucks coming to Perth I may not need to travel for these anymore! I digress.) Thursday morning woke up and I definitely knew a had a cold – cue the incredibly annoying cough that I’ll probably have for the next 6 weeks 😠. I decided rest was in order, so I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon in bed. I spend a good deal of that time trying to prioritise. The things definitely on my list were the Johnny Cash Museum and the Country Music Hall of Fame (as well as the Bluebird Cafe, but it was already booked). Thursday night I had booked a show at the Ryman and when I found the Johnny Cash museum was a short walk away and open late I thought it made sense to do both together.
So I once again paid a decent amount for parking, just across from the Ryman and went down to the Cash museum. In short it was great. I knew some of the story from seeing the Cash movie, but the memorabilia and extra info was really interesting. I took a lot of photos! A lot of the may need zoom to ready – I wanted to commemorate some of the info.
Then it was back to the Ryman to see the Del McCoutry band. This was a bit of a let down. No that it wasn’t good, but I think a combination of now knowing their background, not knowing their music, it being country music that I like less (a bit more honky tonk) and the fact that I was coughing a lot didn’t make is a super enjoyable performance. It was my leasts favourite of the three I went to. Also, the pews in the Ryman are not comfortable! One of the highlights was before the show started, one of the background music songs was I Saw the Light which David Crowder played back when we went to Passion in Sydney circa 2009. I appreciated the close parking and headed back to the hotel, stopping to pick up dinner. I decided I should probably try American Taco Bell so that’s what I got this time, a Chicken Quesadilla and Nacho Fries – they were good! Bed Time.
This post has got long, especially with the photos so I’ll end here and do Friday in a new post.
Well I’m in Florida. As the next few days are the relaxing part of my trip let’s see if I can bring this back up to date!
So IC is over for another year and I’m off to Kentucky. I’m pretty sure that takes me up to 4 states, if we go with the US acronyms that’s CA, IL, IN and now KY. I’m not 100% sure that CA counts as it was only a layover – I didn’t actually leave the airport. But I’ll run with it, on my way back I’ll leave the airport.
The drive to Louisville was uneventful, although I did time it fairly well. I arrived just after check-in time so no need to divert to a Starbucks beforehand this time. The hotel was pretty nice it was only for one night. I had a bit of a nap (still recovering from IC) and then tried another American fast food chain – Chipotle. The food itself was pretty good, but they forgot to add my sour cream and tomato salsa and I only got my rice which didn’t make me super happy. Then it was time for bed.
My Louisville Hotel
The next morning I had a nice relaxing start (in fact I probably slept in too long) but I got out of there by check out at 11am and headed south-east to Irvine. After a stop for Gas and McDonalds for lunch I made it to the Smith’s at a bit before 2, fairly close to my anticipated ETA of about 1pm. It was great to see Dianne again, unfortunately Jerry had to leave that morning for a work trip, so I didn’t get to catch up with him. I settle in an caught up on a bit of admin while Dianne took her grandson James, who I met for the first time, back to his parents.
Once she got back we headed off so we could go the scenic route before we went and met Phillip, Julie & James as well as Matthew for dinner at Texas Roadhouse. It’s been 19 years since I’ve seen them, so they’ve all grown up a lot and of course I hadn’t met Julie or James before. It was great to catch up and see what people are doing. Despite it being a steak house I chose to go for the salmon, which was very yummy. (In fact, of the 5 of us only 2 had steak!) After that we went down to the park so James could play and on the way Matthew stopped and picked up some Ale8 for us, so the boys could have a cold one! It was a nice gesture and we had a good time, even if it was cold – glad I brought my jacket! After that, it was back to Dianne’s house and pretty quickly to bed!
The next day I had a nice long sleep in, I didn’t get up until about 10.30. One of the things I wanted to do was to pick up some Ale8 (as this can only be bought in Kentucky and a few other surround states near the border.) I have very fond memories of this drink, both my introduction to it and the taste as well as the many fun nights we shared at IC drinking Ale8 with others from all around the world. On the way, Dianne showed me some more sights and we picked her friend nicknames ‘Bestie’ to come with us. Sadly, the factory usually runs tours, but they’re currently paused. However, we did visit the shops and bought some merch. As the story goes, there is a vault at the headquarters with the Ale8 recipe in it, and only two people have access. We also asked at the factory about shipping some to Australia and she said you could it online. Turns out, international shipping is only available to active US military serving overseas.
We went to lunch at a family run pizza bar, very much like the old Pizza Hut’s in Australia. They had Ale8 on tap. so I got to have even more! It’s feeling like I might be over it at this point. After that we went to the shops to buy Ale8 and got a good buy 2 get 2 free (thanks to Jennifers store membership). Then it was to UPS – they quotes about $800 to ship the 4 cartons of cans to Australia. That wasn’t happening. They did say the post office would be cheaper so we tried that, it was cheaper but only down to $400. I mean I like Ale8 and all, but not that much! In the end I worked out that there’s no liquid limit on checked baggage, so I decided I’d probably have to buy another suitcase (to replace my small bag). I get two free checked bags, so that should work OK. After that adventure it was off to the park with James & Bestie. The park had water, so James had lots of fun with that. Then we dropped off Bestie, dropped off James and haded home.
A few hours later, Philip, Julie & James came over and we decided to get take out for dinner, so Dianne went and picked up Mexican. It was nice to have a meal together and I thoroughly enjoyed my Chimichanga. It was really great to catch up with the Smiths and especially to share the encouragement with them about my journey towards knowing Christ. It really was a God thing, because Dianne was sharing that she didn’t even know how they ended up hosting homestay for FPS! Then it was bedtime. I got up, got organised, hung out for a little while and then headed off, down to Nashville. On my way I stopped at Walmart and found a new large suitcase as well as some strepsil equivalent for my throat which was starting to tickle. Then I made it to my Nashville hotel – but that’s a new post…
Ok, at this point I really am along way behind, but we’ll ee how we go. At the moment I’m sitting in the Admiral’s club in Charlotte Airport (NC) but I’m going to have to leave to board my plane to Fort Lauderdale in a few minutes.
So I think I’m up to Thursday, I don’t think anything of note happened the previous night at the appreciation dinner, except perhaps for the first time and bid on something at the silent action and managed to win. It’s a YETI, FPSPI 50th anniversary cocktail shaker. It wasn’t cheap, but the money we spend is for a good cause, and I did need one. Now I just need to get the Bailey’s to make the cocktails (hopefully duty free on my way home).
So Thursday morning was the opening ceremony. It was pretty good – not too long and a couple of good performances including an Australian violinist. I didn’t really connect with the keynote speaker, I didn’t find him that engaging, but a lot of other people thought it was good, so maybe it was just me. Here’s a couple of pics from the opening ceremony.
After the opening ceremony I when to have lunch with Suz and Cheryl (another AD) – we went to McNutt dining – where all the students were eating. Then it was back to Union St Centre for our evaluator meeting. As usual there was a lot of discussion over the FS, especially about the FSP this time! The FS was pretty good – it was very clear on where it wanted you to go, which did theme to some teams just restating the charge and not doing much else, but there were some good UPs.
After the meeting we had a bit of free time, including time to get dinner so I drove round the corner to Forest dining as I missed the transportation there. After dinner it was shout out time, I was doing Seniors, no real problem there. Ann and I raced through ours pretty quickly. Then it was time to start evaluating, they said packets were bigger and I guess they were in the sense that I had two booklets of teams (no individuals) but I only had 14 booklets in total, which was better than what some people had. We had till 4pm on Friday to get the done. So I evaluated, slept for a few hours and evaluated more. When I was done Emily & Kyla asked if I could do another booklet which I did. Then I had a nap! For the first time in 3 years I actually had the time to go to the CmPS fair, but I napped for a bit too long and then I drove over there I couldn’t find any parking.
After that failed attempt I came back and made a start of my MAGIC booklets, but quickly decided I would be more productive in the morning, so I had an early night. Booklets were due at 2, so after that I had another nap – are you noticing a patter? Then I went and had a drink with Suz & Anne, before we went to dinner and then to the variety show. My usual Saturday night duty of supervising the dance happened, this year was probably easier because Paige & I didn’t have to DJ. We did take requests, but a lot of them didn’t get played, but in general the music was good. (I have a lot of videos from the dance, but I only took one photo!)
After that it was back to the Union St Center and join in with the post evaluation party – I always end up getting to bed too late after this, but it’s part of the fun of IC. I had a good 30 seconds of being April’s MVP because I ’accidentally’ opened a bottle of red wine so we could have more drinks! I made it to be, probably around 2 pm. The next morning I was up and off to the closing ceremony. Nothing too exciting, an Australian Junior Team one the action plan presentation so we got to see them perform that and there were generally some good results from Australia. Thankfully that ended early so Suz didn’t have to leave before it was over. Then it was time to pack & leave. This took me a while to work out what I had bought and acquired and how to pack it all, but within an hour I was all sorted and headed off to Louisville.
(I’m currently on my flight to Fort Lauderdale but I’m going to end here because I only have two minutes of free internet left. I’m slowly catching up – my Kentucky adventures come next.)
I’ll add one more picture I took at IU, including cool clouds!
