Day Twelve (Epiblog) - Soul II Soul

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Today I returned to work and the relative mundanity of everyday life (hence Soul II Soul in reference to their 1989 hit Back to Life.) In some ways it was good to be back, mainly for the increased opportunity for sleep (at home, not at work.)  Given this will be the final travelogue blog post (for this trip) I thought I would refer back to the first post and the list of activities that I indicated were likely and comment on hos they did or didn't come to pass:

- Racing cars.  Well that one speaks for itself, the Nissan Rogue was very racy indeed.  Oh and we saw some Formula 1.

- Rock concerts.  Not so sure Justin Timberlake counts as rock but his support act sort of did and Stevie Wonder surely does.  Similarly the many bars of Austin, New Orleans and Nashville offered amble live Rock opportunities.  A standout being the cover of Footloose by the band in the first bar in Nashville.

- Dueling pianos.  Every night in Austin and New Orleans.  It would be an interesting concept to import to the UK as they are a lot of fun, the challenge would be finding enough musicians who knew just about every song ever written!

- Country and Western concerts.  Possibly the live music highlight of a trip with a lot of live music.  See here for a review of the gig and line up details - https://goo.gl/onbzNN 

- Graceland (to see what Paul Simon was going on about) - pretty much had the run of the place into the bargain:

Graceland - tour does not include bathrooms
- Live and Let Die location scouting.  A partial success, initially the plan was to take in the Fillet Of Sole restaurant and the scene of the boat jump.  However our busy schedule meant the latter was not possible.  That said the following pictures from outside the Fillet Of Sole show a rare example of Alistair doing something good:

The top picture is taken from the film.
Not as well staged so easier to differentiate.

- Steak eating.  Quite a lot of this although I could have tried harder in this respect.  Whilst a lot of steak was eaten none of them were as fantastic as I hoped, mainly due to a laser like focus on bar rather than restaurant selection.

- BBQ food eating - Total failure on this I think.

- Pun based breakfasts - a picture paints a thousand words:

Moons over my hammy - will it ever not be funny
- Karaoke.  Done in New Orleans.  My throat hurt mainly from laughter and late nights so I put in possibly my worst karaoke performance ever.  But still tick against this one.

- Beer.  I think I may have had one on the second evening.

- SUV driving.  Well the Nissan Rogue was sort of an SUV but only 50% points here as it was also rubbish.

- Space rockets.  Yes, NASA had some, I saw them.

- General arsing about.  Generally it was a very sensible trip but I may have arsed about a couple of times.

pretzel chin balls
Anyway if anyone is still reading thank you, I have enjoyed writing about the trip almost as much as I enjoyed living it*.  I hope to blog again in future, probably the next time I do something interesting so it may be a while.

*not strictly true.

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