Music City

Nashville is the Music City in more ways than one.    Linda and I went downtown last Friday night to get some dinner, one of those situations where you just see what happens.   We were going to eat at a little restaurant in the new Omni Hotel which is right smack in the middle of downtown.   Parking was a piece of cake, give the keys to the valet and the restaurant comps your parking.  Katy Perry was doing a show next door at the Bridgestone, so the place was pretty lively around showtime and a lot of hustle was headed to the arena.   Dinner was fun, we had some southern food done with a little twist, quite good.   Although,  the strawberry -rhubarb pie could not hold a candle to Linda's or Lillian Beeler's.    Linda makes great pie with the lard crust and  some zing to it and Lillian made pie for me while I worked on their farm doing college.  You feed a college kid, he will work his ass off.   Lillian only cut the pie in to 4 pieces!! Get ready for some yum,  the L's both deliver.

After dinner we took a little walk down to Broadway and enjoyed the neon.  The usual crush of tourists and bachelorette party's filled the sidewalks, adult midway at the county fair everyday.   We ducked into Ernest Tubb's record store to check on a new country artist we had heard and  wanted to get his latest stuff.   Ernest Tubb's is breathe of fresh air, a whole lot of signed pictures of artists long gone that were big stars in their day line the walls, some really cool stuff.  A lot of priceless articles.   We wanted to get some Sturgill Simpson,  who we heard on "The Prairie Home Companion" radio show when it was in Nashville.   PHC comes every year to the Ryman and does a show and always has some top flight talent and many times some really good new stuff.  This year along with Brad Paisley and Sam Bush, Sturgill performed.   Wow!!  he was really good.   Garrison really liked him as well.  

I was gawking at some pictures  as we entered the store and Linda marched right into the back part of the store  and picked up  disks released in  2013 and 2014.  Pretty simple to get the hard core stuff in Ernest Tubb's.  When we checked out, the cashier had seen him live and  we chatted about Sturgill's voice and career.   Sturgill sings real country, not reborn rock and roll.  He leaves out the pick up trucks, cutesy crap and writes the real hard core pain and done me wrong stuff.  Sometimes his voice really sounds like Waylon Jennings--really.    I have listened closely to  one album twice and he is great with lyrics, and his stories can stir some real emotion.   We will keep an eye out for him and hopefully get to see him live.   He is gonna be big time pretty darn soon.  Check him out.  

I have been working on road work for my training as of late.   I have been running on a asphalt trail that is over 3 miles long and basically goes past our house.   My wind is improvely slowly, but it is fun and is low risk and I can run late in the evening or whenever.    I have also started experimenting with some new running gear.  Salomon, which is known for skiing and hiking gear, makes some capri type compression pants for men that are designed to compress the thighs and hips and reduce injury and all the other claims.  I bought a pair on sale  at REI and like them quite a bit. They are tight and they take some wiggles and prancing around to get on properly. 
 I will test them for speed perfomance in the near future, but they have really helped keep the leg soreness at a minimum during the longer runs.  I love to play with the new technology and see if I can perform better.