Visit to Knoxville

Last weekend, I headed to Knoxville for a weekend of rest and relaxation and to shoot with the Knoxville R&H Team in the Helen Ross McNabb Charity Sporting Clays Tournament. And of course, if I visited Knoxville, I had to visit my favorite restaurant - Altruda's.



After picking me up at the airport, Mom and Dad drove me to the restaurant, where we met my Uncle Stan, Aunt Lou, Reid (Cousin) and Renee and their two kids, Kara and Ryan for dinner. In this picture, Aunt Lou is moving an empty Mich Ultra bottle to prevent Ryan from taking a swig (he is starting early).

Mom has Kara and Ryan as my Uncle Stan looks on in this picture.

After dinner, I went to Laddy's and Amy's, where Mark Clark and Patrick Wade met us. We hung out for the evening, watching the Olympics (and Michael Phelps's PHENOMENAL 100 meter Butterfly finish).

Saturday morning, Dad and I got up early and met his shooting team at Cracker Barrel for breakfast. We then headed up to Grainger County to "Birds and Clays", the site of the tournament. I shot with Shane Phillips, Todd Murphy, Steve Prater and Jon Arnold from R&H. Our team finished 3rd in the 10:30 AM flight. I shot OK personally, considering I had not shot a target in 2 years.

Saturday evening, I hung out with Mom and Dad. We ate a home cooked dinner, went out for ice cream and then watched Phelps break Mark Spitz's record. It was nice just to lay around and relax.


Reflections - McGhee Tyson Regional Airport

Sunday, I flew back to Philadelphia. The flight was fairly uneventful, but the experience was somewhat strange nonetheless. For those reading this blog, who have never flown into or out of Knoxville's airport, it is a very small, uncongested experience... quite relaxing really. A few strange experiences happened to me on this particular Sunday:

1) Waterless urinals are one of the latest achievements of the "Green" building movement. I fly regularly and have visited MANY airports over the past 6 months. I find it strange that McGhee Tyson airport should present me with my first personal encounter with a waterless urinal.

2) For the first time in my life, I had a delayed departure time actually bumped up. Don't get me wrong, I get delayed all of the time (especially flying into and out of Philadelphia). This time, I was initially delayed for one hour. When I arrived at the airport, the flight had been delayed 60 more minutes. However, as I ate my dinner at Ruby Tuesday's in the airport, I heard my name paged for final boarding. The flight was moved back up.

3) My favorite - as we taxied to take off, our flight attendant informed us that we were first in line for departure. In Philadelphia, I have sat in line on the runway as high as #36. In Knoxville, I have never seen two planes taxiing at the same time, much less waited in line to take off or land. I got a big chuckle out of that one.