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Trip Start Date: March 14, 2003. Miles at Start: Not Recorded The first Firebird Travel of 2003 was supposed to be a trip to Pensacola Florida for the Southern Trans Am Regionals. Throughout the week, I paid close attention to the weather (as I always do before a trip). Unfortunately, the weather for the Spring Break weekend in Pensacola looked horrible, so on the night before the trip, I called the trip off. What am I gonna do now! I even asked for a half-day off from work so I could go to Pensacola, plus it was just me and my wife - the kids were with their grandmother in Columbus Mississippi for Spring Break, and to make matters even worse, trip day was on my wife's birthday, and I didn't get her a frikkin thang! So the night before trip day, we checked the weather for Memphis and it looked like it would be a pleasant weekend. Okay baby, that's your birthday present: a weekend getaway to the big city of Memphis! March 14: Trip Day. It already started out bad, because my half-day at work ended up being an 8-hour day at work (a full day is 10 hours for salaried personnel). I got off work about 3:15 pm and my wife looked like she was upset (she had gotten off work at noon). Luckily, we had our clothes packed and ready, so about 4:00 pm we were on the road to Memphis. The downtown area of Memphis is about 70 miles from Clarksdale, yet I've never really visited downtown Memphis often, have only eaten at one restaurant (a chicken place), and only been on Beale Street a few times in my whole life, so basically I don't know nothing about Memphis. This became painfully apparent when we were deciding exactly where in Memphis we wanted to stay. I knew I wanted to be close to downtown but I had no idea where any hotels were that we could afford. You see, I did not do any planning for this trip - We were riding on straight luck. Well for once our luck was good. We found a hotel in West Memphis Arkansas that's only about five minutes from downtown Memphis. 
Once we got settled at our hotel (about 5:30 pm), I let my wife decide what she wanted to do for her birthday. She decided she wanted to go out to eat at a seafood restaurant called Landry's. Anything for my baby on her birthday. So around 7:30 pm, we head towards downtown Memphis. Guess what... we didn't know exactly where the restaurant was. We spent about 20 minutes riding around downtown looking for Landry's. Then in a desperate attempt to keep my cooling fan from coming on every five minutes, we asked a person at another restaurant directions to Landry's. Come to find out, Landry's had changed its name to Joe's Crab Shack, which we passed by about four or five times earlier. So after another ten minutes of trying to find a place to park at Joe's, we finally settled down to eat. If you've never been to this Crab Shack, do yourself a big favor and go there right now. We had a blast! In 20 minutes I'd forgotten all about my driving ordeal. Oh, the food is all good. You have to experience the Crab Shack.
The next day (March 15) we went to the Wolfchase Mall in Bartlett Tennessee and did a little shopping. My wife bought R. Kelly's Chocalate Factory cassette...A cassette! I'm lookin at her like "Why you gettin a tape when you have a CD player in the Concorde?" She reminded me that the Concorde also has a tape deck, plus the Escort only has a tape deck. I told her I could dub the CD on a tape, but she wanted to save a few dollars. Can't be mad at her for that! After we left the mall, we took a steamboat cruise on the Mississippi River. I got some great pictures of the "M" Bridge and the Pyramid. After the cruise, we decided to go to the Pyramid, since none of us had been there. There was a Women of Faith convention going on inside. While I was in awe about the beauty and size of the Pyramid, I didn't notice that I was basically the only man inside the arena except for the security guards and vendors. My wife hurried up and got me out of that Pyramid!
 That night, we went back into downtown Memphis and parked across the street from the Peabody Place. We went to Isaac Hayes' Music Food and Passion. Let me tell you: the music, the food, and the passion was off tha heezy foe sheezy! We listened to three music groups while eating some barbeque ribs. Make sure you put Isaac Hayes on your itinerary when you come to Memphis! Then we headed out and as we were walking out from the Peabody Place I didn't recognize my car parked across the street because my 5-star chrome rims were glistening from the city lights (I'm not used to city night life)! March 16 we headed from West Memphis to Columbus Mississippi to pick our kids up. The trip to Columbus took about three hours. The whole trip was uneventful except when we got to Aberdeen Mississippi, which is about 25 miles from Columbus. My wife just had to use the restroom (#2)! So I stopped at one gas station. Their restroom was out of order. We went to the other gas station across the street. They didn't have a restroom! By that time my wife said the cold air made her not have to #2, so we went straight to Columbus with no other incidents. The trip back to Clarksdale was uneventful too, except we when we stopped at Heafner Motors in Batesville to look at some mini-vans...yes, my wife is pregnant and after August there will be no more family rides in the Bird (three kids), but hopefully there will be more Firebird Travels. My car is paid for and I don't plan on selling it! 
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