Camry, I've reason to believe, we both will be recieved....

After the visit to the Corvette Museum, I had the rest of the miles to Memphis to cover.  Sadly Kentucky is completely the wrong direction so I just made my way back down the Interstate to Nashville again.  I drove past the behemoth Grand Ole Opry complex.

The National Corvette Museum and I. Bowling Green, KY.

You are now leaving Kentucky.

Nashville,again.  Heading towards the Grand Old Opry.

Tyres, en route to a monster truck convention, probably.

Absolutely everything seems to travel by truck here.  There are gazillions of trucks, many with adverts advertising jobs as a truck driver.  The road system is truly the vascular system of this country.  For a lot of people I seem to speak to, driving to California is the most normal thing in the world.

After 150 miles or so I pulled over into a rest stop and made a couple of calls and stretched my legs.  I spoke to Blair about the police, about whether he thought they are bothered about everyone speeding all the time and whether they lie in wait with radar guns or just wait for people to drive past at high speed.

Soon to be renamed 'Johnny Cash Rest in Peace Area'.

Once across the Tennessee river, the roads start to become less cornery and the inclines become less steep.  

Once I set off again after the rest stop, not long after my conversation with Blair about the police, a State Trooper appeared in my rear view mirror.  I tried to keep cool, pretend I hadn't noticed him and stuck rigidly to 67.53mph for the next little while.  He slowed in the outside lane and paced me for a few miles.  I saw him typing my licence plate number into www.thecops.com on his in-car computer and having a good old think about whether or not driving a car from Massachussetts this far south was a good enough reason to pull me over.  Parking on the wrong side of the street obviously isn't a Felony in Tennessee like it is in New England so he overtook me after a few minutes and pulled off at the next exit.

I didn't take a picture of him.  I'm not sure he would have thought that was cool.

This car has a giant Tennent's lager 'T' in the back window.

 

It appears that when the government wants to build an interstate highway, they just do it.  There's no 7 year public enquiry about how the local population of Newts is going to feel about the whole affair and it's obvious that when the Interstate gets built it cuts right through the middle of people's property and communities.  I guess there's so much spare land elsewhere that it doesn't matter to most people as much.

Approaching memphis I saw this cloud, which I thought looked like a Phoenix.  However I am in Tennessee, not Arizona, so it's more like a 3 way fight to the death between a scorned banjo, a fiddle who's dog just ran away and a guitar lamenting his recently reposessed car.

And so I arrived in Memphis.  Here is a view of the inside of my hotel room.  It's not exactly the Hilton, but it will do. 

Actually, it is the Hilton.  £51.54.  Heheheh, thank you expedia.com!

The fountains, bell boys and the types of shoes the female guests in the lobby were wearing made me think I might be punching slightly above my weight as far as bang per buck is concerned tonight.

Something slightly anomalous about my trip so far is that internet access in expensive hotels costs extra, but it is free in cheap ones.  It's a $10 per night extra in this hotel, but I enquired about it and smiled sweetly at the nice lady at the check in desk and she gave me a login code for free.  I might be able to afford an egg at breakfast now!

 My room is on the 16th floor.  The top of the lobby looks a bit like the beginnings of a giant spiral staircase.

A fine place to sit and watch the sun go down.

Quite a nice sunset tonight.  If the earth is still roughly spherical and orbiting the sun, I should get the sunrise from my room tomorrow.

I had dinner in the hotel restaraunt.  Chicken and artichoke linguine.  It had lots of Pesto in it.  (c;

After I ordered it, the only other diner in the restraunt piped up and said that he had just had it and that it was excellent.  He then proceeded to make conversation with me. I tried desperately to think of something to say but I'm quite crap at small talk. I couldn't think of anything self-depricating and I'm a bit self concious that my sense of humour might be lost on someone who regularly spends nights in Hilton hotels so I didn't really say anything.

I think my friendly nodding and agreeing must have been mistaken for 'leave me alone you annoying bastard'.  I thought it would be terribly vulgar to tell him all about myself and what a splendid time I was having in my clapped-out old Camry, but perhaps that's exactly the sort of thing he wanted me to tell him about.

He left and I dined alone, I was approached a couple of times by an aspiring Don Johnson in a pungent aftershave and a particularly badly fitting suit jacket who turned out to be the hotel's night manager.  He asked me if the hotel was taking care of me.  I said that it was and he went off on his rounds, aligning the leaves on the plants to his satisfaction etc.

 Now its bedtime yet again, with more adventure to be had tomorrow.