blog.emerick.org

The whole story really begins on the 9th when we headed back to Blacksburg around 3:30PM to stay the night before leaving for Memphis in the morning. However, we had some technical issues. That morning Trav had his master and slave cylinder on the clutch assembly replaced. However, they did not bleed the lines well enough and there was an air bubble in the line which caused the clutch pedal to have no pressure when not used for a long period of time… So in effect after driving for a while Trav could not engage the clutch and shift which put taking his car in jeopardy. We safely made it back to the apartment around 7:30PM and we unpacked the cars… We then took travs car for a test drive to check it out and we drove it for awhile and made some calls to see what the problem could be… The most common answer was that the clutch line needed to be bleed… Wanting to leave somewhat early in the morning we called around to find someone that could do it that night however the cost would be considered extortion… So we decided to wait till the morning and take it to the Honda dealer to have them do it… The dealer opened at 7:30 and was pretty much a first come first serve basis so we got there at 7:30 and were the first ones in… It took them about an hour or so to bleed the line and was only $42 instead of the $135 this shady guy wanted last night…

After getting back from the dealer we packed up all of our stuff and loaded the car and hit the road at exactly 10 AM EST.

We arrived in Bristol around noon EST and decided to stop and get some lunch. We drove down 381 which lead into what appeared to be downtown Bristol (and into Tennessee) where we found a Sonic… Normally Sonics are great however this one completely screwed up every aspect of our order starting with not bringing us our drinks and then bringing us the wrong drink for Dave… Then I ordered Tots which arrived as Fries… and Travs burger which he ordered with NO cheese arrived with cheese… AND we didn’t even get any mints even though there is a sign on the door that the waiters see on the way out that says “got mints?”… We never got any mints, which I could have used considering that my cheeseburger was covered in onions… so don’t stop at the sonic on Commonwealth Blvd I believe it is…

After Sonic we tried to stop at this gas station to use the restroom and of course the first place we stopped at had no public restrooms… so we go on down the road (Back into Virginia) and find another shady gas station to stop at and use the restrooms… After a 45min break in Bristol we got back onto 81S and officially entered Tennessee via 81S… Best thing about Tennessee? The speed limit is 70MPH compared to 65MPH in Virginia…

Another 70 or so miles and we ended up on 40 West which took us into Knoxville where we hit a little back up to do some road work but didn’t last long and soon we were back into open road… Traffic hasn’t been that bad outside of the cities… Its been pretty clear which is always nice for driving…

Passed into central time zone around 3:08 EST 2:08 CST… so we gained an hour but will lose that hour when we drive back to VT…

Passed exit 311 on 40W…

We are currently about 59 miles from Nashville and are about to stop for gas…

UPDATE 6:00 CST (7:00 EST)::
We drove through Nashville… Traffic was pretty bad in a few spots but no real delay even though we hit the city around 4 and probably the beginning of rush hour…

We made it through Nashville and started looking for a place to eat dinner…

Stopped at a Flying Js truck stop for dinner and a break… Dinner was ok… Had a club sub… Flying J charges for internet access… $5 a day… If we would have been there longer I may have considered it but just for 20 minutes… it was hard to turn down internet access though as addicted as I am…

We just passed exit 172 which means we have about 150 more miles to exit 12 which we have to take to get to Kyle’s apartment… So we have about 2.5 hours left to go… we have been on the road for about 9 hours now and trav is still going strong… Its kinda nice not having to drive and plus we have the new sound system in his car which we have been rocking out to… sounds pretty good… Well I think I am going to go code some stuff for the MMS server… I know I wanted to get it down before this trip but I procrastinated too much and now I have some time to do it so…

UPDATE 9:00 CST (10:00 EST)::
We finally made it to Kyle’s Apartment… We almost couldn’t get in because it is a gated community but we just followed another car through the gate… After a few calls we made it to his apartment and just hung out there the rest of the night and after watching some TV crashed on the floor… to be up by 8:30 the next morning to get ready to be at the Mid-South Coliseum by 10am when the parking lots open…