I'm currently in east Tennessee, and boy are they friendly here. I was supposed to travel from Glasgow to Amsterdam, to Memphis, then to Tri-Cities airport (in east Tennessee). But I was bumped off my last flight from Memphis because the flight was oversold. Being the last flight of the day, they put me up in a hotel for the night. However, I was supposed to be making that flight on Thursday evening, and the earliest flight they could get me out of Memphis on directly wouldn't have been until Saturday afternoon.
Luckily, they found Friday flights from Memphis to Atlanta, then from Atlanta to this little Tri-Cities airport. It turns out there's a NASCAR race going on this weekend in a place called Bristol, which is served by the Tri-Cities airport. Hence why the flight was oversold (well, part of the reason - the airline's administration is cleary gash).
Well I'm here now, and it's nice. A couple of trivial facts about Johnson City:
It has a population of around 50,000, and yet is still called a city. Being a Glaswegian, and thus someone who lives in a city ten times as populous, this bemuses me. But I'm sure my standards are the ones that are all skewed.
It has the highest number of food establishments per head of population than any other US city. So I'm told. Despite this, I'm not really seeing much evidence of the 33% obesity rate factoid here. Nice food though - had Italian on Friday evening.
It has the third highest proportion of gays to straights of any place in the US. So I'm told. This is an interesting statistic, because where I am right now is smack-bang in the Bible Belt(tm). Apparently, a lot of the 'homosexual activity' - as some of the local populace might be inclined to call it, who knows - is extremely discreet. It's an underground thing. So I'm told. I'm being told a lot, and I've no idea if it's actually true or not.
As I said, though, almost all of the people I've encountered so far are very friendly. The man at Customs and Admissions was a surly bas, and as this was my very first point of contact with US security, it was a little intimidating to say the least. But people will talk to just about anybody. And that's nice. Emily's roommate is a strange one, though. She hides most of the time, but on the few occasions I have seen her so far she hasn't come across as very nice. I can see why Emily doesn't like her.
Oh, and I've suffered the daylight time switch twice now. And jetlag. Those are about the only negatives of the trip so far, with the exception of aforementioned flight cockups. Hopefully it'll stay that way!
