Amory, Mississippi

  8/3/11; 11:07:08 AM by AC
  The title of this post is misleading, since I'm updating from the Two River's RV park on the north east side of Nashville Tennessee, but for sake of the archives its titled as such to reflect the contents.
  After a night in Shreveport Louisiana, we continued our drive up north to visit Ryno The Bearded. Not his real name, but chatroomm monnikers are as real as it gets on the interwebs, and even after the 6 hour drive it felt entirely natural to hug this man who's done so much for the No Agenda Stream and the podcast itself and just call him Ryno.
  Ryno lives about 30 miles south of the birthplace of Elvis (Tupelo) and shares a nice home in a wooded area with his dad and one of his brothers. A prime example of a Mississippi bachelor pad! The vast yard used to be a tree filled swamp, and Daddy Ryno was happy to tell me all about the 200 trees they had to remove and how many pickup trucks of dirt it too to convert it into a nicely grassed lawn with several beautiful trees providing ample shade for the Dutchess. Of course the guys have all the toys they need to make life as fun as possible; four wheelers, jet skis and 11 vehicles were parked with some order throughout the property. The mustang does the quarter mile in under 6 seconds I'm reliably informed.
  We arrived around 6:30pm, after passing Mississippi University and the place known as Bum Fuck Egypt, Egypt Mississippi. You know you've been everywhere when you've actually passed through BFE!
  With 97 degrees and at least 60% humidity, we pretty much parked ourselves on the back porch and acquainted ourselves with our hosts and Allan, the Ford salesman aka Captain Negative who lives next door.
  Once darkness set it, the beers kept flowing and it was time to light the grill for some real southern hot wings and ribs. But not until Ryno connected the propane tank to his infamous Rubens' Tube for a spectacular example of physics combining fire and sound waves into a great light show.
  I'll be talking plenty about our nighttime fun with Ryno et al on the show (327.nashownotes.com), but rest assured we had many a belly laugh after dinner in the game room, where we continued our beer fest while shooting pool and playing youtube country songs. My favourite, hands down is the remake of Rupert Holmes 'pina colada song' by Sunny Ledford: Red Bull and Vodka.
  We stumbled into the RV around midnight, bellies full, gullets wet and tounges still burning from the wings. Our faces stretched and hurting from all the laughs. They sure know how to party on a Monday night in Amory!
  We slept in a bit Tuesday morning, ,8'oclock, imagine that! After discovering that my debit card had been cloned and almost $4000 withdrawn from our account back in LA and reporting it to my bank, we had a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and fruit courtesy of Ms. Micky.
  Ryno then drove us 5 minutes out to Smithville, which was devestated by a tornado on April 27th. Although heartbreaking to see only concrete foundations where once entire neighborhoods stood, the amount of reconstruction and perseverance in getting life back on track by this community is a beautiful sight to see.
  Concluding our tour of the area, we drove up to Tupelo to visit the birth home of Elvis Presly, a tiny 2 room structure with an elvis museum and giftshop also on the grounds. Somehow this felt better than going to Graceland. These extremely humble settings and surrounding area helped me understand the origin of the blues a lot better I'm sure.
  We bid farewell to Ryno and again headed up north toward Nashville, grabbing the first 100 miles of the journey on the Natchez Trace Highway A beautiful area, but absolute hell to drive. 50Mph speedlimit (strictly enforced I was warned by many) and because of the trees you develop tunnel vision very quickly on the road and it just wears you out.
  After a stop at a great roadside steakhouse thanks to a spot of googling, Micky took over to get us into Nashville around 7pm. We parked, hooked up, drank a corona in the setting sun and once again fell into a deep sleep.
  I'm in the Rig right now, prepping for tomorrow's show. The weather is nice enough for me to sit inside with the a/c on and the door open (screened of course) and we are parked right next to the campground's wifi antenna. I've configured a manual ip address and my own dns servers, so hopefully it will provide for good connections for tomorrow's broadcast.
  Micky is off to explore the city, as well as some 'girl time' i.e. claws and paws repair. Poor girl, RV life isn't easy when it comes to keeping up personal appearances, but man it still is a hoot load of fun!
  Looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow night at The Big Bang for the Nashville meetup!