Happy New Year!
(Nice crop)
Second- We are no longer bicoastal bffs... We happen to reside not only the same coast but in the same state! It's a wonderful thing. I am now located in lovely San Francisco. So far I am discovering that San Francisco is a cleaner, safer, and better smelling version of New York City. Pretty stoked on it.
(I currently have a space heater pointed directly at my legs... I keep it on high until my legs start to feel like they are burning and begin to have red splotches... When it's on low it will occasionally make a soft humming sound. Sometimes that takes my dog Sharky by surprise and he jumps a mile... Ohhhh the entertainment!)
My road trip from Atlanta to the Bay Area was pretty glorious. I traveled with my buddy Lindsay... She spent Christmas with her family in Birmingham, AL, so I picked her up there...
From Bham we drove through Mississippi and then to Memphis, TN. We made a stop at Graceland to give our sore butts a break from the long ride (wait that sounds dirty...) and to see what the hype was about...
Graceland is on Elvis Presely blvd which is a longgg street full of graffitied ghettos and then BLAM... Smack in the middle is a mansion. It was not what I expected. Probably the funniest moment was when the shuttle took us to the front door
and we were greeted by a Graceland employee... He began to give us instructions and a brief history of GL before we entered. He beagn: "Welcome to Graceland. The home of Elvis as of..." he paused and chuckled. We just stared at him waiting for him to continue... He begins again, "The home of Elvis from 1957 to.... hehehe" Ummm what!?! This time we giggle too in effort to make him feel more comfortable. He continues, "Ok wait... This is Graceland. Elvis purchased it in 1957... The founder of umm..." You get the point. This went on for nearly 15 minutes. I am convinced the guy was under the influence of... something. They provided us with headsets so we could listen to an audio tour. When we pressed play it said "Welcome to Graceland. The home of Elvis Presley. Elvis purchased the property in 1957." Wait a second... So the guy outside told us exactly what was on the tape!? Looking back I'm not even sure if he was supposed to tell us anything more than, "Step to your right and press the play button on your headset." Pretty funny.
That night we drove through Arkansas and Kansas. The next morning we awoke to snow! We had planned to visit the childhood home of the music group Hanson the next day (yes, MMMBop). We did not expect the snow to be quite as bad as it was. It was a dangerous ride. A car almost crashed into us, my windshield was covered in ice, and we had to drive 10 miles an hour off the freeway. We arrive on the street that takes us up to the Hanson area. Halfway up we realized the car will not drive up the enormous hill:
But I am determined! We did not drive 2 hours out of the way (Tulsa, OK) to turn back when we are THAT close! So I parked the car on the side of the road and made Lindsay, Sharky, and myself walk a bit over a half a mile in snow to the house. Lindsay was in high heel black boots. She was slipping and sliding. Somehow we made it... We even snapped a couple photos before feeling entirely too creepy and raced back to the car. (Well I raced and Lindsay took baby steps. I warmed the car up for her. haha)We then went to the site of the Oklahoma City Bombing (no funny stories to tell there... yikes).
Continued through Texas and New Mexico.
When we reached New Mexico we discovered a little town called Clovis. We were sick of driving for the day so we decided to get a hotel. We asked a woman working at a taco stand where we could go enjoy a drink. Well it was Sunday. They do not sell liquor in NM on Sundays. Not at the store or a bar! With two exceptions... Applebee's and Chili's. (and those closed at 10!). So we head to Chili's for a snack and a drink. Some men approached us at the bar and offered to buy us some shots:
We agreed. Turns out, an airforce base is located down the road... They bought us shots of Jager (I bet you guessed that by the photo)... One of the boys was shocked that I did not know how to "two step"... (some sort of country dance). So he began to teach me this sweet dance move... in the middle of Chili's. (He was in pajama pants and a t-shirt that read: Ra-tard.) It was pretty ridiculous. Then another one of the air force dudes got kicked out. It was last call and apparently he reached over the bar and tried to refill his own beer. After he was escorted outside he began knocking and pressing his face on the outside window trying to persuade us to come out side. It was still snowing. The night ended with me telling the third airforce guy, "May the airforce be with you". He replied "That's rude". Oh how I miss Clovis.
I'm sick of writing this... I will make a "part two" later...
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