The Freed-Hardeman Trip, part 1

The other day we made the drive from Nashville to Freed-Hardeman University, to play a concert as part of the inauguration of the new University President, and as part of an event aptly titled "Soccer-Palooza". Little did we know how much effort said trip was going to be.

Apparently, shortly before the trip, the alternator on our SUV went out, leaving us with a nice, constantly depleting, battery charge.

We were unaware of this until we were a short distance outside of Nashville. In rapid succession, the battery meter began decreasing rapidly, the dashboard lights stopped working, and our windows refused to roll down. It was like a scene from a horror movie. We were stuck in our car, plummeting down the interstate with no gages and few controls. The last thing to go was the speedometer, hitting 0 mph even as we were doing over 70mph. Then a shrill whine began emanating from the car, and we lost acceleration and power altogether.

I pulled over to the side of the road. We were 20 miles from the nearest town, AAA wouldn't help a car with a trailer, and no police drove by during the next two hours.

Fortunately, Ryan Hogan came to save the day, buying us a new battery, and driving out of town to bring it to us. We couldn't replace the alternator in time to get to the show, so we had to hope that the new battery was fully charged.

It wasn't.

But it got us to FHU. We had a great time playing a concert in a soccer field, meeting interesting people, and doing our part to usher in the new University President. We finished late at night, and were checked in to the local hotel.

But how would we get back in the morning? If the battery wasn't fully charged, would we actually make it?

Continued in Part 2 and Part 3