Monday, August 13, 2007

Atlanta Blog Post

I originally wrote this up on Saturday. I have just been a little too busy to post it and it was on my wife's computer...when I had issues connecting to SFOs hotspot.

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We’re back from Atlanta. I have to say that it was not a joyous trip. We did have some fun. We had some disturbing moments. All in all it was a good experience, but I have to say it was rather weird in certain ways and that we’re glad we’re back. You already read out about Lyuda and Avrora’s not so great adventure in US Airways Frakked up land. Now let’s discuss some of the other fun adventures: we’re not flying separately ever again, btw. I mean that literally and otherwise.

First off, the rental car place which work arranged, btw, actually rocked. They had us in and out PDQ, especially this morning. The hotel was eh ok. I guess the W isn’t all that despite several reviews to the contrary. That’s ok. It appears – and I may be uncertain about this – that the W is building two more hotels in the region, so more up to date facilities will be there for whoever happens to stay with them in the future. I doubt we’ll be back in Atlanta any time soon, so I’m not so worried about it.

I already mentioned the restaurant that we went to on our 3rd Anniversary, but we also went to another good one last night. This was the Imperial Fez. It is a Moroccan themed and cusined joint. It was quite good and the belly dancer was amusing and comely, especially when she was flinging around some flaming batons during her ‘Fire Dance.’ My wife and daughter loved it and I mostly ignored it to avoid setting off my wife’s jealousy twitches: Ukrainian women, jealousy, oy. Nuff said. Anyways, the fare was good. The service was excellent. Our camera’s battery died, but the people at the next table offered to send us pix they’d taken of us. Some of those were Lyuda and Avrora dancing with the belly dancer. Over my objections. Once again, I get to show how neandertalish I am. *sighs*

We also went to a HORRIBLE restaurant. Or at least we didn’t like it at all. Lyuda and I have confessed to each other that maybe it might just be the cuisine that just doesn’t match our tastes. We went to Fire of Brazil. Which is, you guessed it! – a Brazil BBQ place. The meat was just a touch too salty and way too dry. Sadly, despite being an internal cuisine lover, we just haven’t been impressed with this one. We had two out of three restaurants turn out bad for us, so we’ll probably be skipping this kind in the future.

My wife went to CNN as I said. She and Avrora also went to the Georgia Aquarium which they both found to be very, very underwhelming after having been to the Monterey Aquarium. They loved the Beluga’s, the sea snakes, kinda liked the whale sharks, and not much else. Avrora liked the penguins, but she likes them everywhere and we have a colony at the SF Zoo, Steinhart Aquarium, and the Monterey Aquarium. My wife’s comment was that if you’ve been to the MA, all you need is 20 minutes to wander through the GA. My wife and daughter also went to Lanier Lake resorts to play in the waterpark. They had a good time. Avrora loved seeing all the carp in the water.

We also went to Georgia Underground. A very un-unique mall, frankly, but we did pick up some glass work from there. Not much else to say other than my wife kept getting hit on rather blatantly when she went to the restroom and came back out again. Sheesh. I know she’s hot guys, but show some class when she’s got a ring on her finger. *shakes head*

Then came the most bizarre thing we did. My wife and I had an argument over it, actually. We went to Stone Mountain, Georgia to the state park. Frankly, the whole thing made me want to vomit from the get go. Well, it was worse than that. We went. We saw. We realized that they Disney-fied the whole kit and caboodle. It was frankly a bizarro world entered we. Praises for the antebellum South. Various God Loving Songs. Puppet shows. A talking and spitting fountain. Various shops too. And it was mostly run by African Americans. In fact, about a quarter of the visitors were African American. Frankly, IDK what to think about it.

The worst thing we encountered otherwise was that driving. I honestly thought California drivers were horrible. The overly aggressive tactics, the obnoxiousness to each other, etc, I thought were worse in Cali than in New Mexico. Well, Georgia takes the cake for bad drivers so far. I cannot come up with words to describe how I felt about this. The English language does not have the necessary invective. Traffic was worse than in the Bay Area. Um? huh? There were two very good reasons.

The first is that exits are not just exits for is on the sign. More than once we found that on exiting the off ramp would sprout multiple routes and that they were not always as clearing marked as we’d expected: I compared notes from another Californian from my classes and he was having a frakked up time of it too by accidentally missing the right ramp (sometimes out of 4 or more). The Oakland Maze is less scary! So, people are dodging all over to get into the right exit. My instructor stated that Atlantans were not so upset with Sherman for burning the place, but were hopping mad for leaving the road system intact.

The second reason is that Atlantans simply cannot merge. It is beyond them. What is orderly, in comparison for Bay Area residents to do on the freeway, these guys simply are incapable. There were times when two lanes would become one and the drivers would continue double file in a single lane for over a thousand feet. Another ‘amusing’ variant of the unable to merge gene expressing itself was that if someone could not get into the lane they wanted, they STOP DEAD COLD IN THE INTERSTATE AND WAIT TO GET IN. Cars would and would backup into a gridlock situation because some dipshibbit would just refuse to budge until he, by golly and gum, got into the lane he wanted. Gottimhimmel, these people are frakkin insane with blink tag! What would normally take me 20 minutes on the freeway with no traffic could turn into 2 ½ hours there (and did! It really did!). Just because people cannot merge. There’s gotta be a genetic reason for it, I swear. We can cure it. This won’t hurt but a bit, I promise.

A tangential comment my wife said was as we were driving back to hotel one night was that she noticed that a lot of the cars were bumped, dinged, or whatnot. Almost all of them were in the side 9but not to bad) like someone was trying to merge and couldn’t quite make it. Instead they’d bump the car they were trying to get ahead of.

Another darkly amusing bit was that Atlantans must have some serious issues with car maintenance. All I can think of is that maintenance must be that it is beyond them or they are getting fleeced by their mechanics or something. We always saw at least one car, truck, or semi broken down every two miles on the highways. One day, Thursday, it was worse: one per mile. It didn’t matter what time of day or night it was either.

If you all didn’t hear, it was hot there too. Multiple days of over 100 F (37 C). Wow. Fun. Especially with the humidity.

We did find a Trader Joe’s. WOOOOOOO! Actually this seemed symptomatic of something else I noticed. Of the people I interacted with, which was limited truth be told, about half of them lacked the Southern Accent. The other half had varying degrees of Southron on their tongue, but mostly it was damned light. Carlos bitches about the Southernization of America, but, frankly, I think our Yankee’s Burden is paying off (note, glyph of satire there).

All in all, we had an interesting time. Lyuda thinks it looks nice. I made it plain I wasn’t going to work there, so she could forget even getting a minor inkling of living there. I think, even though Atlanta was in better shape in general the San Francisco, I’d much rather take a bowl of Fruits, Nuts, and Flakes than grits anytime. Even if it is an over priced bowl and the fruits, nuts, and flakes are politically woohoo. ;)


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