Road Trip to Atlanta (Part II)

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning. OK, so it was more on the side of 10 AM. I stumbled into Karol's room to find that Ben and Karol had slept in the same bed. This seemed odd until I learned that Jimbo has slept there as well, but had left earlier. Tom was disappointed at learning this, because his great big bed was empty, and Karol's was packed to capacity. Anyway, the big plan for the day was to go t a BBQ place called Fat Matt's, which is a name for a BBQ place that I can respect. Apparently this place had really good BBQ, and being a fan myself, I was eager to go. Indeed, the food was good, especially the BBQ sauce and the baked beans. I found out that the sauce had tamarind in it, which was probably the secret to the flavor. I ordered a quarter rack of ribs and a quarter BBQ chicken with cole slaw, baked beans, and bread. And I ate every last bit of it. I don't want to say I regretted eating all that, but I certainly paid for it later. But well worth it, I think. Fat Matt sure knows what he's doing over the BBQ pit.

After lunch we stopped at a thrift store where I found a brand new, still in the package mouth harp. Stupidly, I pointed this out to Ben. When I saw his eyes light up, I instantly had horrible flashbacks to the seemingly endless miles of road trips that expanded into eternity the first few trips we took after Ben bought himself a harmonica. I felt sure that the trip home from Atlanta would be the longest 8 hours of my life with him twanging away at that little toy. Ben bought himself the jaw harp, and Karol bought a few shirts, and we were on our way back to Karol's place. Tom turned on 'Scrubs' Karol popped open a few brews, and Ben twanged away. The plan for the evening was to go out and watch the Gators game at a place called Taco Mac, which is an Atlanta institution. Before it got to be the going out hour, boredom set in and Karol, Ben and myself decided to go to Costco and hit up the free sample peoples. We took for granted that free sample people at Costco are typically as plentiful as frazzled moms at Chuck E. Cheese, and as a jaded Apron's clerk I was looking forward to taking free samples from someone else while completely not giving a crap about what they were selling and wholly having no plans at all to buy anything. This plan backfired, because out of the entire football field-sized store, there was only one lady slinging lobster spread. We were vastly disappointed and drowned our sorrow in churros and pizza from the food stand. After that is was back to Karol's pad to get ready to go out for the evening.

First stop: Taco Mac. I don't know where the 'Mac' part of the name came from, but the taco part was evident. I had a taco for dinner. It was pretty good. Too bad the Gators lost though. After that we went to collect Jimbo who was accompanying us to the club that night. Ben and Karol had met some girls the night before and wanted to meet up with them again. I was satisfied with this arrangement, so long as the bar we went to featured some sort of interior area for people not drinking. Happily this bar offered that, as well as a line to get in and enough people to standing around uncomfortable and socializing just about impossible. But socialize we did, until the wee hours of the morning. After that, it was a stop at Steak N Shake for some vittles, then home for some sleep.

Sunday started off much like the other days, rolling out of bed and scrounging to find food. On the way up, Ben and I had stopped to buy some fireworks at a gas station. In my humble opinion, no road trip is complete without at least one Roman candle fight. So, before the Bucs game started, we went to a local park to play with out fireworks. Since a four man Battle Royale was not a wise idea, we went with two rounds of one-on-one. Ben and Karol took the lead, and a spirited battle it was. High on action, low on accuracy and tactics. I got some pretty good video if you want to see it. That poor accuracy thing would come back to haunt us. Next, Tom and I took our turn, and had a good time. We had bought among out explosives some blue and orange smoke bombs to celebrate the Gators victory, but even though they lost, the smoke bombs still had to be lit. It was not long after we lit the smoke bombs that Ben made the somewhat understated observation: "Hey guys, there's a fire over there."

True indeed, one of the errant Roman candle shots and found its way onto a pile of fallen pine needles and set it ablaze. By the time we noticed it, the blaze had spread to about 15 feet across and was thinking about crawling up some trees. We moved in with all the skill and grace of the Keystone cops to extinguish out handiwork. Special props to Ben for jumping in to stamp on the flames with nothing more than flip-flops. His leg hair paid dearly for his bravery. Fortunately Tom has some background in fire control, and we were able to put the fire out without any authority figures noticing. Covered in dirt and ash and smelling like forest fire, we figured it was time to retire and head to the bar for some wings and football.

We went to a sports bar for some wings and to watch the Bucs game, and what a happy experience that was! When the waitress wasn’t ignoring us, we were being charged all over the place for stupid stuff. Refill on water? That'll cost you. We had had enough sports bar fun by half time, so we left. Shortly after getting back to Karol's place, Ben and I packed up for the trip home. Mercifully, Ben left the jaw harp in Karol's charge. We executed a nice four-way high five and Ben and I hit the road. Traveling went well until we hit the outskirts of Atlanta, where we slowed down to maybe 10 MPH for some no-traffic traffic. I drove until we hit Lake City where we pulled over for some, you guessed it, Steak N Shake. If I ever see another SnS burger, it'll be too soon. At this point Ben took the wheel for a little while. When I woke up we were pulling over so Ben could catch some sleep. Neither of us were comfortable with his driving ability, so I took the tiller again and brought it on home. All in all it was a damn good road trip, mini-forest fire and all. It's always good to get away for a long weekend and see the guys. That sort of thing makes me happy.

Stay tuned for my reflections on this year's Halloween season, that should be posted soon.