Tuesday 19th May continued

The motel in Memphis is going to be a memorable motel but not for its good points, as the only good point is it's close proximity to Graceland. Our first night here we had been to get a few supplies and when we returned to the motel, while I was locking the bike a very dubious character started chatting with me, his opening line was "that's a nice bike do you want to sell it?" he was wearing large quantities of gold jewellery and his teeth were nearly all gold, he had a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He then went on to tell me how he was living at the motel as his house had burnt down and how he was having a good time at the insurance companies expense. He had not said how his house had burnt down, I wish I had asked him now. After chatting for a while He went on to ask me "if I liked to party? " I didn't really think about my answer "I just said yes I like to party" and then he went on to say "well I'm your man what ever you need I can get it for you" he started to list some of the things he could get, I just replied "no I'm fine thanks I have all I need" we shook hands and said our farewells. We soon realised that most of the people staying here were long term residents. The first room they gave us stank of cigarettes so as we had asked and paid for a non smoking we complained and got a different room. It was a noisy night what with being near the airport and people coming and going at all hours of the night. In the morning I was very happy to see my bike was still where I had left it.

In the evening we rode downtown to Beale street, where the street is lined with blues bars and restaurants, the ends of the street were closed off with police cars and barriers, after parking the bike we walked around for a bit, it was very hot and sticky so we decided to go for a drink in one of the many bars only to be refused entry as we required ID to enter and as we had left it at the motel we thought about going in to one of the restaurants but neither of us was hungry we carried on walking, we walked passed the Gibson guitar shop and realised that we had walked passed the back of the Gibson guitar factory earlier and you could see in to their factory from the street as they leave some lights on. The ride home was interesting, riding through quiet deserted back streets of a strange US City at night I always find quite unnerving and tonight was no different.

Wednesday 20th May
All packed and on the way to Birmingham Alabama via Tupelo Mississippi, it was trying to rain all day and we got caught in a few showers but nothing to heavy which is just as well as it was too warm for wet weather gear. Temperature was between 83F and 87F today and very humid. We stopped off at Tupelo where Elvis was born they have restored the house he was born in and moved the church he used to go too and built a small museum. This was a rip off compared to Graceland.
From there we continued on to Birmingham Alabama and have ended up in another interesting place to stay, probably the worst yet lol.