Nashville - Episode III: Revenge of the NCAA Postseason

Last weekend, I went to Nashville. For the third time. In a year. Episode I was in High School with Show Choir (no, I didn't sing and dance. I was in the band, of course). Episode II was none other than the Bowl Trip. Which now brings us to Episode III. The Women's basketball team apparently did pretty well this year (I didn't really follow them), which earned them a #8 seed in the tournament. This meant that there was an 11:00AM game on Saturday. Because of the early game time, instead of leaving the day before the game, we left TWO days beforehand, leaving approximately 36 hours to do whatever the hell we wanted. Among the highlights:

• FLYING THERE. No 18-hour bus rides this time!
  
• Twiggy the rah-rah was on the trip
  
• Staying downtown instead of at Opryland. There's only so much you can do in a mall and a hotel before you get bored.
  
• Walking across the bridge (yes, the one the 'bama fan jumped off) to the Coliseum, and contemplating breaking in
  
• Prank calling several people in the wee hours of the morning. The two best were suicidal Kermit the Frog (courtesy of Link) and Mittens telling Barmore that his uniform wasn't turned in and he puked on it.
  
• Watching "Trick my Truck" on Country music Television. It's exactly like "Pimp my ride," except without the black people, and they do it to Semi-Trucks instead of normal cars.
  
• Walking 3 miles to the Parthenon, an exact replica of the one in Greece. Nashville has culture outside of Country music? Who knew? We found out that I am 1" shorter than the statue of Nike. She wins. Also cool: we managed to get the group rate despite not actually having an appointment
  
• A Ghost Tour of downtown: apparently there are a lot of spirits not at rest in the area. The guide looked like the guy that played Arthur in "The Hichhikers Guide to the Galaxy."
  
• St. Patrick's Day: JoeD and Gary went on an all-day bender. Buttons went out and came back really drunk and felt up Katie. The rest of us underage people watched The Boondock Saints. Cramming 20 people into a hotel room so that they can all see a laptop screen is not easy, let me tell you.
  
• The Vanderbilt basketball arena feels and more like a high school auditorium, despite Vanderbilt being a basketball school. Their "raised floor" was pretty lame, since there was only a drop off on the sides, and then only after about 20 feet of blank floor. Williams Arena is so much better.
  
• We threw down some pretty sweet songs before and during the game, I'm pretty sure I almost completely lost my ability to play at least once.
  
• The highlight of the game was when I yelled "Take her out to dinner first!" during a particularly silent moment in the game. I got the impeccable timing award of the day, and many people have told me this was the best moment on the trip. I may be inclined to agree.
  
• As we were leaving, Prof. Diem got hit in the head with a drum case. He went to the only hospital in Nashville that he had not been to yet and got 9 stitches.
  
• We lost the game. To a certian extent, this was a good thing, because there really isn't that much to do in downtown Nashville. I don't know what I would have done with myself for another day, had we won the game.

Overall, it was a pretty sweet trip. I might go so far as to venture that it was my favorite Nashville trip. Since now I have more or less done all there is to do, I hope that I am never forced to go back. However, in the back of my mind, I think that someone, somewhere, will find it halarious to send us back there again. I'm probably not done yet.

See? I've only been registered for an hour and I'm already addicted.