Music City Runs, Wins and Sings!

We celebrated some more "firsts" for us in Nashville these past couple weeks

that are definitely worth noting.

Saturday, April 28, 2012:   It was a beautiful day in Nashville for the Music City Country Music Marathon.
Congratulations to Ashlee for completing her very first 1/2 marathon! It was an amazing turnout
 with over 31,000 people participating in the 13.1-mile race.

While my knees and ankles weren't up for 13 miles of pounding, I was happy to serve as the "Marathon Mule" for the day as I shuttled cars, belongings and such from the starting line to the finish line not only for Ashlee, but for our friends Danny, Brenda, Wil and Wayne, who also completed the 1/2 marathon.  I was able to take a nice 4-mile bridge-to-bridge loop walk myself downtown while I was at it, so that's gotta count for something.  More importantly I got to see Sheryl Crowe at the finish line...still looking good after 13.1 miles!

After the 1/2 marathon, Ashlee and Wayne treated themselves to huge post-race corn dogs from Drifters BBQ over in East Nashville.  I stuck with the brisket which was excellent.  This little hole-in-the-wall is fast becoming on our favorite places in the area for a beer or two and a casual meal.

Wednesday, May 2:  We were fortunate enough to witness yet another Nashville Predator win at home and this time it was a first for us because it was in the second round of the NHL Playoffs vs. the Phoenix Coyotes.  Our lower-bowl seats were  less-expensive than many others since they were behind the "defend twice" goal, but to us these great seats were priceless because we got to witness in person the sheer mastery of Preds goaltender, Pekke Renne, for two periods especially the amazing 3rd period when he defended flawlessly against even a 5-3 power play for Phoenix and still shut them out completely.

The win would turn out to be their only one in the series unfortunately, as the Coyotes moved on to clinch the series 4-1 and thus knocking the Predators out of the Stanley Cup race, once again in the second round.  We wished the team had done better this postseason, but personally we couldn't be more happy with the results we witnessed this year including being down on the glass twice during the regular season and then with all the playoff wins we saw in person, it's been quite a memorable season.  We can't wait until next season.  Go Preds!!

After the game, Ashlee even got to hook up again with her new Preds boy-toy, "Big Ben" who's crowd-pleasing belly message was never more classic than this one when flashed up on the jumbo-tron tonight.

Monday, May 7, 2012 - We attended the SOLD OUT show of Ingrid Michaelson at The Cannery in Nashville tonight.  This was our first time seeing her play live (other than part of a set at Bonnaroo a few years ago where we couldn't get close to the stage due to the large crowd).  She was great, not only in terms of musicianship and singing, but also in delivering some quite witty banter  and funny stories to the crowd between songs.  A young up-and-coming group out of England called Scars on 45 opened and sounded pretty good also. 

Below is a short clip of Ingrid performing one of her older hits, "Soldier."