Music City

So I spent the second weekend of January in Nashville for the American Farm Bureau Convention. It was a lot of fun! I spent most of my time between the women's committee stuff and the safety booth the ASAP (Ag Safety Awareness Program and network) had. We handed out stress balls that looked like baseballs because our theme this year is "step up to the plate for farm safety" and our spokesperson is Nolan Ryan! One of my favorite all time players. I'm not a big baseball fan but I have always loved Nolan Ryan and I love Luis Gonzales with the Diamondbacks!

So we landed in Nashville on Saturday afternoon and headed to the hotel. Paul, Kacie, Marcos and I all ended up in the same taxi with our driver Del. He was from Ethiopia and had been in Nashville for 5 years. He wanted to be a sheep farmer so we chatted with him all the way to the hotel. He gave us his card to call him when we needed a cab. We got ready and headed to the Grand Ole Opry. In the winter time it's held in the old Rhyman Auditorium downtown. Del met us and told us of a great Italian restaurant so we grabbed a bite to eat before hand. On the drive there we talked about socks because Kacie had forgot to pack black socks and she needed to purchase some. Del said it would be an expensive cab ride to find socks so we thought we might find some in a store around the opry.

The opry was really cool. It was neat to see it live after watching it on the TV growing up. Jeannie Seally, Riders in the Sky, Michael Martin Murphy and Porter Wagner were on it. As well as new artist Jeff Bates and a couple others I can't remember. There were quite a few people from AZFB that was there. After the show we called Del to pick us up and he was going to be a few minutes so we walked behind the Rhyman to the bars behind where Tootsies and the other famous bars are. We tried to find black socks but couldn't so we headed back to the hotel. As we were pulling up Del handed Kacie socks. He had went out and bought them for her while we were at the show!!!

Convention was fun Cal Ripken, Jr. was the main speaker and Sammy Kershaw was the entertainment. The insurance company had a party for the 12 states in the company at the Wildhorse Saloon. I only attended for a few minutes because I had a dinner I had to attend. I wish I could have stayed longer but it was fun. Monday night ended the convention so a few of us younger people went back downtown to hear the live bands in the various bars. It was fun going in and out of all of them listening to the different groups. Some of them were good- some not so good.

Tuesday was our free day before we had to get on the plane so Paul, Kacie, Marcos and I toured President Andrew Jackson's plantation. It was really neat to see the history and the house with the slave quarters and different gardens and buildings.

The plane ride home as usual except that when we landed, Ty immediately undid his seatbelt, stood up put on his coat and then proceeded to turn around and talk to us behind him all the while the flight attendant is on the intercom asking him to sit down and put his seatbelt on. She asked him several times and finally we had to yell at him to sit down. We had quite a few laughs out of that!!