Day 17 - Dallas to Memphis

Dallas to Memphis - 30°c

Although it was neither a particularly late night nor an overly long day yesterday either since I’d had a lie in yesterday morning compared with other mornings, getting up at 7:15am ready for the coach departure at 7:45am felt really hard this morning! However there were certainly plenty of people who had much less sleep than I had after what was a late night for them at the bars.

Once aboard the coach we started our journey over to Memphis which we all knew would be a long ride, even longer than our drive from Amarillo to Dallas, and that ride had been the longest so far. Within 30-minutes I’d estimate that well over 75% of us were fast asleep. Naman had taken to sleeping in the aisle of the coach too, obviously unable to get comfortable in his seat. Thankfully we had no sudden brakes on the way, so he didn’t go sliding down the coach from one end to the other!

A couple of hours into our journey, we stopped off for a quick restroom break and got back on the coach. Kristina put a movie on about JFK since we were all a bit better informed about it all after our museum trip yesterday and could follow it properly. I got a bit bored of it, so put the ‘Sex and the City movie’ on my laptop and watched that instead, until the battery died at least!
We stopped off for an early lunch stop at another Wal-Mart / service station area around 11:30am for 45-minutes rather than the usual hour lunch we have, since we were running slightly late owing to a late departure because one of the girls wasn’t well and couldn’t leave her hotel room for a while (self-inflicted from the night before I think!). Another thunderstorm and slight rain shower greeted us yet again as we got there, it being a very grey day anyway so far since we left the hotel earlier on this morning. Lauren, Marnee, Michelle and I headed over to KFC and picked up a meal in there, which wasn’t particularly great. - I think the chicken had been sitting there for a while before we arrived.

Once back on the coach around 12:15pm, we kept driving for another 2-hours or so, before we stopped off at Texarkana, a town on the state line between Texas and Arkansas, the name originating from putting the two state names together and throwing in the state of Louisiana with it, which Kristina said the guy who came up with the name mistook many years ago for being a lot closer than it really is.

It was the first time we’d stood on a line where two states meet, and it was quite strange to be able to cross a line and be in an entirely different state with different rules, jurisdictions, governments and ideas from the other. We made another stop shortly afterwards in a place called Little Rock where former president Bill Clinton originated from, and visited the local government building where we worked before becoming US president, which looked very, very similar to the Capitol building we’ll be visiting in another 10 days or so when we get to Washington D.C., and took a whole heap of photos, despite the rain that although still present, had lessened to just a slight drizzle.

After boarding the coach to continue our journey towards Memphis, Kristina got us all involved in playing a game she called “Coach Scavengers” where she divided the coach up into the left and right sides, and then called out an item and each side had to find one and pass it down the back of the coach and back up again before the other side could. It was such good fun, especially thing the things she called out got more and more bizarre. - The moment (Londoner) Danielle took off her bra when Kristina asked for one, to pass to the front was especially memorable (perhaps for the wrong reasons!). But her doing so won the right side of the coach the game! …Sadly I was on the left side!

We finished watching the JFK movie, and once that had finished, Kristina put on some ‘Friends’ DVDs. Thankfully before too much longer we’d arrived in Memphis, Tennessee!

We checked into our hotel around 5:30pm, which isn’t the greatest of hotels, but since it’s again only for a couple of nights and there’s so much else going on around Memphis to keep us busy and out of the hotel room, it’s not much of a problem.
The majority of the group headed on down to watched a local match at a nearby baseball park. Having been to the LA Dodger’s game while in LA, I opted out of it and instead headed down to Beale Street with James, Annie, Joey and Kate, all of which had opted out too. We had a stroll around, taking in some of the sights and enjoying the bands playing in the street, before getting some dinner at Hooters! After looking around at some of the restaurants, we decided that the Hooters menu looked the most appealing, and I ordered some ‘911 hot wings’, which, believe you me, were the hottest chicken wings I have ever had in my life! I love hot and spicy chicken wings, the spicier the better, but these were something else!

After dinner I quickly ran down to the nearby Hard Rock Café and picked up another souvenir glass, before we headed back to the hotel for a while to wait for the baseball to finish and the others to get back.
The entire group all met down in the lobby around 10pm and headed down to Beale Street where the entire street was buzzing with activity. The energy within the street was fantastic, and since the entire street is pedestrian-ised, hundreds of people were spilling out of the bars and restaurants and into the street, and the atmosphere was electric.

I had a couple of cocktails whilst walking around the streets soaking it all up for a couple of hours, eventually after a few people headed on back around midnight, a large chunk of us including the two Michelle’s, Marnee, Lauren, Joey, Kirsty, Sam, Erica, Angela, Nathan, Scott, Naman, Andre, myself and countless others, all ended up in the ‘Coyote Ugly’ bar.

Well, what can I say about this place?! Inside the bar the atmosphere was incredible, bargirls dancing up on the bar dragging girls up out of the crowd and onto the bar with them to dance, others dancing all around, it’s hard to sum up exactly what it was like but suffice to say that it was fantastic!
Seeing all the bargirls, and including all the girls above, up on the bar, I was desperate to be up there, but since no other guys went up, I figured I’d better stay down on the ground!

A security guard told me off when I jokingly put a dollar bill down Lauren’s top when she suggestively stooped down towards me lap-dance style! I told him that it was OK and that she was a friend, but he still said it wasn’t allowed! Everybody else was laughing at me unable to believe that as possibly the only gay guy in a bar dedicated to men wanting to ogle women, that I was the one to get in trouble! I got another stern look from another security guard when I leant backwards over a pool table in mock suggestiveness towards Lauren!
Once they were down on the ground, I danced with all of the girls in a big group chain, right in the middle of them all, much to the envy of the other guys! It’s so fantastic that they all let me in like I’m ‘one of the girls’ and adopt me as one of their own! We had SO much fun!

Even Kristina, our tour guide, was still out until 1:30am, unable to leave early as she usually does so as to get enough rest for her next day’s work, because every time she made an attempt to head towards the exit, we all made a barricade across the door so she couldn’t leave! It was very funny!

The details of the night had started to get somewhat hazy well before 1:30am anyway, but if the tales I hear are true, we stayed there until around about 2:30am before the two Michelle’s, Marnee, Lauren, Nathan, Scott and I walked back to the hotel and back to mine and Scott’s room where we continued laughing and giggling for ages afterwards. I do however remember switching the light out and reaching for my phone to set the alarm and it reading ‘4:10am’ and my last words, in-between fits of laughter to Scott being, “Oh god!” knowing somewhere in my hazy head that we had to be up in 3 hours time!

It might have been the latest and craziest night of the tour so far, but it was DEFINITELY the best!

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Part of trip: Trip of a lifetime!

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