Memphis - day 2 - Graceland

This morning we hopped into the car and headed south on highway 55 to Batesville Mississippi. We left at eight o’clock this morning and it was already 90°. Crazy. The meeting went well, it was definitely not a battery problem but it does look like the phone has a problem. I couldn’t open the phone up but I’m guessing a cap popped or something right in the woman’s ear and now she has ear problems. I suppose that is going to cost us thousands of dollars. We then headed back up the 55 and exited on Elvis Presley Boulevard. Gee, I wonder who lived there? We pulled in the Graceland parking lot and learned that it would cost $27 just to go inside the gate. I may have mentioned before that I’m not much of a music fan so I’m not sure if I would have paid that much money for the full tour (I probably would have, it’s Elvis after all) but I certainly wasn’t going to pay $27 for less than an hour. I did my best to get a picture from the street but I think they purposely planted a bunch of big trees just to mess up people like me. At least you can see the building. I also got a picture of the Lisa Marie and one of Elvis’s fancy convertibles. Then it was off to the airport. I was scheduled to layover in Minneapolis for an hour and a half so I decided to wait and get something to eat there. I’m not sure how I ended up with a window seat, I really prefer an isle seat but windows are OK unless you get a fat person next to you and then I get claustrophobic as I’m squished against the window. Imagine my horror as this monster of a man came walking down the isle. I prayed, “please don’t sit by me, please don’t sit by me!” After all, what are the odds? You guessed it, he plopped his 400-pound body in the middle seat. Rolls of blubber overflowed the armrest into my space and to make it all worse, he smelled bad too. So there I sat squished against the wall of the plane taking deep breaths trying to say calm. I tried to read my book to keep my mind off of my predicament and then my prayers were answered. It so happened that the fat mans wife was sitting a few rows up and her middle seat was empty. He went and tortured his wife. I looked over at the isle seat and there was this tiny little girl with a look of relief on her face. I asked her if he was gone for good. She said she hoped so. The plane taxied from the gate with no one in the middle seat. I love it when that happens. We got out to the end of the runway when the captain gets on the speaker and tells us that something very unusual has just happened. They just lost all of their hydraulic fluid. I knew right then that this was going to be a very long day. I’m not sure what the hydraulic fluid in a plane does but it must be very important. I’m quite glad that they didn’t lose it five minutes later as we were gaining altitude. Hydraulic fluid must control things like the rudder and ailerons and I’m sure it is there for a reason. We get back to the gate and they bring on the mechanics. I’m just waiting for them to tell us we need a new plane. Eventually they boot us all off the plane and tell us they’re going to fix it but I’m just waiting for them to get a new plane. They then say they have a scheduled departure time but “just in case” they’re going to rebook everyone on different flights. Immediately a huge line forms and I say to myself, “this is going to be a long day” and I go and buy myself barbecued pork. It was very good. I then get on the phone with North West and rebooked myself on later flights, meanwhile, everyone else is still in this huge line. My original flight landed at seven but now I’m not going to get in until around midnight. Yuck. I then ate my delicious pork and I also bought a sweet potato pie. I’m told it is famous in Memphis. I’m saving it for the flight but it looks very good. Let’s hope that the rest of the day goes better than the last two hours.

Update, my original flight finally left at 5:10 (about three and a half hours late) and I’m now in Minneapolis. I obviously missed my original flight so they rebooked me on a 9:15 flight. Guess what? The flight is an hour late. This is very frustrating. To make matters worse (as if that’s possible) because I was added to the flight at the last minute I have a middle seat. I hate middle seats. The only good news today is that while I was waiting I talked to Kira. She is in Salt Lake at a double reed conference. This is a worldwide conference of renowned double reed players and she was asked to perform for them. That is a real honor and puts her up there with the best in the world. She performed this afternoon and did well. She was quite nervous but I knew she would do well.