Stealin' pictures again!

As I said, Denise and I fiddled around a bit Thursday morning and then we drove over to Mushy and Judy's place, piled them in Denise's Camry and drove us all back over to Knoxville. We had a date, set up by email with a bunch of other folks, to try to have some sort of unofficial blogger meet at Wild Wings.



Turned out the rest of the folks didn't show. Too bad. But we had a great time anyway.

You've heard about this place before if you've spent any time at all readin' Mushy's blog, or if you remember reading about my trip to Harriman in 2007. It's wonderful, and I've been itchin' to get back there ever since I left a year ago.

We sat down and ordered our drinks. Yep, Yuengling again. This time Mushy handed the camera off to our waitress, who proceeded to take a few good shots...

Including this action shot. Fair warning. Just don't let your fingers get anywhere near those teeth while the Sasquatch is feeding.

You can't see much of her back there, hidden as she is by that huge friggin' blue critter with the snarl, but Denise declined to enjoy the wonders of the chicken wings and instead chose to enjoy a "Wild Willie". The name cracked me up, so I told her she needed to call her sister-in-law in England and tell her what she was doin'. You see, the word "willie" has a rude connotation over on the other side of the pond. I knew they'd love it.

She made the call, and while we went off to get our wings from the buffet and she waited for her sandwich to be delivered, I listened to the cacklin' as they discussed the issue. "Guess what. I'm having a Wild Willie!", to which Carolyn replied "Ooo, good for you! Lucky girl!" Naughty!

I tell ya, that thing was amazing... The Wilde Willie that is. It was a sloppy thing, with "piles of hot shaved ham, layered with sautéed mushrooms, then topped with melted Monterey Jack. Served on a bun with a Dijon mustard spread, lettuce, pickles & tomato". We all looked at it, the contents oozing out when she bit into it, wonderin' if we might have made the wrong menu choice. But that notion went away as soon as we bit into our wonderful, juicy, flavorful wings. Mushy, Judy and I had the buffet, but I also ordered 6 wings dipped in the General Tso's sauce. Mmmmmm, that stuff is GOOOOD!

After the feed we headed off to the shops, leaving Denise and Judy to wander around a huge Kohl's while Mushy and I hit Baily's Sports Bar for another Yuengling (one too many for me maybe) and then raided a wonderful little cigar store nearby. He picked up an expensive little Cohiba in a tube and I decided on a few nice sized Punch torpedoes in cool glass tubes, and three light colored, Connecticut wrapped Rocky Patel torpedoes.

By the time we got back to Kohl's I was feelin' the beer and Denise could tell it. She gave me hell, understandably, and I turned over the car keys. What the hell. I guess I figured I was gonna have to wait another year for another yuengling on draft, not to mention another time to relax with my buddy, so I took a shot. I guess I'm a light weight. Three tall ones and I'm VERY happy. I'd bet that if I'd had that Wilde Willie in my tummy I probably wouldn't have been OK. Anyway, we all had a great time.

After that we drove back to Harriman and dropped Mushy and Judy off so we could head back to the hotel and freshen up. Having this extra day gave most of Mushy's in-laws the chance to get together with us and share a meal Thursday night.

Again, if you've been readin' his blog for any time at all you know who these folks are. I'd met most of them at a big party at his place last year, and we'd hit it off nicely. One of his brothers-in-law, Gary, makes his own sweet wine from grapes he grows on his property. He'd given me a few bottles last year, so I'd collected a few examples of local Texas wine and brought them with me, enough so that everyone could have a bottle or two.

The plan was to meet them all at a local Mexican food place, Los Primos, right down the street from our hotel. I was interested, coming from Texas, too see if their Mexican food was any good. Turns out it was. Very good in fact.

It was great to see everyone again. I got hugs all around from the "Dragons", and manly nods or handshakes from the "Knights". At one point Mushy set his camera up and got this shot of everyone chowin' down. Again, keep all your fingers and toes away from the gaping maw of the eating machine.

We had a wonderful time eating great food and enjoying the opportunity to get reacquainted. The girls were in rare form, and I was happy to see that they greeted Denise with open arms. After dinner we said our fond goodbyes to everyone, grabbed another bottle of his wonderful sweet wine from Gary, and headed back to Mushy's for one more night on the porch.

Denise and Judy got caught up on the Olympics on the big fancy TV in their living room while Mushy and I retreated to the porch.

Now, realize, this shot isn't from this last road trip. You can maybe tell that from the sweat pants. Shorts are the uniform of the day for summer in Tennessee, and Texas. But I wanted to give you a look at this critter, this Silverback, kicked back, comfortable in his natural habitat, surveying his kingdom.

Very similar to the Sasquatch in repose. We relaxed out there for a while, listening to some great music being piped through the walls from his computer, smoking one more cigar and drinking one more beer. A great time was had by all. It all ended way too soon, because we all had to get up early the next day to meet at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Before I knew it Judy and Denise were comin' in and tellin' us how late it was.

I tell ya, if there's one thing about this last trip that I regret, it's that Mushy and I didn't have the time to spend more hours sittin' on the porch or in front of his computer. The memory of those times from the last trip are golden in my mind. I missed that this time, but what can you do? You can only pack so many things into so little time. Anyway, there will be many trips and many hours to do all of those things in the future.

So, I figure there'll be maybe two more of these trip posts. The next one will have us leavin' Harriman and visitin' THE KING in Memphis, and then the last one will have us gettin' back home. Is it me, or is this trip lastin' longer on the blog than it did in real life. Well, that's cool. If I could have stretched the trip out like this and made it last longer I'd a done that too. Cheers.