# Thank you, Memphis!


As some of you might know, I had very ambitious plans for yesterday. I
was scheduled to leave Fayetteville at 8:15 in the morning, spend a few
hours on the bus to get to Little Rock, visit Bill Clinton’s
Presidential Library for a few hours, go on to Memphis, spend all
evening walking around there, and leave with the nightbus for New
Orleans. Then I would have a whole day (arriving very early in the
morning) to walk around, and another nightbus would take me to
Gainesville, GA, where I was scheduled to visit a couple that lives on
an ecological farm. An uncharacteristically stressfull schedule, but it
meant I wouldn’t have to pay for any hotels, and would still at least
get a bit of an impression of a lot of sights.

Things didn’t really work out that way. Somehow, and I am not sure if I
did anything wrong, of if this is just how routes work, I ended up going
from Fayetteville to Fort Smith to Texarcana which is in Texas! back up
to Little Rock. All in all, I was in Little Rock at 5:40PM, and of
course had to continue straight on to Memphis (I did see the library
from the window - so near, and yet so far away). I arrived in Memphis
with an hour and a half to spare until the nightbus, having been
travelling since 7:30 in the morning, waiting in bus depots all over
Arkansas…

Yet, I figured I’d try to catch a bit of air, so I left my big bag on
the floor outside the New Orleans-bound bus, took my small bus and
trudged out. Magically, within an hour, I had not only been able to have
a delicious vegan burger and fries at Denny’s, but I also caught a part
of a great open-air jazz concert in the park, completely by chance.
People were dancing, the musicians were playing, the Memphis skyline was
glowing, and I thought: Thank you, Memphis… It wasn’t all for nothing. I
promise I’ll come back some day!

Stian