Finishing the Memphis Story

(^^^ Jacob, Myself, John and Chris at Central BBQ)
On Sunday, after going to morning Mass at the Christian Brother’s Chapel, I went to lunch at Central BBQ. There were about ten of us there for lunch. Of course I got the BBQ pork nachos. From there most of us went back to school to play basketball. Jacob, Bobby’s youngest brother, and I have a running competition with playing the basketball game “Horse.” (Bobby was out of town the whole time working at a camp in Arkansas). It’s been a thing we do ever since I joined Bobby and his family for Easter my junior year. So Jacob, a few of the other people from lunch, and I went to play Horse at CBU for about an hour. I won once and came in third the other time.

(^^^Ryan, Daniel, Travis, Myself in Martin, TN)
After I drove Jacob back to his house, I headed out of Memphis toward Martin, TN. It was about a two and half hours northeast of Memphis. What’s in Martin? Well not a whole lot. Farm land. UT Martin. And that’s about it. But two of my twin friends, Travis and Daniel, live there. And I’ve heard about their farm, their 280 acres of land, and their three ponds…so I told them when I had the chance, Id go visit them. I got there around dinner time, so we went to Union City, about 20 mins from Martin. They claim Mexican restaurants are the only good restaurants around, so we had Mexican food there. When we came back to Martin, another (former) CBU friend, Ryan, joined us at the Twin’s house. We had a couple of beers and caught up. And somewhere late at night, we also went outside, and out there in farm land, we could see the Milky Way, and in a minute we saw both a shooting star and a bat flying around! The next day, they took me around their farm. We tried to find the cows, who apparently migrated to another piece of the property. We also saw two of the three pond. And acres and acres of soy beans! For lunch we went back to Union City to have lunch at a pub that sells some good burgers. On the way back to Martin, they showed me around town, which while small, was bigger than what I was expecting.

I took off from Martin in the early afternoon to go to St Louis. I drove through Kentucky, into Illinois, and finally into Missouri. This was about a 4 hour drive. Along the way I drove through Cairo, IL. Any idea where that is? Lily has probably already answered it’s the southern most city in the state of Illinois. I was in Illinois for all of thirty seconds driving over the Ohio River into Illinois and then immediately over the Mississippi River into Missouri.

In St Louis, I stayed with my friend Kevin. We had dinner at a local brewery and then we went bowling. (My senior year at CBU, when my team won the intramural bowl, we played against Kevin’s team and won by three pins – I believe it was.) So we thought bowling would be fun. It was a bar/bowling place, so it only had 8 lanes. Even with house ball and shoes and that glow bowl thing, I still won three games.

The next morning, after getting some good sleep, I took off from St Louis and headed north with 9 hours left. And about midway, I stopped for Chipotle in Iowa City, IA. It was of course raining hard, parking was hard to come by, but I was determined to have some. After making loops around the city and block, I parked in a parking garage, walked seven blocks or so in the rain to get some Chipotle. Of course, I took it to go to eat along the drive.


And I know you are all probably wondering what did I do during all the driving? In my CD player, besides music, was a lot of catholic radio programs and Buddhist sermons (Midwest Jodo Shinshu Temple has its sermons on itunes).

I made it back into St Paul about 7 at night last Tuesday.

Tidbit by Thomas: Hmm can’t think of anything because these papers I’m editing takes all the brain cells I need to think…