Day 18: Tuesday, Nov. 8 – Memphis to Nashville

Day started with the usual camper morning routine: wake up, shower, oatmeal, packing, leaving. The guy that had parked his car (and slept in it) on the tent site besides me at night – and then moved to the following site after I started my little campfire, I guess he didn’t like fires (or smoke) – had already left. It’s funny to see people pay for a tent site and just sleep in their cars, but I suppose that’s what happens when you’re not allowed to sleep in your car on a parking lot on the highway… (not sure why, seen so many people doing that in France…)

screen-shot-2016-11-23-at-11-11-14-pmAnyways, the road between Memphis and Nashville was… an interstate highway… so, obviously, no big surprise if I tell you the road was kind of boring. I’m not sure it happened between Memphis and Nashville – it could as well have happened during the other parts of the trip on the interstate – but I remembered yesterday about the flying tire, so I’ll share with you now.

So I was behind a group of cars, on the left lane, passing 2 trucks. Thing with highways is, there is always a slow driver that decides passing trucks when a bunch of faster cars is coming by, and then a lane forms behind him. There were also cars behind me, obviously. At some point, I see that one car 3 or 4 cars in front of me is braking for no reason  – benefit of riding instead of driving, you see much farther in front – as I had just finished passing the first truck. The two trucks were separated by probably the space of 4 or 5 cars. Finding weird the fact that car was breaking – and in the same time thinking I might as well pass a bunch of them by the right since I have more acceleration than them – I decided to move to the right lane, as I was also in a reasonable distance already from the first truck. As soon as I got to the lane, I suddenly saw a torn up tire flying up from the pavement right at the place I was a few seconds earlier, and bouncing on the windscreen of the car that was right behind me. A quarter of mile later, I saw a car on the side of the road missing a tire… I just think my lucky star had just avoided me to get a tire in the face and probably to have a possibly fatal accident…

Arriving in Nashville, I went to a Motel 6 I booked some 15 minutes earlier, dropped my stuff, took a quick shower to get rid of the sweat, jumped into more comfy clothes and headed downtown. I ended parking at the Nashville Music City Center parking lot, which was offering an event price of $15, and it was looking much safer than the one in Memphis that was a bit desert and missing some light. I almost parked right where a bunch of Police cars were parked, but then I thought it would be a bit paranoid from me, and it was somehow farther from the entrance of the park – lazy, I know! 🙂

Anyway, I then walked across the city, looking for the nice streets, taking a bunch of pictures of various places.

img_0888 fullsizeoutput_85ca img_0896 fullsizeoutput_85cb fullsizeoutput_85cc img_0910

I then walked some 20 minutes (and same back) to the Third Man Records store – Jack White’s label – right before it closes at 6pm.img_4229 Then I sat in a pub, the Tin Roof, on Broadway and listened to some kind of country music, while eating and having a beer.

fullsizeoutput_85cd Was a pleasant evening. Last quick picture before leaving, img_4231 then back to the motel, transferring the pics and videos and researching what would be my next stop.

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