After a night out hearing about all the great stories of Journal years past it was time for another day in Music City - and today I actually left the resort and can say I've wheeled in Nashville.
First things first though, and that was breakfast. We had a little morning fuel in the outdoor bar area called The Falls - and it has a spectacular view. The ambiance is pretty amazing here as well. This is where we decided to "plan out the day" and devise a plan of action to get important items crossed off our list. We had a few odds and ends to attend to before the big welcome reception at the trade show.
After we walked for what seemed like 10 miles we finally got through the jungle and to the registration booth. They of course had my name tag wrong, so I spent a few minutes getting the right company put on the tag. No problem. The next step was actually finding the booth and seeing what we had to work with.
Once we managed to get to the spot where we were supposed to be we stopped and asked a lady how we could go about unloading the cargo that was driven down by one of our editors. She gave us some instructions and we decided to venture out and see if we could figure it out. We piled into the car and made our way around the outside of the massive compound. We followed the gals directions and were then chased out of the place we thought we were supposed to be. It may have been that "do not enter" sign, but that guy was pretty adamant about us not being there.
Once we finally found where we needed to be we unloaded everything in the rain and started the initial set up. This is the hard part because everything has to fit into a pretty small 10 x 10 square. We bring quite a few folks so we needed a little extra room so things have to be strategically placed - and wires to electronics hidden so nobody takes a header into the booth next to us.
And no, we didn't try to lift anything more than we were able. We follow directions. Although, how nice of them to remind us.
Since we'll be back in Nashville in less than 30 days we opted for a storage facility instead of shipping things back and forth. We can store it cheaper than we can ship it. Before we left we made arrangements at a self-storage place, and we had to go pick up the key before 5 p.m.
We put the address in the GPS and we were off - at a snails pace. The speed limit around Nashville is 55 miles per hour. I could have Fred Flinstone'd it faster. It felt like I was crawling along a four lane road and there was no traffic. Of course the peanut gallery in the back seat kept calling me Dale Jr. and asked if I wanted to floor it like a NASCAR driver. My answer was - yes, yes I did. Anything was better than crawling along at the speed of smell.
We don't think we were in the ghetto, but we were not in Brentwood.
We made it back to the resort unscathed and managed to make it to the Welcome Reception that kicked off the NCBA Trade Show portion of the convention. While we were living it up booth style, we were visited by Tim McGraw, and we noticed Naomi and Wynonna Judd traipse by. I was not impressed. They really didn't even look like them.
Drag queens could have pulled off the Judd's ensemble better, and as for Tim? He had to introduce himself after we all stared at him like we were playing charades. "Hey, ya'll I'm Tim."
"As in McGraw?"
"Yeah," he smiled and did that thing that Tim supposably does.
"Hmm," I nodded. "Nice try."
I guess we all have dreams.
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