March Madness – Day Five of Ten

March 24, 2009

March 13, 2009 – Nashville to Austin, TX

This was a day and a half of driving. It was only my second stint behind the wheel and the day’s highlights were:

Best BBQ of the entire ten days
Nerves getting a bit frazzled
My first Lone Star Beer – courtesy of Aaron Strout
Arrival at South by Southwest
More content up on the #iroadtrip site
Laundry being done at 3, 4, 5 and 9AM

We woke up fairly early and got breakfast in the FREEZING cold of Nashville, TN. Then we soldiered on through some mist and rain. Colin was still driving and I was doing my darndest to get audio content chopped up and on the Web.

Sadly, the hills of the south-central United States weren’t cooperating with my EVDO card and nobody had a great signal in the car. We struggled with that for a little while and then suddenly it was lunchtime.

Lunchtime and Little Rock Arkansas could mean two things – great BBQ or lunch with Bill Clinton. I didn’t vote for Clinton so I was glad we ended up eating at Sim’s BBQ. This joint was just off the highway and had the best ribs, pork and sides I’ve ever had. The collard greens were salty and fresh, and the pecan pie was delightful.

We spotted the place by the smoke pouring across the road and miraculously we found it – even with two backseat drivers trying to tell John to stop touching the GPS and just find us lunch.

Tensions remained fairly high for a lot of the day’s driving – about 17 hours by my count – but nobody complete erupted and we ended up dropping John at his house and checking in to our hotel around 11PM.

Jim and I were sharing a room that first night and after dropping our clothes in the room, we went out to Emo’s on 6th Street in Austin to meet up with Aaron and the gang.

Drinks and merriment turned into two+ hours of fun and when we returned to the room at 2:30ish we found out that the hotel had a washer and dryer. Jim and I looked at each other and decided to get our clothes washed then.

Taking turnes we kept switching loads (one washer and one dryer) until about 9AM and then we were done.

More to come on day six of ten, our first full day of South by Southwest Interactive.

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