October 27: Nashville and Monday Night Football

Today while I was working, Tom took a 35 mile bike ride through the country side. He stopped briefly at the Hermitage library which was a voting site where he saw a Tennessee ballot on a bulletin board. Surprisingly there were 8 candidates for President. He joked with a lady there about whether she was running. She said she wasn’t, but acknowledged that things were different in Tennessee. He also saw the J Percy Priest Lake Dam that ekes hydroelectric power from the Stones River before it enters the Cumberland, and spotted the General Jackson again resting at the Opryland dock.

Tonight was the big game at the Nashville LP Stadium: Monday Night Football between the undefeated Tennessee Titans and the Indianapolis Colts with Peyton Manning. We piled on all our extra clothes to prepare for the 40 degree weather predicted for the evening. We joined the current of fans crossing the river bridge to the stadium. The city had covered all the lights on the bridge with blue cellophane to decorate for the game – light blue being the team’s color. There were lots of grills and tailgating in the parking lot and Tom and I purchased a hotdog, hamburger and fries for our gourmet dinner. The attendance for the game was almost 70,000 and mostly wearing blue, our UNC friends would really have been at home here. They gave all the fans extra large blue tee shirts on entering the stadium. The shirts were so large that Tom and I put them on over the top of our coats – we looked like blimps.

The Titans with Kerry Collins (#5) as their quarterback won the game 31 – 21. The Colts played well with Manning (#18) passing for 223 yards, but could not recover from the two interceptions picked off by Chris Hope. The fans chanted “Seven and oh” as they left the stadium celebrating their 7-0 record. I have to confess that although the "big time" game was fun, I missed the band playing at halftime – guess I will always favor college sports.