Journal Entry 5, Day 13, June 10

We’re heading to Atlanta on I-75 after successful trips to Nashville and Chattanooga. We just finished breakfast at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo restaurant inside the restored former rail depot. It no longer functions as a station, but instead has been transformed into restaurants and a hotel, with old restored rail cars on the tracks and beautiful gardens and fountains along the walk. Definitely worth a visit. (And make sure to check out the grits. Tasted like corn fresh off the cob. Best I’ve ever had, and my folks are from the South.)

We traveled to Nashville from Little Rock on Thursday, and I did several radio interviews in the car as well as some journaling. At one point about 15 miles out of Memphis we get a call saying that a Memphis TV station is interested in interviewing me at their studio. So we take the next exit and pull into a parking lot as things are sorted out. While we’re waiting to hear about the TV station, I go ahead and do an interview with AP radio. Then we hear back – no Memphis TV interview. We get back on the road.

Nashville was great. Unbeknownst to us, we arrived on Thursday afternoon at the start of the annual country music festival called “Fan Fair.” Thank goodness we had hotel reservations. (Way to go, Kara!) In the evening Kara and I both went for runs. We didn’t have precise directions to our meeting in the morning at the Baptist Center for Ethics, so I started to look for it on my run and found it right when I needed to turn around and head back. Now we knew exactly where we needed to be for our 9am meeting.

The Baptist Center for Ethics has been in existence since 1991, and its primary clientele is churches of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We had a good 2-hour meeting with Robert Parham, Executive Director, and the staff. Towards the end of our time together they wanted to see the vehicle, so we gave them the “hybrid-electric tour” – opening the hood, pointing out the electric motor, showing them the two screens that tell you at any one second where the energy is coming from and going to, and what your gas mileage is. (People are quite interested in the technology, that you don’t have to plug it in because the batteries are recharged by capturing the energy from breaking and going downhill, and that it performs just like a regular car the same size.)

While we were showing them the car, Michelle from our communications firm calls to tell us that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a great editorial in this morning’s paper (Friday June 6). She reads it to me over the phone. We couldn’t have asked for anything better. Fantastic news!

Next stop: Kinkos (which I found on my run the previous evening). We need to make some copies, check email, and do some more MapQuests. We grab lunch about 1:30pm and head back to the hotel where I do an extensive interview over the phone with a reporter from The Economist. At 3pm we have a teleconference with our communications firm and Paul Gorman of the NRPE. This ends around 4pm, and I’m zonked. Kara, however, is still going. She heads back to Kinkos to make more hotel reservations for upcoming stops and do more MapQuesting. We have dinner in the room, because I’m not in much shape to do anything else and Kara takes pity on me.

The next morning, Saturday, I head to Kinkos, post my journal entry, and check email. By the time I get back it’s around noon. Kara has done a load of laundry. Now it’s time to be tourists! The one thing we definitely want to see is the Ryman auditorium in downtown Nashville, the original home of the Grand Ole Oprey show. It’s the time of the Fan Fair, so the area is quite crowded. Several streets are blocked off. We want some digital photos of the car in front of the Ryman auditorium – the real Grand Ole Oprey building – for the website. Kara jumps out of the car and I make several passes by the building, going slow to get the shot. (What we won’t do for WWJDrive!) Our final work chore done, we park the car. It’s time to find an interesting place to eat. I let Kara choose, and she picks “Jack’s Barbecue,” which has a neon sign out front with three pink flying pigs taking off. (You see, pigs do fly at Jack’s.) The food is great.

It’s a little before 3pm as we head over to the original Grand Ole Oprey to tour the Ryman auditorium, which we discover was originally built by the captain of a riverboat gambling steam ship for the evangelist who converted him and showed him the error of his ways. We ask about the self-guided tour, but discover that there is a special matinee show and that if we want to see the auditorium, we will have to buy a ticket. We ask what’s available, and the attendant says, “Two just opened up right on the front row.” The show is just starting, so we take the tickets and head in. The full Oprey cast is before us, and the 82-year old legend, Little Jimmy Dickens – all 4 feet 11 inches of him in a sparkling, studded bright blue suit – is singing away. We walk right down to the front row and take seats 1 and 2 – the best seats in the house! Both Kara and I can’t stop laughing. How did we get here? It doesn’t get any better than this – seeing classic country acts in the original Grand Ole Oprey building. Other artists included Porter Wagoner and a relatively new bluegrass artist, Rebecca Vincent. She and her band were tremendous. They do things the old-fashioned way by all sharing one microphone, Rebecca as lead vocalist playing the mandolin, and her all-male band providing harmony and playing guitar, banjo, bass, and fiddle. The fiddle player is fantastic, as is Rebecca. She says that she will be at the Earnest Tubb record store after the show signing autographs. So after the show we head over and get in line and buy her latest CD, getting her to sign it, and then posing with her for a picture. Are we tourists or what! Lots of fun.

The next morning I’m speaking at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, which is to start at 9:45am. I was told earlier that some folks at the church were not too thrilled that we were coming, so I’m expecting to be challenged. At about 9:55am there are only 3-4 people in the room. I whisper to Kara, “maybe there’s a boycott.” We gather together and I begin my presentation. Suddenly, about 35-40 people start coming in the other door. The bulletin had the wrong room! (“Whew!”) We’ve got a great group now, so I start over and tell them about us being tourists, and it cracks them up. I do my presentation (which Kara later tells me is my best yet) and the discussion goes well, with no “push-back.”

The reporter from The Tennessean, (the Nashville paper), has attended the event and interviews me afterwards out at the car. She takes a few pictures, and then Kara and I slip into the worship service. Afterwards we head back to the car and a photographer for the Detroit Free Press is there to take pictures for a feature article that will run on Wednesday.

One of the members of the church, Jane Sights, has invited us to lunch. She and her husband Pete, a retired Air Force Colonel, own a Honda Insight (Honda’s first hybrid, a sporty two-seater). It’s wonderful being in their home. We take some photos of them for the website, and we’re back on the road.

We arrive in Chattanooga several hours later. It turns out that Chattanooga is also having a big festival called Riverbend. We walk down from our hotel and check out the festivities before having dinner. Then we head back to the hotel to try to get a good night’s sleep, as I will be interviewed at the studio of a local TV station for their 5am morning show. Given that we’ve just crossed over into Eastern Time from Central Time, that means we lost an hour. We wake up at 4am. It’s still dark as we make our way to the car. Kara’s driving, and I’m navigating using MapQuest directions. Right off the bat we’re thrown a curve, as a street we need to turn onto is closed due to the Riverbend festival. We call the numbers of the TV station contacts and get no replies. We begin to frantically look at our Road Atlas and its itty-bitty map of Chattanooga to figure out an alternate route. We stop several places to try to talk to someone, but can’t find anyone. By now it’s 5:10am, the time we were to be at the station. We keep calling and searching on the map. Finally we figure it out and arrive at the station. It’s 5:40am. We’re hoping they can still have us on. The only people around are the cleaning crew, but they let us in. They tell us they’ve let the host know we’re here. He never gets the word. By the time we get his attention there’s only 5 minutes left. His assistant tells us there’s nothing they can do. Frustrating! We should have driven to the station the night before.

We make our way back to the hotel, where we check out the breakfast buffet. Kara looks at the runny scrambled eggs and says, “This looks like a great breeding ground for salmonella.” I’m hungry and want quick protein, so I take a chance. The eggs are cold. Another bad sign. Eating those lousy eggs ends up being a decision I will regret for about 24 hours. It saps my energy for most of the day.

We head back to the room where I do several interviews over the phone, including a contentious one with a Christian radio station, my first. I also do one with the local talk radio station. It is heard by one of the local TV stations, which calls the hotel and schedules an interview at Ascension Lutheran Church, where we will have our event in the evening. We head over to the church around 1pm to make sure we can find it. The pastor, the Rev. Clay Seneker, is there (who we later discover is a member of the Tennessee Ornithological Society). He shows us around the church and helps us get set up. At 2:45pm the reporter for the local Fox TV station arrives and interviews me. The photographer for the Chattanooga paper arrives at 3pm and begins taking photos, and the Religion editor comes at 3:30pm and does an in-depth interview.

With the interviews concluded, we head to dinner and end up at a Chilies.

The evening presentation goes well, and I am interviewed afterwards by another local TV station, channel 9. Afterwards I reconnect with the folks from EarthCare, a local Christian creation-care organization that had me as a speaker just a couple of months previous. They helped to organize and cosponsor our Chattanooga visit. Kara asks them where we can deposit our recycling (since it has been piling up in the car), and one of the members, Patrick Spiesser, graciously takes it of our hands. It’s good to have Christian brothers! Unfortunately, we must get back to the hotel so I can do another interview with a Christian radio station in Nashville, who had seen the article in The Tennessean. That goes well, and our workday is done at 9pm. Time for rest.