State No. 24 - Tennessee

Edit: I want to apologize for this taking so long, but things happen & you don't always get to sit down and tell the story when you want to.

So, the first place I went to was the Arcade Restaurant.  It is Memphis's oldest cafe, & it is turning 100 this year!  The food, while not must-visit quality, was still pretty good.  They had an interesting sign to remind employees & visitors that they do keep their customers in mind, so I thought I would show that here.



National Civil Rights Museum

I visited the National Civil Rights Museum during my stay here.  Unfortunately, due to their social media policies and the fact that I am (however loosely this is defined) a blogger, I'm not allowed to post pictures I took from inside the museum.  To be safe, especially since I don't feel like fighting any legal troubles, I won't post any pictures too much from this part of the trip, even though I do want to.

The museum is really divided into two parts: the Lorraine Motel, which mostly covers the years up to 1968, & then the Legacy, which covers the time after 1968.  The Legacy goes behind the circumstances surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death & additional civil rights issues from more current times.

Metabolic CrossFit

I dropped in at Metabolic CrossFit on April 19.  Coach Chuck was pretty enthusiastic, & made sure to welcome me in.  I really felt like I was at home, & he gave additional pointers to help out on the clean & jerk.  There was a bit of a temporary snafu with the fact that they had run out of shirts, but Coach Cathy eventually sent me a shirt once their stock was refilled.

Ultimate Ballroom Studio
https://www.facebook.com/UltimateBallroom/

The only thing I forgot to do was take a few pictures here.  This was an amazing place to visit.  The social that I visited was about 1 hour & 15 minutes long.  All of my partners here were good, even if one or two admitted not knowing a few steps I led them through.  The interesting thing is, at the end of this social, they play an entire song for a traveling dance & the ladies line up in a corner.  The men pick up the ladies & travel one circle around the floor, then drop off to pick up the next lady waiting for a turn.  This cycle repeats until the last song ends.  It's an interesting custom that I had not seen before.

Games from the Bluff City Open have been published on the website below for my Rounds 1, 2, & 5.

http://www.memphischess.com/games2019b.html

Mr. Gary Pylant ran a pretty good tournament.  Games started close to schedule & the atmosphere was very similar to the good memories I had at one of my first rated tournaments.  I say close to schedule because there was a humorous delay I think on Saturday where they were trying to wrap up the U1000 section with blitz game tiebreakers.  The blitz went one win & one draw for each player, so they had to go to a fourth tiebreaker with black having draw odds.

I didn't play well at the beginning of the tournament as I had some headaches that bothered me through the first day.

Since Rounds 1, 2, & 5 are published, I'll do a light version of commentary from Round 3 instead.

As I don't quite know why the paste code isn't working, the game will open in a new tab in the link below.

http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2019/5/27/Game800933312.html

That concludes State No. 24