What A Weekend!!!

Well, time to get back at it! Took last week off from the iron due to an all day Thursday panel interview about a possible 4 year over seas ExPat aerospace manufacturing engineering gig in the Philippines. Didn’t want to risk having some sort of physical blow out right before the interview LOL. Traveled out to their world HQ just outside Buffalo, NY Wednesday night after work, interviewed all day Thursday then traveled back home Thursday night. Had the usual bizarre screw ups making connecting flights in Atlanta but luckily all were successful!!! The interviews seemed to go pretty well & they said I should know something within a week or so therefore, I’m just waiting to see how that all shakes out, trying not to lose TOO much sleep over it just yet!

Due to uncertainty about getting back home on time Thursday I had canceled my mountain resort reservations in the Ozarks & opted for some sort of a nearby adventure instead. Griz being a music nut, decided to download the iPhone App for the Mississippi Blues Trail, more commonly called the

Blues Highway

 which is primarily U.S. Hwy 61 from New Orleans clear up to Chicago. The trail has marker sign posts scattered all over the surrounding countryside where blues pioneers either; lived, died, or regularly performed & also at places where significant events in blues / musical history occurred. I only traveled a couple hundred miles of the trail & still didn’t hit every marker in between as some are well off the beaten path while others are WAY off it LOL! The app is really cool since it shows you the markers both alphabetically & on a map so you can select the ones you have interest in then it pumps out directions that will at least got you into the neighborhood but MANY of these markers are just far enough off the beaten path that you won’t have cell service to follow along so best to write down the GPS coordinates ahead of time, provided you own a GPS which I do not LMBO!

Even though things were gloomy & cloudy Saturday due to tropical storm Lee pushing up from the gulf, had a good time following the Blues Trail SSW along the mighty muddy Mississippi as the blues, as both a music & culture, primarily had its roots in the MS river delta region from the early days of plantations & post Civil War share cropping. As agriculture became more mechanized the culture & music migrated north along the river to the packing houses & other industry clear up into Chicago & the affects on music are clearly traceable through history! New Orleans Jazz had more of an influence on soul music while the blues had a great deal of influence on both early country & rock, with Memphis claiming to be the birthplace of rock & roll.

Saturday ended up in Clarksdale, MS where folk lore tells that early blues legend Robert Johnson traded his soul to the devil for his gifts with the guitar. HWYs 49 & 61 AKA “The Cross Roads” is supposedly where the deal went down one dark & stormy night! Clarksdale was once a vibrant hub of both agriculture & the blues. It still hosts 2 annual internationally known festivals around the blues & regional juke joints but the other 50 weeks a year it’s just another typical dying farm town with a couple good live music dives along with a couple music & cultural museums thrown in for good measure. Saturday night I hit Morgan Freeman’s Clarksdale juke joint “Ground Zero Blues Club” & they had a local high energy band on stage until 1AM that were OUTSTANDING!!! Otis “TCB” Taylor & crew were REALLY into crowd participation & their style was a blast! Every now & then they’d stray off from the typical blues lineup announcing “The blues had a baby & named it rock & roll” tearing into some heavily blues influenced rocker’s cover!

Sunday tropical storm Lee was unrelenting, pouring rain nearly ALL day but I followed the Blues Hwy markers back up river, hitting ones further off the beaten path, even briefly straying across the river into Helena, AR (stumbling into a confederate cemetery while there) culminating the blues adventure back downtown Memphis on Beale St in a couple of my favorite blues halls experiencing one of my recent but most favorite performers, Patrick Dodd, while also catching an old favorite, Blake Ryan, who’s recently started his own band & is now MUCH more into a MoTown / Funk groove than his former blues band was. Both nights ended somewhere between 2AM – 3AM so early rising wasn’t high on the list of priorities this weekend LOL!

Labor Day itself began chilly, windy, cloudy & gloomy but still decided to hit the trails of Shelby Farms, where Memphis’ bison heard roams! Covered the 1 mile woodlands loop, 4 miles of the rougher terrain horse trail & ended up the last mile covering the wetlands loop with 3 of the 6 total miles in full blazing clear sky glory after the crazy winds had pushed Lee out of the Bluff City region!

Eased back into the normal groove @ “0” Dark-Thirty this AM with HIIT cardio sessions wrapped around core iron work totaling 300 HIIT calories & 72,000 LBs of core iron getting the normal life back under way. Shuffling UBWO up to tomorrow, saving LBWO for Friday given the mileage covered over the weekend.

Hope y’all had an excellent Holiday weekend, either in high energy adventures or laid back family time whichever suited your desires! Things may be changing big time in Griz land if this ExPat gig pans out but even if it doesn’t, it’s far past time to get my anal - cranial device finally engaged & reacquire some fire for life that has been eluding me most of these past months & I am DEEPLY indebted to those of you who have both tolerated & motivated me to keep on keeping on through this tough rough stretch of trail! Rock on pals!!!