tastewar.com

Author: tastewar

  • Whapped WAP

    As I mentioned earlier, my pictures were uploading to flickr very slowly last night, and when I woke up, I was not surprised to see that the upload had failed. I started it up again, and it failed on the second picture. After a couple more iterations, I decided to take another tack, and connect to a different SSID, as there were many available and provided by the hotel. That seemed to fix it — the remaining few photos uploaded in minutes rather than hours, and the rest of the web sites I was using worked much more smoothly.

    The problem felt like the LAN connection to that particular WAP must have been dropping packets (and lots!), either due to a bad cable or a bad interface. So if you’re ever at the Comfort Inn on Elm Hill Pike in Nashville, avoid BBHWIRELESS_18.

    Overall, our experience with hotel wifi has been good. Performance hasn’t always been the best, but the availability has been ubiquitous, and as opposed to a few years ago, always free. The only exception was the non-national-chain sportsman-oriented motel we stayed in outside of DeSmett, South Dakota.

  • Title Bout

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    I didn’t write anything last night because I couldn’t think of a good title. Well, that and the fact that my pictures are uploading slower in this hotel than they do through my mobile connection. But still cheaper, to be sure.

    Here we are in Nashville! We spent the night in a Comfort Inn, and for some reason they gave us a rate $30 cheaper than when we made the reservation in the afternoon. Woohoo!

    Being rather naive about Nashville, we didn’t know what to go see other than the Grand Ole Opry House , so we went there first.

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    Turns out that Carrie Underwood (a family favorite) was performing that night, so with no expectations, we went and asked if there were tickets available, and…

    there were not. Nor were there tickets for the afternoon show, nor for the backstage tour. But as I said, no surprise — it was a Saturday after all.

    Instead, Susan got us tickets for a riverboat performance for Sunday, which should be fun.

    I would guess that originally, there was no huge mall across the street from the Opry, but there is now. Lacking any other plan, we went and had an early dinner at the fancy Aquarium restaurant in the mall.

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    We thought we might take in the new Harry Potter movie after dinner, but it was voted down in favor of something less scary — G-Force in 3D. While the movie wasn’t great, the 3D was pretty fun. So while to the rest of the world, Nashville is known for its music, for us it will always be remembered for its 3D movies 🙂

  • Lunch!

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    We stopped at a nice rest area for lunch. We made PB&J sandwiches for the kids and tuna & potato salad sandwiches, since we lacked any other dressing.

  • Happy Anniversary

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    This morning marks our fourth week on the road. We are headed to Nashville to see the sights and learn more about country music.

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  • Tennessee, With a Dash of Mississippi

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    Having spent the afternoon in Tennessee, we crossed over into Southaven, Mississippi and spent the night in a Quality Inn there, just to add to our state tally. Currently, it stands at 18 plus one Canadian province: Massachusetts, New York, Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi.

  • Poor Boys and Pilgrims with Families

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    And we are going to Graceland.

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    What else to do in Memphis? Well, we decided to do one of the more obvious things, and take in some Americana. We arrived at about 4:45, certain that it would be closing (flashbacks of the Henry Ford museum…) shortly, and we’d be left taking pictures of the exterior from however close you could get without paying admission. But we were wrong! They were happy to take our $84 and let us go on a recorded audio guided tour. And we had a great time, aside from the funkiness of going around sort of together but with headphones on, listening independently to the tour.

    Turns out, Elvis earned lots of gold and platinum records

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    and had lots of funky clothes

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    Who knew?

  • Here’s Mud in Your Island

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    Thanks to Matt’s and Caryn’s suggestion, we stopped at Mud Island today, where there is a scale model of the Mississippi river that you can walk along (and in!).

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    It’s about half a mile long, and the water gets to about a foot deep or so in places. It is one of our favorite places we’ve visited thus far. At the very end is a big wading pool, and a bigger one representing the Gulf of Mexico, in which you can rent paddle boats, though we didn’t.

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  • He Jes’ Keep Rollin’ Along…

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    We re-crossed the Mighty Mississipp’ today,

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    and are (therefore) back in the east. Only this time, we did it much further south, on I-40 at the border between Arkansas and Tennessee.

  • The Pious South

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  • Hospitality

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    Last night we stayed with Matt and Caryn and their family. Matt and Caryn lived in Belmont eleven years ago, where we attended the same church. At the time, we both had children one year old, about the only two kids in the church. They left for Arkansas about eleven years ago, where Caryn’s family is from. We’ve had occasional letters from them in the intervening years, and as with most of our friends, they are better correspondents than we.

    In spite of our lack of communication, when Susan emailed and told them we’d be driving through Arkansas, they opened their hearts and home to us, and hosted us for dinner and breakfast, and shared with us their warm, cozy home for the night. The epitome of hospitality. Thank you!

    Their boys are right around the same age as our kids, and they seemed to get along right away. Their two dogs were also a hit with our kids. In addition to enjoying a small part of their land, we got to meet a rat snake that lives under the workshop, and their rabbit, Bun-Bun. And they introduced us to the game Spore — not sure if that’s a good thing or not 🙂

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