Wrecking our way through Nashville

AK, Jon (my amazing couchsurfer who now lives in Germany) and I took off early on Saturday morning for Nashville, TN. I had planned the trip about a month before because the NCAA Gymnastics Nationals was being held up there and to top it off one of my best friends Dana was working at her first grown up job up there as well. Jon was trying to make it up to his brother's place in West Virginia so we offered him a ride up there with us.

We met up with Dana and the new boy she was dating and grabbed a bite to eat along with the restaurant's make your own bloody mary bar. Well 3 of us went and watched the Georgia Bulldogs grab their 5th consecutive NCAA title...even though I'm a yellow jacket at heart, I feel compelled to root for the Georgia Gym Dogs since they're the only Division 1 team in Georgia and one of their Olympic athletes had helped choreograph a couple of my girl's floor routines.

After the meet we met up with Jon and Ben, the new boy and all went to grab a bite at a local Indian restaurant and then the 5 of us headed out to the bars in East Nashville. Jon decided that he would be the DD for the night and we spent the next couple hours hopping from bar to bar, to taco stand, to bar.

Deciding we had had enough for the night, we all piled into Ben's car with Jon in the drivers seat. At night in downtown Nashville, the main road's lights all turn to flashing yellow and all of the streets that cross have flashing red lights. We were driving along the main road with flashing yellows when another car decided that they weren't going to even slow down for their flashing red and came flying into the intersection...there wasn't even enough time for somebody to get out an, "Oh, shit" before we T-boned the other vehicle. Because I was sitting in the middle seat in the back, which thankfully actually had a shoulder strap I didn't see the accident coming - only had felt the screech of our breaks and Jon tried to avoid the hit, felt the painful crunching crash and then saw the smoke coming up out of our engine. The 4 of us quickly bolted from the car, nervous that smoke might mean fire or explosion that you see in the movies.

The other car had spun out after we had T-boned it and had landed half on a curb. The driver of the other car emerged, screaming accusingly at us for hitting her car. We informed her that it had in fact been her that had a run a red light and her mad screaming turned into a repitition of, "I did NOT run a red light, I did NOT run a red light". There were 4 people total in her car, one who had not been buckled as was displayed by her head sized dent in the front windshield...I think she ended up being ok.

Between the 5 of us we did a quick survey of eachother to make sure all of us were alright. My neck and everyone else's was starting to ache a little from whiplash and a couple minutes later Jon showed us his hand and his knuckle had swollen up like crazy - it ws definitely broken. I'm sure he was so grateful to be our designated driver. The cops showed up shortly after and questioned all of us separately and for some unknown reason they decided not to breathalize the driver of the other car even though everyone in that car was dressed in clubbing clothes and it was pretty apparent to us that she had been drinking....seriously? I feel like any accident that happens around 2 am should require that both drivers be breathalized!

All 4 of the girls from the other car were taken to the hospital on stretchers even though 1 refused to put her cell phone down even when they were rolling her onto the ambulence with a neck brace on. I do honestly hope the girls were physically ok, they obviously were not so mentally competent as they later tried to sue. All 5 of us had refused medical service and we spent at least another hour waiting on the tow truck to come pick up the car and the police to finally stop questioning us and leave. Funny how the accident wasn't our fault at all and we were left stranded on the side of the road until Dana got a hold of her friend to come pick us up at what was now like 4 in the morning.

The previous night had obviously been pretty eventful, but we didn't get much chance to sleep in the next morning as we were meeting up with a caving friend of mine - David at a cave called Indian Grave Point in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. The owner of the cave is extremely friendly to cavers and has some nice parking spots for us on the side of the road and has built a small fence so that you can cross over the barbed wire that surrounds him farmland to access the cave. Once crossing the fence, you hike around a cow dung infested pond and straight up the hill - avoiding more cow patties along the way. The cave entrance itself is a pretty large sinkhole that you can scramble down and then enter the chilly air of the cave - that had a smell of rot about it this particular day.

I absolutely love caving and am built small and agile which greatly helps me get around in caves and I went happily tromping ahead, leading us into the cave and doing my best to ignore the awful smell. From behind me I hear a loud, "Gross!" Jon had discovered the source of the smell - a rotting, bloated goat corpse - yuck!!!! Jon and Ben were all entertained by the dead, rotting corpse and preceded to take pictures in front of it, while the other 3 of us hiked as quickly as possible on past the goat and deeper into the cave to get away from the stench.

I had been in this cave once before and its got so big passages and chambers as well as some fun muddy crawl spaces that I of course wormed my way through whenever possible. There is a particularly "special" chamber with a particularly "welcoming" women is spraypainted on the wall. The 6 of us wandered up, down and around through the cave and eventually came upon the cave guest book which is surrounded by many interesting toys and a dorito was some funky mold on it. We signed our names and crawled up and down several more dark and muddy passages before making our way back to the entrance which was grossly apparent due to the odor of dead goat.

After a fun day and interesting weekend in whole we all headed our respective ways - Atlanta, Nashville, and West Virginia.