Day 15 - 2107 Words

The next day was quite full. We were in danger of falling behind schedule, but we had built in a little extra time in anticipation of that. We left the hotel bright and early and headed down to the Farmers Market, where we got on the Nash Trash tour. We were, just like at the zoo, not the typical audience for this adventure; the Jugg Sisters, who run the tour, were clearly not expecting a crowd of twenty somethings who knew absolutely nothing about country music to take over their big pink bus for the morning. Even so, they were nice and the tour was hilarious. The best part was “Make Up Tips for the Trashy.” There were about four women in our group, one of whom was Bryce. She had obviously been on this tour time and time again. She could recite the Jugg Sisters’ whole routine. She was having a fabulous time. The other girls got a big kick out of the make up tips, while most of the guys stared in confusion. I don’t know why women wear make up anyway. It doesn’t impress men that much, from what I can tell, and it seems like a lot of work. The tour was over in just ninety minutes and we were back at the Farmers Market.

We wandered the Farmers Market for a while before setting off for the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Bryce had planned for us to take a tour that was called the Star For A Day Group Recording package. By this time I thought she was crazy – she had paid our admission for the Nash Trash tour out of pocket and she was paying for this as well. At the rate she was going, she would have spent a few thousand dollars before the day was out. I wondered if she had many friends here in Nashville. At the Hall of Fame, we toured Historic RCA Studio B and then actually recorded a song with all thirty or so of us together. The Tennessee contingent of our group had only added one carful. For a group of people with almost no singing training and no interest in country music, we sounded pretty good. I guess all of our time in garage bands when we were in high school was paying off now.

After the recording session we toured the Hall of Fame itself and the Museum. We finished out with a late lunch at the Wildhorse Saloon, where they played our recording for the whole restaurant to hear. It was a bit overwhelming. Our day of tourism was far from done, however. We went over to the Opry Mills Mall, where we found ourselves more at home than anywhere else in Nashville. After all, there were stores for gamers of both the video and tabletop sort. The mall had both an EB and a Gamestop. This was our kind of place.

Our comfort was not to last for long, though, because after dinner Bryce had arranged for us to all go to the Grand Ole Opry. I was surprised; most of us enjoyed the show. We were more of a death metal crew than a country crew, but sometimes things are entertaining independent of their genre. After the show, we all headed back to the hotel. We had to get an early start in the morning for the Kentucky Lake Resort.

We left first thing the next day. The drive to Kentucky Lake only took a couple of hours. The lake is one of the world’s largest man-made lakes. Despite my knowing it wasn’t natural, it reminded me how beautiful nature could be. Here we met up with Ash, a buff guy who defied all stereotypes of gamers. The resort area was much bigger than just one hotel; it featured forty three different types of lodging and a number of attractions. It was a laid back place, almost the opposite of Nashville in that way. Ash and Bryce got along capitally. She regaled him with tales of our Nashville adventures, taking great delight in describing our facial expressions as we experienced the city through the lens of the Nash Trash tour. He would laugh this strange laugh that seemed to start at the pit of his stomach and then force his whole body to convulse. It was obvious that there was some chemistry between the two of them. I couldn’t help but be a little jealous. Here we were, on this trip, the purpose of which was supposedly for me to win Elaine back from Alexis the pansy, and other people were making their own love connections. It felt wrong, and I was actually a little angry.

Adrian had become my constant companion on the trip. He was always supporting me, acting in a brotherly fashion, encouraging me when things went poorly and managing the growing group of guild members who were tagging along. We picked up another two cars full in Kentucky. By this point there were almost fifty of us.

Our day at Kentucky Lake was spent in a lazy fashion, playing golf and taking boats out on the lake. We split up into smaller groups, though the leaders all seemed to stick together. Ash, Bryce, Adrian, Donnelly, Owen, and myself had lunch at the Moors Restaurant on Kentucky Lake. We spent some time reviewing the itinerary for the rest of the trip.

“So we leave for St. Louis tomorrow?” Bryce asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And then onwards to Kansas City!” Adrian exclaimed. I guess Kansas City excited him.

I had the whole itinerary written down. Owen read it out: “Omaha, Sioux Falls, Buffalo, Billings, C’ouer d’Alene?”

“Where the hell is C’ouer d’Alene?” Donnelly asked.

“Idaho,” I said.

“And... why are we going there?” Ash asked.

“We are trying to stay on major highways and take the most direct route to Seattle possible,” Adrian explained.

“Right,” Bryce said. “If we got off the beaten path we might do something crazy. Like have fun.” She was sitting very close to Ash. Very close indeed. I wondered if it was weird for her being the only girl. I know if I had been the only guy at a table with five girls I would have felt a little strange.

“We want to get to the con,” I said. “Plus, I can’t just show up the day before Elaine’s wedding and sweep her off her feet. It will be too late then.”

“No,” Ash said. “You definitely could. Just show up, wow her with your perseverance, and voila – she’s yours.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. One of the most common topics of discussion on gamer forums is why girls don’t like us more. Every once in a while a girl will pop on and post something about how maybe if we treated women with more respect, or if we would pay attention to girl gamers instead of always going after girls with whom we have no common interests, then maybe we would get girlfriends more easily. It seemed to me that Ash probably had never felt this basic gamer dilemma. He was brawny and could definitely pass for your normal, athletic, all-American guy. It was no wonder Bryce was drawn to him. After a couple of days around losers who didn’t bathe very often or know how to speak to a girl in actual words instead of just strange vowel sounds, any woman would jump at the first man who resembled something vaguely normal.

I was beginning to resent Ash, a little. If I had been like him, Elaine probably never would have left me. I felt a little bit like Ash must have been part of the newer gamer contingent, latching on to the past time once it became popular. Even so, he revealed in his conversation that he was among the hardest of the hardcore, having played games on an Atari 2600 and being capable of singing all the various themes from every eight bit game I could name. He could go toe to toe with the best of us. It didn’t actually raise him in my esteem at all. It just made me envy him more.

After lunch we played a few rounds of mini-golf. We headed back to the hotel where Ash had booked us a large group of rooms and settled in for the night. Some of the guys had brought laptops and the hotel had free wireless access, so we played a few rounds of the game before nodding off. Bryce spent the entire night in Ash’s room. I’m not sure if anything happened between them; he did have roommates who might be less than keen on him getting some private time in with a girl with them around. Even so, I came to resent him more and more. He was far too suave to be a gamer.

We got up the next morning bright and early to start the next leg of the trip, which would take us to St. Louis, Missouri. As St. Louis was right between Missouri and Illinois, all of the guild members attending from both states were meeting the caravan there. After enjoying the hotel’s free continental breakfast, we headed out to the cars. I had been riding with Adrian, whose car was much newer than mine. We got out there, loaded our suitcases in the trunk, grabbed the other three members of the Florida contingent who were riding with us, and settled in for the three hour drive to St. Louis.

Adrian turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said as he tried again. Still nothing.

“What’s going on?” one of the guys in the back asked me.

“Car’s not starting.”

“Yeah I’d figured that much out,” he snapped.

“I can’t tell from here any better than you can from back there,” I responded.

“Guys. Calm down.” Adrian tried the key in the ignition one more time. By this point a lot of the other cars were already on the road to go. Adrian popped the hood and got out. He looked at the car. “I don’t see anything wrong,” he said.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Call a mechanic I guess?” he said.

“We don’t have time for this,” I complained.

“It doesn’t much matter, though,” he said. “So settle in. We’re so far out, this could be a long wait.”

With the help of the hotel staff and AAA, we were able to get the car towed to a local mechanic. Apparently the car was missing some crucial part. Someone had stolen it or it had fallen out in the night. When Adrian asked the mechanic how long it would take them to get the part in, the mechanic scratched his chin and took a deep breath before giving him the bad news. “About two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” I shouted. “In two weeks Elaine will be on her way down the aisle!” The mechanic looked perplexed.

“He’s trying to stop his ex’s wedding,” one of the other guys explained.

“Oh,” the mechanic nodded with a knowing look.

“It’ll be okay,” Adrian said. “My sister can be here with her van by tomorrow if she’s not busy.”

“She – tomorrow?” I asked. All of the other cars in the caravan had left. We did have a phone tree worked out, so I could call the other drivers and let them know what was going on, but they had all shot out of the parking lot early in the day.

“Let me call her,” he said. “Hey, Isabel. Look, I’m with some guys in Kentucky, and my car broke down. We really need a ride at least as far as St. Louis. Can you help us out?” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Alright. Thanks. I’ll email you directions.” He hung up. “She can leave in a couple of hours,” he told me. “That’s the best she can do. She’ll drive us up to St. Louis but we’ll have to find our own rides from there.”

“This is a disaster,” I said. “We’ll never make it to Seattle in time.”

“Dude,” one of the other guys said, “we built in, like, a whole extra week. It’ll be alright.”

I grunted. “Let’s just get a cab and get back to the hotel,” I said.

The mechanic recommended a taxi service and we headed back, though we did have to pay a pretty penny for the cab ride. We checked back in and Adrian popped his laptop open to send his sister directions.

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Day 14 - 524 Words

Our second day in Montgomery was spent at the zoo as Donnelly had planned. It was a nice time. All of the animals were on fields or in other natural type habitats. There were no cages. It was fun to take over the zoo with a group as large as ours, especially as we were mostly people in our twenties. The zoo employees seemed used to large groups of kids, and to large groups of retired people, but not to people our age. We road the train around the zoo and then did a walking tour as well. We spent some time in the aviary, but by far the part that was most popular with our group was the reptile house. The Montgomery Zoo boasts that it is home to some of the world’s most venomous snakes.
One of the guys in the guild, a guy named Phil, was obsessed with snakes. This was like heaven for him. He read the descriptions of every species aloud. He could spend half an hour just watching one snake sit. By lunch time we were ready to get back on the road, but Phil wanted to watch those snakes forever. As far as I could tell, he didn’t care whether or not we ever got to the convention. I wasn’t really comfortable hinting to him that we needed to get a move on. We had one guy, Owen, though, who was pretty clever.
“You like snakes, Phil?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I heard there’s a really great store in Kansas City that sells exotic snakes.”
You could see the wheels turning in Phil’s head. It was the first time he’d looked away from the snakes since we had walked into the reptile house, actually.
“Really?” Phil asked Owen.
“You bet.”
“Wow. We should go there.”
“Definitely,” Owen agreed.
“When do you think we’ll get there?” Phil asked.
“Well, Kansas City is scheduled for day five, but with the amount of time we’re spending here it could be longer.”
“What are we waiting for?” Phil said. “Let’s get out of here!” I guess he thought the prospect of actually owning an exotic snake was more interesting than just staring at them.
Now that Phil was ready to get moving, we could hit the road once more. Our next stop was Nashville, where one of the two female leaders, a woman named Bryce, had planned for us to experience both ends of the cultural spectrum in one day.
It took us about six hours to get to Nashville, stops included. We met Bryce and her Tennessee crew at the Opryland Hotel, where she had snagged a group rate for the out of town types in the group to stay. After what was becoming a fairly standard meet and greet type of deal, we pretty much took over the hotel’s Cyber Cafe. A lot of the guild members hadn’t been able to join us on the road trip, and we’d promised them a play by play of the whole thing. Some of us had to censor ourselves to keep from complaining about Phil’s snake obsession and the delay it caused us.

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