Road Trip to Cali - Day 1 (Morristown, TN to Oklahoma City, OK)

I'm listening to Dad catch some beautiful, well-deserved, yet noisy ZZZZ's on the other bed... so I figured I'd update this thing... Today was cool. As was said earlier, I did not sleep last night. We ended up leaving Morristown at 5:30 AM EST with the sounds of Phantom Planet's "California... Here We Come!" keeping us alive. We made it to Nashville about 9:30 EST and we stopped at Matt Hodges' and Dan Faber's apartment to grab a few things that I left there earlier - being a pair of shorts, a djiembe, tripod, and a pillow; I returned Dan's copy of Blue Like Jazz that had been sitting on top of my old sunday school teacher's toilet, keeping him company while he did his business.

Dad and I stopped in Memphis for lunch at this famous barbecue place; it was in a pretty rough part of town, with bars all over the doors and windows and stuff. It cracked us up. I forgot the name of it though. So Dad asked the our waitress what sides he could order with his dinner plate of ribs, to which she replied, "You get two choices of baked beans, cole slaw, and potato salad." Seeing his face at the sound of the latter two, in referring to him wanting a double order of baked beans, she said in a very Memphis draw, "Don't worry. It's not too much. Won't give ya gas or anything." And then she just kinda walked away. We were both pretty much in shock and nearly in tears because of laughter. It was pretty ridiculous.

So we kept driving and met up with my friend from Belmont Lauren Turner and like five of her friends. We ate at this Mexican restaurant in downtown Oklahoma City (I also forgot what that was called). We all had really good conversation, really good food, and a great blessing by Rachel Turner. It's funny - I remember when she came and hung out at Belmont; we were all hanging out late at night, Steve had his guitar and some were singing. She was dancing in a very hippy-like (reminiscing of Bonnaroo) manner; I say that because it was beautiful. Maybe it was the lack of self-conciousness, but also she commented to me upon my inquisition that she was dancing for her Father Jesus. How amazing! Honestly, all of Lauren's friends are pretty much amazing. They are all very warm, welcoming, accepting, fun, goofy, and followers of Christ. I respect them all deeply.

On another note, after some hour or so of debate, Dad and I named the new navigation system (well really the voice inside that tells us what to do). After I proposed Gretchen, Robin.... we threw around a few other names Arial (haha, get it? aerial...)... However we finally agreed on Maggie. She's been super-helpful so far. Anyway, it's time to get some sleep. Good night...