Day 1: Atlanta

So today was the first day of our 35-day weekend! We'll be on the road for five weeks, and it has started out pretty well.

We packed up all of our things. Granted, neither Dave nor I had any idea what or how to pack for this kind of trip. How many pairs of underwear do you bring?! I voted for 20 myself. Nuts, I'm sure, but--hey--I'm gonna be wearing clean pants when the cops come!

Along with our clothes, we made sure to bring the books our mothers demanded I pick up at the AAA this week. The young women gave me a book, map, and camping guide for every state we were going to visit. This is what that means:


We also had some books of our own to get us started, most written by NPR faves Jane and Michael Stern.


Once packed, we waved goodbye to our fabulous housesitter, ShaLeigh.


She's a dancer teaching classes at the ADF for the summer. Don't even ask us how we got fortunate enough to have a housesitter live in our house for the same amount of time that we'll be gone. She is very sweet to our kitties as well, thank God. I hated saying goodbye to my cat-babies.

We loaded our cooler, picnic basket, futon mattress, sheets, pillows, comforter, luggage, flashlights, radio, snacks, and other JUNK (thanks, Mom) into the car and headed to Atlanta


Somehow Dave was able to pack his stuff into two bags, but I have five. How does that work?

We stopped at a roadside market in South Carolina to buy some sodas. It was just past the giant peach on I-85. While there, we bought some peach sodas and peach cider. This brought on a significant tongue-lashing from our Atlanta host Patrick, who pointed out the inferiority of SC peaches. Whoops.


In ATL, we're staying with our friends Patrick and Jen. Since we left kind of late (surprise, surprise), we decided to meet at Stone Mountain for the nightly laser light show. Yes, that's right. First of all, as Patrick put it, Stone Mountain looks like a giant boob popping out of the ground. It is carved with a scene of three soldiers on horseback.


We were surprised by the thousands of people there. I stopped one man with his wife and child to ask who the three horsemen were. He was able to pull out Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but he was incredibly embarrassed by his inability to recall the third rider. Wikipedia reports that he is the South's beloved son, Jefferson Davis. I told him it was certainly fine, but he said, "I've lived here 16 years. I'm from the North, but this is what it's all about." I don't have any idea what that means, but it was pretty weird.

The laser show was wacky! Not what I expected. There was a distinct "The South will rise again" feel to the whole thing that was weakly tempered by a brief moment of images of a US map going from two colors separated along the Mason-Dixon line to a red, white, and blue stripy map. There were lots of laser images of troops and American flags. LOTS of songs with the word "Georgia" in them: "Georgia on My Mind" and "The Devil Went down to Georgia" as well as a number of college fight songs (???). When they played "Sweet Home Alabama," the crowd went nuts. For the record, no songs about God, but lots of "Dixie" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Then, there was a bizarre medley of songs by people from Georgia instead of the scheduled "Movie Moments Medley." It started with Outkast's "Hey Ya" backed by laser images of germs walking around (salute to the CDC?). Then, it went on to REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" with images of robots on wheels rolling around. I have no idea what that was supposed to represent. Then, there was a B-52s song and an Indigo Girls song. Weird, for sure.

When it was all over, we went back to a place where we had met up with Patrick and Jen initially. That place? The ATLANTA FUN CENTER! Yes!


This place had a "lounge" offering karaoke until 2am, and bowling until 3am. We took them up on some black light disco bowling. The place was so dark that I couldn't see my own ball roll down the lane. It was wacky. I did pretty well for a crappy bowler: 102. Yay!

Then, home to P & J's house in the ATL where we met Doofus, the barfing, shaven cat. Pictures of that tomorrow. In the first 15 minutes, the cat barfed twice. It was sad. He only barfs on the uncarpeted floor. Good kitty. I miss my kitties already.

Now to bed. Tomorrow, we will embark on a full day of fun and adventure (???) in Atlanta.