Memphis Road Trip

Last Wednesday (July 21, 2010) a few of my friends and I took a road trip to Memphis, TN to see a few of our friends that live there and to attend a screening of the 1985 classic Back to the Future. The trip only lasted a day but it was a pretty hectic outing so I figured I might as well chronicle it in a blog post here.

At 9 am, Zach Osborn, Caleb Graham, Daniel Jones and I left my house to drive to Memphis. I was driving. If you know me, then you know this is a big deal. I've never been much of a driver. While most people look forward to their 16th birthday to get their license, I was always looking more forward to my 17th one because I could finally buy my own ticket to R-rated movies. That's the kind of kid I was. I didn't know anything about cars and I sure as hell didn't know how to drive them. The only reason I have a 2003 Ford Sport Trac is because my dad really wanted a truck so he decided to hit two birds with one stone. Even though I received the truck in ninth grade, I rarely drove it. I did not really begin to drive regularly until my senior year of high school.

While I'm an okay driver in settings that I'm familiar with, if you put me somewhere I don't know like the back of my hand I'm pretty screwed. And if you put me on an interstate... well... I'm guaranteed to be a nervous wreck. Whenever my friends and I go on road trips, I usually do not drive for this reason. However, on this particular trip, I was voted driver. I feel like everyone regretted this decision by the end of the trip.

I feel like I didn't do that horrible on the way up to Memphis aside from my dramatic fashion of changing lanes. However, once we hit crazy Memphis traffic, I was out of my element. No, we didn't get in any wrecks but there were many hairy moments. That's all I will say.

Upon arriving in Memphis, we ate lunch with the brother / sister duo of Jay and Kamela Mullins at a local pizza place called Memphis Pizza Cafe (a.k.a. Memphis City Pizza). When we first got there, the place was packed and we ended up just standing around awkwardly not knowing what to do. Never have I felt like a tourist more than in this moment. Also, when we first walked in, a guy commented on the Ghostbusters shirt I was wearing at the time, saying, "Hey man, nice shirt!" When he said this, I wasn't making eye contact with him and I wasn't sure he was talking to me. Then Caleb got my attention and pointed to the guy, who repeated what he had just said. However, by this point, I was embarrassed for missing the first comment and I was unable to communicate in words a thank you. So I just looked at him with a bewildered look, mumbled something that wasn't a sentence and then, realizing I didn't know how to talk anymore, finally settled with a thumbs up to the guy.

I am so bad at being a human being sometimes.

Despite this awkwardness, we found a table outside in the shade and the pizza really was great. After eating, we went to a pretty cool record shop that was near by called Shangri-La. This place had a really good selection. Being the weird person that I am, I was drawn to obscure movie score records such as John Barry's King Kong (1976) score and a record for Freddy's Greatest Hits by the Elm Street Group (I still don't understand what this is). Daniel Jones was the only one to buy a record. Unfortunately, because it was so hot, it warped pretty bad in my truck.

Speaking of heat, it was very hot in Memphis on this particular summer day. All of us were sweating bullets by the time we arrived in Memphis for lunch. Everyone else had planned ahead for this heat and had brought extra shirts to wear. I, on the other hand, only had one shirt allotted for this day. Because of this, I had to make due with my sweat soaked shirt for most of the day (before the movie, I broke down and changed into the shirt I had packed for the next day's ride home).

After Shangri-La, we ventured to the Brooks Museum of Art. This was probably one of the cooler art museums that I have visited. They were doing a big display on "Who Shot Rock and Roll," which features a lot of really interesting photography of rock and roll stars through out history. After this, we went through the traditional art display and revealed how uncultured we were when it came to older art pieces. Also, during this time, Daniel Jones said one of the worst things I've ever heard. However, his comment was unintentional and was a result of a miscommunication between his eyes and his brain. Because of this, I will not reprint it. However, it was very funny and even funnier when he realized what he had just said. I've never seen the fear of God enter someone's eyes so fast before.

We then went to Kamela's favorite coffee shop after our tour of the Brooks Museum of Art had come to an end. While there, I purchased a bottle of Mexican Coke. This resulted in another scenario where I sucked at being a normal human being. When I purchased the bottle, the barista offered no bottle opener or any other method of opening the bottle. So I figured it must just be a twist top. This wasn't the case. Then I figured there must be a bottle opener somewhere on the drink machine that I got the bottle out of. This was also not the case. My friends started to make fun of me by this point, telling me just to go back to the barista and ask her to open it for me. However, I was embarrassed I didn't ask before and didn't want to go back up to her. So I mostly just stood awkwardly holding my closed bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola, not drinking it.

On the way out of the coffee shop, Daniel Jones offered me a bottle opener he had on his key chain. I finally opened my drink.

Our next stop on our tour of midtown Memphis was a used book store whose name escapes me right now. The place was very small and kind of shady. It was here that I feel like tempers really started to run high. We were all really hot and tense from the drives from location to location. I feel like everyone was running down and wanted to rest. The Mullins clan was beginning to quarrel. It was actually kind of humorous to watch. There was a black cat in the bookstore. Kamela, being an obsessive lover of animals, found it out, picked it up and began to walk around with it, petting it. This really bothered Jay for some reason and he scolded her for it and then began to say he was ready to go.

In the parking lot, we all tried to formulate a plan on what to do before Back to Future started up at 7:15. It was 4 pm by this point and we needed to kill some time but still be at the theater by 6:30. Eventually we decided to go to the Mullins house, even though it was 45 minutes away and another 45 minutes from the theater (leaving us maybe a 20 minute window to relax at the actual house).

About halfway on the drive to the Mullins house, we encountered a really bad wreck. A dump truck had shot off the road and creamed a small car on the corner of a busy intersection. This wreck put us at a stand still for ten to fifteen minutes. During this time, we lost Jay, who we were following to the house. Frustrated and starting to lose our cool, we decided to call off the trip to the Mullins house.

With Kamela still behind us, we began to just drive on the interstate, going nowhere in particular. Trying to figure out what to do, we called our friend David Tigrett (who we were staying with that night). David was about to get off work so we figured we could just go to his house until the movie started. He asked us where we were on the interstate and we said were about to pass an exit for a Perkins Road. To our surprise, he said that he lived on Perkins Road. I made a spontaneous and probably dangerous veering to the right and took the exit. We lost Kamela during this.

Now swimming in a sea of confusion, heat and stress, we parked at a nearby Walgreens and waited for the Mullins clan to regroup with us and for David to find us and take us to his house. Kamela eventually found us and sat in the car with us. We listened to rap music and mostly sat in silence. I feel like no one was happy at this point. It was also at this point that I was really starting to feel sick. I had been feeling really dehydrated and strange since waking up that morning. As the day had gone on and had gotten more stressful, I had begun to develop a particularly nasty sinus headache. This is something that would eventually grow to give me one of the worst nights of my life.

Eventually David arrived and took us to his home. While there, we regrouped with Jay, changed clothes, reapplied mostly melted deodorant (that damn heat...), and watched Daniel Jones get dressed up as Marty McFly. Then we were off for downtown Memphis and the amazing Orpheum Theater.

Words cannot describe how much I loved the Orpheum. It's an old timey theater located in downtown Memphis that showcases old films and broadway shows. It has old balconies, a beautiful, classy design and everything I've always wanted to see in a theater. Before the shows start, a man playing an organ rises from the floor and he plays for about fifteen minutes. The whole experience of the place was really wonderful.

Before the movie started, the Orpheum held a movie trivia quiz and costume contest. All the people selected for the movie trivia quiz were terrible. The questions were super easy and the guy that ended up winning was a total bro. It was kind of annoying to witness. The costume contest was a little more fun though. Even though Daniel Jones dressed up as Marty McFly (and looked incredibly legit), he's a shy guy that hates to be the center of attention. Because of this, we had to give him a hard time until he went up on stage to participate. When he went up, there was literally no competition. A couple of teenagers dressed as their "future selves" but no one else tried as hard as Dan did and no one looked any good. Then... the ringer entered the stage...

A little kid that was probably six years old climbed on the stage in a lab coat and glasses. The moment his foot touched the stage, the audience erupted in "Awwwwwww"s. From that moment, I knew we were in trouble. The thing is... the kid's costume was pretty bad. Yeah, the idea of a little kid dressed as Doc Brown is cute but, the fact was, he didn't really look like him.

The guy in charge of the costume contest asked us to cheer for someone when he said their name and whoever received the biggest ovation would win the contest. While Dan put up a valiant fight and got a great ovation (because, let's face it, he was the best dressed), the kid got the pity / cute vote and won the contest. David Tigrett captured all of this with his iPhone, which you can see below.

The funniest part of all of this to me was how bitter Dan was when he came back down to our seats. "That kid looks nothing like Doc Brown...." and "I didn't know Doc Brown wore a lab coat... everyone knows it's a radioactive suit..." were phrases uttered under his breath upon sitting down. We told him later that he should have acted deaf and started using sign language when they asked for his name. That way he would have gotten all the pity vote and won for sure.

Seeing Back to the Future on the big screen was great. I hadn't seen the movie in a really long time and, because of this, it really was like watching it for the first time again. The projection was great and was pretty damn loud. The crowd was very interactive, erupting in applause when George McFly finally punches Biff in the face. It was a really, really great experience to be apart of.

When the movie ended, we wondered around downtown Memphis for a little bit before stopping at Huey's for dinner. There, we enjoyed everyone's company while eating some really good burgers. Some great stories were told, including those about the Mississippi College myth that is Tim Quevillion. It was a great time. This and the Back to the Future screening were highlights of the trip.

We went back to David's house after eating and said goodbye to Kamela and Jay. David had an empty room in his house so Zach, Caleb, Dan and I were all staying in it. We had brought sleeping bags and pillows and spent the night on the floor. Little did I know that once I laid down that the night from hell was beginning for me.

All that day, my sinus headache had been building up. By the time we got back to David's, it had reached its apex. Being the stubborn idiot that I can be, I didn't really say anything about it and didn't ask for medication. As the night went on, I slowly realized that it wasn't going away.

Throughout the day and most of that night, my nose had started to run. As I lay trying to sleep, I came to the horrific realization that the only way I was going to be comfortable was to let my nose run all over me and my pillow. When I would let it run, the terrible pressure in my head would lift up momentarily. However, I was borrowing one of David's pillows. To solve this problem, I grabbed the pair of sweaty khaki shorts I wore that day and wrapped the pillow in them. Then I let my nose run all over me and the khakis through the night. Even still, I could not fall asleep and was still in a lot of pain. However, it was more comfortable than I had been.

So I lay on the ground, tossing and turning in my own water snot until about 5 am. The headache made me very thirsty, so I would often get up and go to the bathroom, drinking from the sink. By 5 am, I was getting delirious and became obsessed with getting a better form of hydration. I decided that I was going to go to the kitchen and get the pitcher of filtered, cold water that David had in his refrigerator and drink from that. So, using my cell phone as a light, I got up and ventured to the kitchen.

Once there, I got the water out of the refrigerator and managed to get the last red, plastic cup in the house. I was about to fill the cup up with water when I, at the last second, decided to check the inside of the cup with my cell phone light to make sure it was clean (my old OCD kicking in I guess). What I saw inside horrified me. In fact, I wasn't sure it was real. I thought I was hallucinating in my delirium. So I checked it five more times. And then I checked it again at 9 am when we all got up. The image stayed the same every time.

Inside the red, plastic cup was a spider web and one of biggest spiders I have ever seen. It was so big that I actually mistook it for a cricket the first time I saw it. Bewildered by what was in the cup, I simply put another used cup inside of it (so no one else would make the same almost mistake I made), put the water back in the refrigerator and walked to the bathroom and drank more sink water.

Around this time, I started to go through my dock kit to see if I had any sinus medicine stashed away somehow. To my luck, I found one lone Sudafed pill. I stared at it, angry at myself for not searching for it hours ago. Then I took it, laid back down, and finally got some rest.

Reading about all of these frustrating moments, one may think that this trip was a disaster. However, that's not the case. It was really fun. Yeah, it had its tense and uncomfortable moments but what trip doesn't? The main point is that I got to go to a really cool city with some good friends and, despite everything, we had fun. I would have preferred to have not had these tenser moments but, in the end, this is just the way it is and, honestly, it's what makes life interesting. It really makes for great stories afterwards. After all, would you have really have sat through all of this post if I simply talked about how much fun we had and how everything worked out just fine? I didn't think so.