Brett and Joy went on their first medical conference trip together since they were married. Now that Brett is in the outpatient realm, they have a lot of overlap on topics to attend. Ironically, they selected the AAFP conference which was in Nashville, a semi-familiar destination from ICC trips. We flew on Monday from San Jose non-stop to Nashville and were treated to WiFi only on the flight, so Brett pivoted to watching Netflix and starting on the Last Dance documentary of the 1998 Chicago Bulls. We watched the 49er game on TV after walking to get takeout near our hotel. The next day is up bright and early for a 6:45am talk about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. Then it was pretty much conference all with a break at lunch for Assembly Hall food and a nice dinner out at an Italian place not far from our hotel. Everything about a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel. We were at it again the next day, splitting up for some of the talks especially when there were too many good ones to choose from (sometimes 23 different in one hour). By 5:30pm on Wednesday we were fatigued by all the lectures and decided to see what we could do that night. Across the street we had noticed six semi trucks lined up for the concert at the Bridgestone Arena. Sadly, the Predators hockey team was not in town, but that meant the arena was booked for concerts to enjoy. Journey was in town for a sold-out show, but somehow there were tickets available on Stub-Hub discounted from originally $150 to $44 which sounded like a deal, so we jumped at the chance to "Don't Stop Believin" for 2.5 hours of non-stop guitar rifts and familiar tunes. The next day was another early one, with a break in the early afternoon during which we went to the Museum of Christian Music and enjoyed recalling our enjoyment of numerous artists over the years. As evening began, we listened to some of the music of Red Clay Strays on Spotify and determined we could enjoy another night of live music at the Bridgestone. Little did we know we would get 5+ hours of music including Brent Cobb and the Fixins, Zach Top, and Sierra Ferrell. The final day of the conference, we spent our lunch break at Category 10 learning some country line dancing. The final evening we met with Gayla and Jeff and had dinner and talked about the Christian music industry as well as remembering Brett's time in Duhok with Gayla. Saturday we hit a couple more lectures and then it was off to the airport again to return home. A successful first conference together and beautiful weather all week.
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| Dinner with Gayla and Jeff at Etch in Nashville. |
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| That is an amazingly good looking, tasting, and smelling dish. |
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| What a pleasant surprise Red Clay Strays was--enjoyable country rock! |
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| Category 10 hurricane lounge line dancing at lunch. |
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| Along with Red Clay Stray, we saw two bands featured on the outside of the Country Music Hall of Fame: Sierra Ferrell and Zach Top. |
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| Ready to watch Red Clay Strays at Bridgestone Arena--sold out two nights in a row! |
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| Sierra Ferrell and her Heavy Petal Music...country folk really. |
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| Red Clay Stray--lead singer looking a bit like Elvis? |
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| Brent Cobb and the Fixins opener. |
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| Mercy Me Lego guitar at the Museum of Christian Music. |
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| Call back to late 80s and early 90s--Michael W Smith. |
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| Steven Curtis Chapman--probably the artist Brett has seen most in concert and even brought to his college in the mid 90s. |
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| Can't miss Toby Mac! |
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| Journey on their Final Frontier tour--the last one? |
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| Packed house for Journey! |
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| A very nice dinner together the first night after the conference. |
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| Music City Conference center, a two-block massive structure. |
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| AAFP conference attendees. |
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| Watching the 49ers in our hotel room when we arrived. |
