Travelin’ Thornberries Have Grand Ol’ Time in Nashville

September 28 to September 30, 2007

Hello, My Darlings!

It has been well over four months since Jennifer and I have been able to travel and bring to you experiences both magnus et parvus, grandes y pocos, great and small. But it is our pleasure to gift you now with our weekend excursion to Nashville, Tennessee, the site of my most recent conference for the Southern Pain Society. As with our earlier trip to Boston, we’ll most likely pepper it with bits of our current foreign language projects. That would be lingua Latina, the Latin language for me, and lengua espanol, the Spanish language for Jennifer.

Forward!

Friday, September 28, 2007—On the Road Again

… “Just can’t wait to get on the road again…” Yeah, given that we were traveling to Nashville, the undisputed heart of country music, I couldn’t resist the reference. Of course, to be honest, I’d rather swallow a fish hook and line, snag it in my stomach lining and then yank my entire gastric sack inside-out past my teeth rather than listen to country music. But diversity of tastes is what makes this grand species of ours a beautiful entity, eh?

The Beautifully Bland Car Trip

If you’ve traveled with us vicariously before, you know that for Jennifer and I, getting there is usually half the hell. No matter how we plan, we’ll still end up trampled by a herd of human “cows,” held up in line by surly employees, stopped at red lights ad nauseum, or in some way reminded that the essential nature of life is, to quote the 16th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” This time, however, our experience was more in line with that of the Hindu concept of moksha, or liberation from such material and short-sighted goals.

This being a reasonably short weekend trip, we decided to just drive down south rather than fly. So we packed our stuff, had a snack of Little Caesar’s breadsticks, then piled into Jennifer’s cute gold vehicle, “Tinky,” and got on the road. Beyond the normal concerns of traffic on a Friday evening, we really didn’t encounter anything unexpected or untoward. Jennifer slept part of the way there, while I handled the driving. I even put on some music that Jennifer promptly turned all the way down so it sounded like mice chittering. But it was Friday and we were on vacation. C’est la vie [Look, Leda! French!] We had always heard that navigating Nashville was an experience similar to having one’s face tamped into a hot waffle iron, but even our arrival went smoothly. It seemed we were under a lucky star.

Arrival at the Gaylord Opryland Resort

Fortunately, we gained an hour during the trip by crossing from Eastern to Central time. So it wasn’t as late as we had thought it might be. Nonetheless, part of us was operating on “tummy time,” and our tummies told us it was well past our dinnertime. When the huge parking lot of the Gaylord Opryland Resort appeared, we hoped for a quick check-in, followed by joyous face-stuffing.

Well, you know that didn’t happen.

First of all, you must understand that the Gaylord Opryland Resort, the site of my conference, is absolutely huge. We had thought the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi, to be a massive edifice, but this one easily dwarfed it. It bulked against the dark skyline like an aquae ductus Romanus (Roman aqueduct), or a medieval castle. If the Beau Rivage could be represented metaphorically by Herman Munster, then the Gaylord Opryland Resort would be Norm Peterson from Cheers (1982): instead of tall and imposing, it was short and very fat. That also meant it sprawled. Jennifer and I had come prepared to have trouble getting inside the damn place, figuring it would have a plethora of entrances, and no matter where we parked, the entrance we needed would be on the opposite side anyway.

We had a brief debate on what to do with our luggage. On the one hand, we could leave it in the car, go inside unencumbered, check in, then return for our stuff. Alternatively, we could take all of our stuff with us, suffer being loaded down, then avoid having to come al-l-l-l-l the way back out to the car afterward (which was a good thousand feet from the hulking structure itself). We ultimately decided to just load ourselves down, figuring the quest to find the registration desk wouldn’t be too bad.

But it was.

With Jennifer carrying our bag o’ entertainment and me dragging our wheeled load o’ clothes and the cooler o’ beer, we ended up having to go all the way down one side of the building before we found anything that resembled an entrance. And of course, there was a tour group of obstructive “sheeple*” bleating and cropping grass while they waited for their bus to arrive. We had to veer off the sidewalk and out in the middle of the road to avoid them. [*Quick aside: The term “sheeple” was borrowed from my cousin Heather. Hey, Heather! Hope you’re out there in the audience!]

Once we found a way inside, another ten minutes would elapse before we could figure out which direction to go. Fortunately, maps of this enormous hotel were frequently and generously interspersed, so we eventually found the general route. And as expected, the “general route” was a bisecting line that required us to go al-l-l-l-l the way through the damn building.

The li'l man in the top left corner of the floor here illustrates the scale of sprawl in the Resort.

Both of us were purely focused on knocking “cows” aside and moving to our destination, so there was little time to notice our surroundings. All I remember is darkness, a bunch of plants arching around us, and at one point, a woman singing who had a big-ass stalk of flora sticking out of her skull.

Finally, mercifully, we located the check-in desk. Of course, it conformed to the Rule of Crowds. You’ve all seen the phenomenon before, I’m sure. You go to a busy place during a prime time of business. The crowds are rampant; the “cows” are lowing. And the service provider answers their needs by maintaining a skeleton crew and operating one or two of their five registers. They must take a lesson from the Post Office, which is notorious for waiting until noon, when everyone makes a lunchtime beeline to mail a package, and then they shut down the “other window” and leave a single beleaguered person to manage the hoard. This place had about three to four people on the floor, with fifty guests in line to check in. Of course, Jennifer and I couldn’t even find where the line began, but then a couple of seemingly nice bellhops offered to take our bags and unclip a place in the guide ropes to let us cut our way into the back of the line. I took that offer well, with my hands bleeding from holding, directing and marshalling our luggage for so long. But Jennifer immediately realized that those “Good Samaritan” bellhops were actually “Judases,” waiting for us to register so they could pressure us into letting them transport our luggage, and thus gouge us for 40 pieces of silver.

Eventually, Jennifer swooned from hunger, her lips blue, her eyes draining tears of blood. I caught her and held her until our turn came to register.

This bony, emaciated mannequin in one of the Resort's stores, captures how starved Jennifer felt.

During that time, they showed us where our room was located, and it looked pretty close. Both of us giggled up stomach juice to see that we were mercifully on the first floor! Yay, no crowded, crawl-ass elevators or endless flights of stairs!! We also used that as a justification to get away from our mercenary bellhops, whom both of us pummeled bare-knuckled until we could reclaim our luggage in peace. Then, slapping away their feebly grasping hands and leaving those guys in a pile, whimpering and begging for mercy, we set forth to find our room: #0144. All kidding aside, we do have to say that the staff of this hotel was peopled with amazingly good hosts. At no time were they surly, impatient or rude and we did always feel welcome. When we got home, I took their online survey and gave them almost a total rating of 5/5 stars!

Even with the sprawl of the hotel, one would have thought this part would be easy, huh? We were on the first floor; our room was located on the first floor. No brainer. But not in a Travelin’ Thornberries narrative, my darlings. Oh, we found the room on the first floor. But our electronic keys didn’t work in the door lock. Jennifer tried it several times, then I tried mine, to no avail. Then she realized that we had miscalculated and this was not our room. Oops! We had found room #1044, not #0144! We just hoped no one was sitting inside with a gun, waiting for us to interrupt them one more time. So we went searching again, trying to figure out how we had gone astray. After we went through several corridors that took us farther and farther from where we were supposed to go, we finally figured out that we actually needed to be down a floor. Which meant our room was on Floor… Zero? WTF!? So find an elevator we did, and down we went to Floor Zero.

The doors opened to plastic and scaffolding strewn about everywhere. Yes, true to our luck, our floor was the only one we saw throughout our stay that was under renovation. Why does it always seem like the things we visit get their once-per-decade overhaul during the time we’re there? *Snort!* But the long and short of it was that we found our room, laid Jennifer down to go into hunger-based seizures and we both freshened up.

Chappy’s, Revisited

We had come expecting to rendezvous with an old colleague of mine (the guy on the left in the picture). He has a couple of nicknames: “Meat” and “Caseus Magnus” (“Big Cheese”). We’ll go with the former here, since it is easier to pronounce, and I don’t want to alienate you, our darlings, with too much Latin. By using my pre-pay cell phone, and colon-voiding 50 cents per minute, we managed to connect with Meat and make arrangements for dinner at a restaurant called Chappy's.

Since we ate so late, Jennifer, Meat and I ended up shutting the place down. They were locking the doors, wheeling out the cleaning crew and basically urging without urging us to please get the hell out before we gobbled the last of our desserts and drinks. The trip back to the resort was uneventful, and there’s little to tell beyond finding the room and going to bed.

Saturday, September 29, 2007—Testosterone & Residual Endorphins

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to force myself up the next day in time to catch the beginning phases of the conference, so I didn’t even try. Instead, I timed my alarm so I could arrive by about the second hour or so. Getting up and dressed was as difficult as I imagined, just because I only got a few hours of sleep. But I have come to expect such discomforts when we pile a professional conference together with a personal vacation. I soaked my head in the towel, buffed my face with the sink, grabbed my clipboard and auxiliary map of the entire resort and set about finding my way to the Magnolia section of the Convention Center.

As I made my way from the room to the main throughways of the hotel, I realized the true scope of this place. For one thing, I walked out into sunlight and thought I must be passing outdoors between structures. But no, I was still inside…overhead spanned the largest glass roof I had ever seen!

The interior of the Opryland Resort is like a city block under one roof!

It reminded me of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. Yes, the resort wasn’t so much a single structure as a self-contained urban sprawl, like a city block cordoned off and placed under a single roof. Urbs en micro (a small city).

The Multidimensional Hotel Tesseract

Urk!!

The map of this engineering hodgepodge was pretty straightforward, and I followed the path it laid out with good precision when one considers how much my sleepy head still felt like it was stuffed with Jennifer’s socks. Of course, little did I realize how much my two-dimensional map left out of a four-dimensional hotel. Yes, after walking and walking for more than twenty minutes, I realized that I was climbing higher and higher and going further backward in time to the Mesozoic Era. When a pterodactyl flew by and clipped me with its dew claws, I realized I was wa-a-a-ay off track and had to retrace my steps. Ultimately, it took me close to half an hour to cross and re-cross the hotel to find my way to where the current speaker was talking away. But this is a vacation narrative and should be fun. Ergo, I’ll leave out the sordid, discouraging or merely technical details. Instead, we'll divert to...

Jennifer’s Adventures in the Gaylord Opryland Resort

Jennifer was eager to go exploring on her own, and she kept the camera to take some shots around the hotel whilst I took notes and learned about depression. I’ll turn this part of the story over to her to tell:

TRANSITION TO JENNIFER’S VOICE:

So, I walked with Thomas back over to the convention area, then parted ways and went off on my own to explore the massive hotel.

Steel (Trap) Magnolia

I walked leisurely, camera in hand, taking pictures along the way. It was rather nice not to be in a hurry to be anywhere in particular. After awhile, I decided I had seen enough of the Delta section and wanted to find my way to the Magnolia section. I checked my map, and it appeared that all I had to do was go through a door, cross a hallway and come out on the other side.

These are just a few of the beautiful flowers along the walkways in the Delta section.

Um … no.

If Thomas found the hotel tesseract, I found the steel trap. I went in the door to the hallway, but there was no door out the other side. So I went one direction down the hall and ran into a staff-only area, and the only door I saw led into a hallway that was nothing but concrete. It reminded me too much of those suspense movies where the hapless victim wanders blithely, hoping to find a way out, and no one ever hears from them again. Obviously not the right way. I went the other way down the hall and came to nothing but an elevator and a staircase leading up to the next level. Stupid me for thinking there might be an exit here.

[Sigh] I just wanted to see more of the gardens! Was that so much to ask!?

Since I wasn’t getting anywhere, I found my way back to the Delta section. At least I was familiar with it, and I figured there had to be another way around to Magnolia. Finally, I found it. I went through the coveted exit door, and after noticing how much warmer it was, looked up in surprise to realize I was actually outside! There was no roof over the Magnolia section! Unfortunately, that was the most exciting thing about it. After all of my efforts, all I found there was a swimming pool (which alas, was closed for cleaning), and a little pond with a water fountain. It made a nice picture, so I got a shot, shrugged my shoulders and found my way into a more interesting part of the hotel.

Titter! College Girls!

I looked at my watch and figured by the time I walked back across to our room, Thomas would be about finished with his conference session. So I wound my way around the other side of the Delta section, getting some different pictures, and made my way back to the room. I checked the status of our beer in the cooler and found that – horrors! – the ice was melted! Well, we just couldn’t have that. It might warm up .126453 of a degree, which would be enough to send Thomas into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth that his beer had gotten… warm! Being the good wife that I am, I ventured down the hall for some ice, so as to stave off his endearing b*tching later. Call it a pre-emptive strike.

On my way back to the room, I encountered three college girls coming up the hall. I nodded at them, and one hesitantly asked if they could come into my room. In the mood for one more little adventure before the husband came back, I unlocked the door and beckoned them in.

A short while later, they emerged, hair mussed, blouses ripped open, happy smiles on their faces. I smiled with satisfaction that they had gotten what they wanted--

No, no, no. What are you thinking?!? That was just Thomas’ fantasy intruding [get out, dear!] Actually, the girls only needed a photo of the inside of someone’s hotel room for a scavenger hunt – some sort of sorority thing. I let them in and took a picture of them in front of the patio door. They smiled, thanked me graciously and left. That is all that happened. I swear.

Afternoon Delight

I decided to take advantage of the patio for which we had paid extra,as well as the fantastic book I was reading, and the Cuervo Black we had in the room, and settle down to wait for Thomas to finish up. For a shot of the view, see below:


A short while later, after Thomas joined me, and we took a short nap before beginning our evening.

Cows In Crowds at the Local Mall

It was as Jennifer said above. We woke, freshened up, then walked over to the Opry Mills mall. As expected on a Saturday evening, the pathway between the Gaylord Opryland Resort and the mall was the site of a major “cattle drive.” Hundreds of “cows” were hauling leather in slow cow-time, in the same direction. We ended up having to weave around them, push between them and slaughter a few to finally get out ahead of them. But eventually, we left them walking like they were ambling backwards, and we entered the mall through the theater entrance.

Generally, Jennifer and I aren’t huge shoppers, and we’ve discovered on our many trips that a mall is a mall is a mall. They don’t change much from location to location, and they all have pretty much the same products. But occasionally, we’ll find one with something a little different. This one had a store or two.

Earth Shattering Ejaculation to Erectile Dysfunction

Eventually, Jennifer’s eyes began to rotate in different directions, seeking the hotel and the food therein. Yes, this being October, her birth month, I had promised her before we set out for this trip that I would buy her dinner at a place of her choice in the resort. She was horny for lasagna, and the opulence of this mall would no longer act as the cold shower on her pasta desires.

We swung back to the room, checking through customs since the hotel crossed through some other country’s borders, and dropped off our purchases. Then we went to the restaurant she had pre-selected way back when she researched the Gaylord Opryland Resort on the Internet: Paisano’s Pizzaria and Vino. Not only did they specialize in quality Italian food in buffet style, but they were situated near one of the resort’s fountains and Jennifer wanted to get a closer look at it.

She selected her coveted lasagna and corn chowder, of all things. I grabbed a stromboli and some sort of Italian flat bread. The meal was tasty and the fountain continued to ejaculate peacefully in the background.

Until we finished up eating and went to take pictures of it.

Yes, midway through our meal, the fountain suddenly dropped off to a flaccid trickle. People were gathered around the arena benches below watching it still, so we figured they knew something we didn’t, and the fountain would get excited and perk back up soon…but it didn’t.

The fountain the Travelin' Thornberries had hoped to get by night; but it's still cool here.

Nope, it stayed a disappointing and unstimulating nub for the rest of the night, and we would end up waiting until the next day to get any good pictures of it. You can see what it eventually looked like by clicking below:


At the time, however, we had to content ourselves with walking around the hotel, taking some other nighttime pictures and marking other places where we’d like to get daytime shots.

(Above): Jennifer realizes that sometimes, Thomas can be an ass.
(Below): Thomas hangs around with his best frond.

Then we went back to the room, had a few drinks while watching some television, then went to bed.

Sunday, September 30, 2007—All in the Same Boat

The next day, we got up in time to check out and cart our luggage to the car. But we decided to hang around and get those remaining pictures we wanted.

One Final Tour

We took the opportunity to grab many of those pictures as we went back through the hotel from the parking lot on our way to turn in my continuing education form back in the Magnolia section. One of the attractions we passed was the grand staircase that has become the hotel’s signature symbol; this was originally the Gaylord Opryland Resort’s front entrance, way back when it first opened its doors in 1977. All of the advertisements we saw for the hotel included a gratuitous scene of the staff lined up on that staircase, which is modeled after an opulent mansion in the Deep South. So we planted Jennifer on it, waited for the “cow” quotient to drop to nominal levels and grabbed our own images.

“Excuse Me, Ma’am!!”

Before we went much farther with our winding-down exploration, Jennifer and I wanted to satisfy our craving for raw, dead fish. Yes, we had spotted a place called Wasabi’s right from day one, an authentic sushi bar. In we staggered, where the kindly waitress seated us while she confirmed that the sushi chef was ready to begin. Overall, our selections were fantastic, as most sushi tends to be.

What was funny was that I noticed I was getting low on tea at one point, and I started sipping from my glass when the waitress walked by, so she would note my tea distress. She picked up on my cue and brought over a pitcher to refill me. Jennifer held hers up and asked for a refill right as the waitress turned away and bolted off to another table. I don’t know if it was the wasabi filling my nostrils or the caffeine, but I just found that hilarious and laughed until I was almost crying.

Not to be ignored again, Jennifer took a huge breath, squished her diaphragm against her lungs, ballooned her cheeks outward until they were almost translucent, and then when the waitress came within ten feet of our table, she belted out, “EXCUSE ME, MA’AM!!” The waitress dropped everything and grabbed the nearest table to hold on for dear life, as Jennifer’s shout picked up chairs, loose chopsticks, soy sauce bottles and other guests, and pushed them bodily across the hotel and into the interior river. Still shaking and quivering from her close brush with Hurricane Jennifer, the waitress weakly tottered over with the tea pitcher and practically upended it on Jennifer’s head. Well, actually, she just sloshed it into Jennifer’s glass such that it ran over onto the table and almost washed away her plate. I laughed up more wasabi fumes. But ultimately, none of this spoiled the experience. Jennifer still left a good tip and laughed wickedly behind her hand that the check folder remained floating in a pool of tea at the table for that waitress to clean up.

The Boat Tour: Witnessing Dolly Parton’s Enormous…Accommodations!

We left Wasabi’s, grabbed more pictures and then moved to do the last activity on our agenda before leaving: the boat tour!

Yes, there is actually an artificial river that runs around the entire Delta section of the hotel, with little boats that will give a leisurely guided tour.

Jennifer and I jumped into line, where we were immediately told that their computerized cash register had just crashed and we couldn’t use our debit card. Doh! Not to be defeated, we scratched together some good ol’ fashioned cash and crossed their palms with it. Then we took our seat in the next available boat and bobbed around the hotel while our chubby guide told us a few details about the place.

I tried to take a few notes as we went, but that’s hard to do in a moving boat. Some of my successes? Well, I learned that the glass ceiling I mentioned earlier is composed of 6,200 panes of glass that had to be mounted via helicopter! What’s more, to cover an entire self-contained city like the resort, the ceiling had to reach a height of 25 stories up from the hotel grounds and represents the highest point in the building.

The water geyser in that area, what I must call the Aqua Maxima (biggest water), shoots up to 85 feet into the sky! You can see it in the video sequence further below.

They told us how many governor’s suites they had, one of which is Dolly Parton’s preferred room when she visits the Gaylord Opryland Resort. It’s a two-story room with spiral staircase, self-playing piano and a canopied bed overlooking the gardens outdoors. We were invited to rent it for ourselves at only a mere $3,000 per night. Of course, it is already booked for the next year, so I guess we’ll just save that extra money we’ve got laying around. :-/


Finally, they said something about all of the beautiful flora interspersed throughout the Resort. Apparently, it required a team of more than twenty gardeners!!


The Girl with the DiVine Bush

No, no, it wasn’t like that! These narratives are PG-13 at best!

By this time, Jennifer and I were both getting antsy and ready to get on the road for home. We leapt from the boat when it docked and started the long, hard hoof out of this labyrinthine cathedral of mirth. On the way out, we ran into the legendary DiVine, a human-plant synthesis standing nine feet tall. She ambled past us, twisting, bending, doing handstands on her lengthy tendril-like extremities and mutely expressing herself with her caricaturish green features. Covered in leaves and vines, she was an elegant blend of nature with human innovation, discipline and mime-like entertainment. We later learned that this woman is one of only seven people in the world who could maintain the discipline and physical stamina for that role! Here, you can watch her perform here yourself:



Stench, Surliness and Boorish Stupidity: All the Trappings of Home

We were on the road a few minutes later, our enjoyable trip rolling to a close. About an hour or so outside of Nashville, we made a stop at a gas station to refuel and get a couple of drinks. I dropped by the restroom and beheld the first toilet I had seen in days that had flies hovering over it. The cashier who rang up my bottled tea was a mega-drone with a two-word vocabulary that was 50 percent grunt. Her coworker decided to let forth a monstrous, soul-shaking, girder-loosening belch right on top of all the customers within thirty feet.

Our belching cashier in his native environment.

Yep. We knew for sure then that we had left behind the opulence and hospitality of the Gaylord Opryland Resort. Infinitus est numerus stultorem; “infinite is the number of fools.” We were definitely almost home.

The rest of the trip went without incident, which means there was no story there. And as always, thanks for your time and attention to our narrative!

The Travelin' Thornberries wish to thank you for your attention.

Bonum Fortunam!! [Good fortune!]

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