The house woke up early with two young boys running around,
no worries, we wanted to get a early start. With showers and the bikes packed, we departed Todd and Lisa's abode. Our endpoint for the day was on the Blues Delta, Memphis Tennessee, where we would hit up the famous Beale St. to listen to some Blues. As we were rollin down I-40 towards Memphis I recall coming upon a group of Harley riders. At the back of the Harley procession was a chase van with some slogan that said something about Australians across America, or something like that. It was funny to pass them with two Australians in our group with NO chase van. I looked back in the mirror to see if all of our group had made the pass and was ok. I can still see Rose (Nimec) at the back of the group doing his thing, arms out wide and flying on autopilot past the other group. I laughed in my helmet, thinking what must the other riding group think of the four dumb Sportbike riders that passed them. We had a pretty much uneventful day as we did about 330 miles on I-40. The only real stops were to hydrate, gas up and have ice cream sandwiches. As we pulled into Memphis it became clear that finding a hotel room might be hard. There was a Southern Baptist convention going on in town and most all rooms were taken. I had the fellas stay at one place as I scouted a few places myself.
The reason I did that was because it was stifling hot and humid. Bucket, Chewie, Nimec and myself were sweating bullets and I figured that I could zip around easier by myself instead of a group of four. I located a cheap set of rooms at the Benchmark Hotel, reserved them and went back to get the fellas. We paid and parked the bikes in a secure underground lot under the hotel. We showered up and walked down to Beale St to have dinner and enjoy some Blues.
Chewie was prime for this night, he had a new pep in his step. We turned onto Beale St and took a few pics here and there.
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Suddenly we were introduced to Gino....no not the DirtMcGirt Gino that you and I know(he was drunk like Dirt though....). Anyways before I could tell the Aussies NOT to talk to certain strangers we were hit up by Gino.
Gino wanted to give us a newspaper and tell us of the local building stories...blah blah blah. After the 15 minute speech he did the deed and asked us for donations to his church or organization. Time to move on, lets go guys...time for dinner. He decided on The Blues City Cafe where we grubbed out on ribs, and different meats along with a few nice Bourbons and coke.
We had nice close seats to the band that was playing a historical tribute to Johnny Cash and his life.
Chewie was in heaven, he was smiling ear to ear and I could just tell that he was immersed in the moment. It was gratifying to be part of something that we had talked about for a while and to see it happen before me. I was glad to be a part of that. With the night still young,
we went outside and walked across the street to BB Kings House of Blues.
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We sat down and had a mess of drinks and sat listening to a group of amazing men sing and play some live Blues. They played all types of songs from U2 to Prince. What a wonderful night, fabulous music, great friends, good food and drinks culminated in an awesome night. We stumbled back to the hotel and sacked out. Turn out the lights....the fat lady has sung.
miles traveled for the day=330
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