Life and such: Day Thirty - Texarkana (TX) to Germantown (TN)

I can smell Geneva, NY from here.

Ok, I can't really, but I know it is closer. In fact, I think it is only about 1000 miles away. A mere drop in the bucket, relatively. I am leaning towards chucking the towel in and driving straight there today. We shall see.

Meanwhile, we had an interesting day (well, I think every day is at least mildly interesting) yesterday. Mom thinks highly of Roger Federer. I saw an ad somewhere for Wimbledon - Breakfast at Wimbledon in fact. Somehow I woke up at 7 local time and realized that maybe the match would be on. Sure enough, after clicking through a bunch of channels - there it was. On ESPN. Good thing we weren't at home, otherwise mom wouldn't have been able to watch Federer beat Djokovic! She was very happy (though she seemed to not really understand the game anymore). Just knowing that Federer won, made her happy. At least for the time being. I will keep reminding her.

While that was happening, I took a shower and called the steamboat place to see about reservations for that evening's dinner cruise. They didn't pick up, instead I was requested to leave a message and they would call me back. Which they did. Around 9:30 local time. To tell me that the cruise was full. Oops. That only left two options - the 2:30 sailing that afternoon, or waiting till the next day and doing the 2:30 sailing. And Texarkana is 4:06 from the boat place. Without any mishaps. Eeek. I made a split second decision and we started flying out the door. I hope we didn't leave anything behind. I doubt we did, since I have a sort of system of packing now (well, I ought to have one after 30 fricking days of traveling...). I wanted to get on the road by 10:00 so we would have half an hour to find the boat place and get aboard. Well, we didn't quite get out the door by 10:00. More like 10:10. Which the GPS let me know, would let us arrive at 2:16. A 15 minute window. Not enough to make me comfortable.

I have a hard time doing the math in my head, but I thought that if I consistently exceeded the posted speed limit by 5 miles per hour, we ought to make up about 20 minutes over 4 hours. Makes sense, right? The GPS has a setting to show the arrival time. If it moved backwards (earlier) then I was making progress. This meant no stopping - no lunch, no gas, etc, until I was sure we had more than the 15 minute window. Poor mom. She was stoic and managed the pell-mell journey without much complaint. We had a bit of slow traffic here and there - were even warned about a major bit of construction and asked to take alternate routes (which we didn't) and we eventually managed to shave it down a few minutes - then, around Little Rock, I realized that I had programmed the GPS for a stop there for lunch. Oops. I reprogrammed and voila! Gained 15 minutes. Yay! So we stopped for gas, eventually. I lucked out somehow and found gas stations selling gas for $2.99! That is plenty for gas, don't you think?

We arrived in Memphis at just the time my GPS said - and didn't see the boat place where it said it was. I was minorly irked. Reset the GPS and drove around and still I couldn't see it. Finally, I parked near Riverside Drive and got out to search on foot - and it turned out I was parked right in front of the entrance. Sigh. So I drove down the driveway onto some cobblestones and parked at a precarious angle. Mom had a tough time navigating the cobblestones but we made it. Phew!

The paddleboat was not exactly what I expected. I was kind of envisioning one of the great old paddleboats - but we got a teeny weeny little one instead. Still, it was good to experience. There was a guy doing a narration as we navigated around - telling us history about the river, Memphis, TN and such. That made the trip much more enjoyable. Mom and I also had "lunch." Nachos and a shared hotdog. The boat itself was not all that exciting. There were several decks, some of which were outside in the heat (we stayed in the air conditioning). The seating was kinda utilitarian. I am very, very glad we didn't do the dinner cruise! Not the atmosphere I would have liked at all! For a day cruise, it was fine. I think mom enjoyed herself - not a lot of walking!

We managed to get back to the car without mishap and headed to the Cordova Flying Saucer. I would have liked to have shown mom the Downtown Memphis location, but parking is so bad around there that it wouldn't have been worth it. The Cordova Saucer (for those of you who haven't bought a copy of Diary of a Plate Addict yet) is a mall Saucer with lots of parking. Not my favorite, but comfortable and familiar in any case. I think I have been there at least four times. Two managers came and chatted with us, which was great. And our server, Sam, was pretty good. I gave her a card at one point and she realized that I was the author of the book. I asked her if she wanted a copy and she said yes. Yet when it came time, she thought I was going to give her a copy. Oops. I don't really give copies of the book away (just ask my sister!). Oh well. If she wants one, she can order it online.

Mom was a bit unhappy since she can't seem to find a way to be entertained while I am happy as a clam in a Saucer. At one point she started to read Bar Dreams, which I think she was enjoying. But she was peckish, so we ordered the salmon plate. It was a little weird - but ok - they are now smoking their own salmon - so instead of lox like salmon, we got little chunks of salmon. Hmm. We survived.

I also had three beers - big surprise there - an Amber, a brown and an IPA. All were enjoyable, non exceptional. Truly, though, it is less enjoyable tasting beer when one's mom keeps sitting and glowering...

Off to a motel/hotel for the night. Our second free night while on the road! At a Comfort Inn in Germantown, TN. Our room was on the third floor - and didn't exist. We were in room 319 - see the picture below. Since mom and I were still hungry, we asked after a good local restaurant and were directed to the Germantown Commissary.

Great place! Another business in a re-purposed house. We got there and only had to wait about two minutes for a table. Right after us a few large groups appeared. Phew! The menu was under the glass on the table top. BBQ and Ribs was the theme - Memphis style. I ordered a combo plate - chicken and ribs, plus a side of BBQ house made chips. Everything was great! Mom certainly seemed to enjoy it too. And we got to take our cups with us (they are good marketing for the place).

Back at the motel, we watched The Naked Spur - a Jimmy Stewart Western - on AMC. I don't know why we watched it, but we did. Not terrible, but not great either. Oh well. See, interesting, right?