Storm Troopers, Hockey Players, and the Methodist Church
Daniel and I don’t care about the Nashville Predators or the Buffalo Sabres. But we do like to drive very long distances for hockey games, and so we found ourselves getting into Mrs. Potts at 9am on a Saturday to drive to Nashville for a 7pm game.
Four hours later we made it to Music City, hunting down a food truck called the Grilled Cheeserie. We were told they offered something called the Mac n’ Cheese Grilled Cheese. Obviously, our lunch plans had been predetermined by a higher being.
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After filling ourselves to the brim with the holiest of grilled cheeses, we made our way downtown to spend a few hours exploring before the puck drop. We spent two hours in the Tennessee State Museum and still couldn’t see everything; we were forced to leave because the museum closed.
We wandered into the lobby of the museum, which was shared by several other venues and state offices, and found dozens of people milling about. Some sort of promotional event was going on, and there were free hor d’oeuvres. We still don’t know if we accidentally intruded a private event simply by exiting the museum or if it was open to the public. Either way, we snagged some free chicken and waffles and got out of there before anyone said anything. We found out later it was a TEDx event.
We wandered around the downtown area a bit and found a pretty sweet World War I memorial…
And then stumbled upon the Capital Building, complete with gazillions of tributes to Andrew Jackson. My favorite part was President Polk’s grave, which was right there on the Capital grounds.
We finally started making our way to Bridgestone Arena for the game. We grabbed a couple of drinks across the street before we went in, enjoying the square dancing, Tennessee whiskey, and people watching the confused frat boys/cowboys. I was sporting my Blackhawks shirt and received a good many hollars of approval.
Upon entering the arena, we noticed some of the fans looked a bit…not of this world. There was even a celebrity in attendance, and although I high fived him, I was not able to get a picture with Lord Vader. I was, however, able to get a picture smooching one of his storm troopers. The trooper was a bit tall, so I naturally had to strap on a pair of invisible pointe shoes to get up to him.
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The Preds destroyed the Sabres 3-0. We stuck around to enjoy the nightlife for a couple of drinks, then started the two hour drive to Daniel’s parents’ house in Alabama. We spent the night there, headed to church the next morning, and spent the rest of Sunday with his family. After his mom beat me at Scrabble (again), we began the three-hour drive back to Montgomery and made it back in time to watch the newest Walking Dead.
These are the types of things I will miss when I move to Mali.