So Atlanta.
&AAk-
We got to Atlanta around 10:00 pm Thursday night and proceeded to follow our Map Quest instructions to our hotel. We were a little nervous, because the exit we got off seemed to be really residential and stuff, but we figured ‘No big’ MapQuest got us 989 miles without a problem, it should be able to handle directions to the hotel’.
Wrong.
We drove through an exceedingly posh area of residentials and churchs. There was not a hotel to be had. We finally tracked down the specific address of our hotel and it was a large area of trees and shrubs and what I have learned is kudzu. Finally, we called the hotel to talk to some clueless individual who told us to look for a church. ‘Dude, there are a whole lot of churches’ we’re in a church zone.’ Which I didn’t even make up’ we had passed a sign saying ‘Church Zone’. In Wisconsin, the only zones we have are areas where whitetail deer may jump out unexpectedly and cause you to kill yourself and everyone in the car with a horrible car crash. Here they have Church Zones. Because I was so addled from our intense drive, I started picturing singing parishioners coming out of the building, wandering out into the road.
It turns out that we were on the WRONG Mount Vernon Highway. Because there are several Mount Vernon Highways here. You’d think they’d put a little #2 or something on the sign, but no. And don’t even get me started on all the Peachtree and Peach Pit streets. It’s a crazy Peach conspiracy.
So we finally get to the hotel, which is very lovely and like a little apartment, not a hotel room. And we’re on the third floor, so after 18 hours of sitting in the car, we lug all of our luggage and the cooler up to the third floor. And then passed out.
The next morning, we were awaked by a knock on the door. Esteban, because he’s the man and does things like this’ it’s in his marriage clause, got up in his underwear and opened the door. It was Ward and June’ all fresh and happy and disgustingly cheerful. Because they stretched their drive down over something like 4 days, due to the fact that their tender constitutions cannot handle long amounts of car driving’ and the fact that Ward has entered into that stage of his life in which he drives like an old man.
Thus began the ‘Kids’ portion of our journey. We are now ‘The Kids’ and must do things to assuage the parents into not being afraid of scary Atlanta or whatnot. Esteban had work to do for his job (even though he’s on vacation, he ended up working from his laptop all day), so I informed the parents that I would be going to see the World of Coke and if they wanted to come with, that would be cool. They did, because they have no agenda or ambition. Their big accomplishment was getting here. Their attitude now was to rest on their laurels and gear back up for Going Home.
June made me sit in the front seat of their Minivan because she wanted me to navigate and she also didn’t want to be able to see as much Atlanta. It was basically her attempt at wearing blinders. Didn’t help, she became a serious backseat panicker. And I was supposed to do the navigating because I had all this experience in Atlanta and all, having been in the city for 11 hours at that point.
Whatever.
I navigated the Old Man Van downtown, with June panicking anytime we saw a large building. You’d think they were portents of doom or something. And because Ward drives 45 miles an hour, it took a really long time to get there. But we did and we did the Coke thing. My only real reason for going was to drink unlimited quantities of Coke, but they just give you these little shot glass thingies and your belly gets all fizzy and yucky feeling after awhile. Then we tried all the various flavors of Coke from around the world. Oh my god, you guys warned me about the nasty one, but you never told me where it was from or what the name was. Bitter Apertif. I’m telling you all right now in case you go. It is a mixture of grapefruit and quinine and it is possibly in the top ten worst things I’ve ever had in my mouth. It’s nestled between hot mustard sauce at this Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis and the time that I was chewing gum and riding my bike and a bee flew into my mouth. June, because she’s an evil little minx sometimes, liked to position herself near that one so she could see the faces of the people trying it. It was like so awful, you almost wanted to try it again because you couldn’t believe it was that awful. It almost took your breath away.
Then we wandered over to Underground Atlanta, which was a little anticlimactic. We then attempted to drive to the Hard Rock Caf’, because they decided it was too far to walk, but then couldn’t find a place to park to save our lives. I got all giddy seeing a bunch of people in the park playing chess, because we have no chess parks in Green Bay, probably not even in Wisconsin and I think it’s cool to see people playing chess in the park. I wanted to stop and take a picture but they were too freaked, like we might have been approached by a chess playing person who would take our queen with their rook or something.
They decided that we shouldn’t go to eat at the Hard Rock because it was too stressful to find a parking spot. They fled downtown despite my reassurance that we were fine. That was my mantra with them. ‘No, we’re fine. We’re going to be fine. Seriously’. It’s fine.’ We headed back on the highway and back to our hotel. This time, Ward picked up the pace a little because he was afraid the chessplayers would follow us, yelling ‘Knight to Pawn 5’. We got back to the hotel and I headed out to purchase us some provisions, as neither of us had a thing to eat at that point.
I went to the Whole Foods Store, which is now my favorite grocery store on the planet. I should have had a clue about the pricing though when I pulled in. I parked the Monte between two Mercedes and directly in front of me was a Saab. There was also a conga line of four Volvo station wagons all in a row. I think mine was the only domestic car in the lot. Didn’t matter. Whole Foods Store is now my girlfriend. They have a freaking olive bar. I don’t like olives, mind you, but how cool is that to have an olive bar? I picked up some hummus, fresh guacamole, fresh salsa, a sushi platter, some blue corn chips, organic bananas, some meringue cookies, and some sourdough rolls to nosh on. Because Esteban planned to do some Wisconsin style hotel drinking with his fam that night, I picked him up some Harp’s beer from their fine selection of snooty beers (Note to Belle: they have Shiner Bock there too). Then I perused their hot sauce aisle, because I love to see all the different things that we don’t have, and found that they had some Wing Time sauce, which is Esteban’s all time favorite sauce and is very hard to find. I usually end up ordering it for him on the internet and it’s kind of expensive to pay for all that shipping. I took all three of their bottles. Total cost of groceries: $56.78. Holy shit.
Then I ran through Chicka-Fil-A because that’s totally new to me. I picked up a chicken sandwich for Esteban and myself, but then I remembered that he specifically requested a burger. Ok, over to Checkers, where I got him a burger and a chili dog sans onions (one of his favorite nitrate ridden treats). Then I had to haul all that shyte up three flights of stairs. I left the non-perishables in the car (the beer and the Wing Time) and then we proceeded to eat like wolves, devouring all the fast food and snacking on the chips and cookies. Hey, we hadn’t eaten anything all day and just road snacks the day before.
I then typed out my travelogue and checked email via Esteban’s laptop. Then it was time to get ready to my much-anticipated portion of this journey.
Dinner at Rancho Lesbiano.
Which I’ll have to tell you about later because it’s time for us to skoodle. Have a great weekend.
