And so our story begins...

WARNING: I am writing this entry at a place called Jittery Joe's and am drinking an "Iced Crackachino" so I apologize in advance for any and all rambling and/or incoherent thoughts. That said, I will refuse to go back and edit this entry for anything other that typos and/or spelling mistakes. It must be real and in the moment.

So, this adventure and the stories that will come out of it almost didn't happen. On Tuesday, while I was in the dentist's chair, disaster was unfolding for the group in the field. Being on-call, I was the point person to deal with any field issues. The net result was my spending most of Tuesday night making phone calls to coordinate efforts before packing. Wednesday morning, I had to meet a student who I'd be bringing out to the field that day and his father. I'll save the details but I had to do intake then drive him 8hrs to Georgia. As I was driving down, I got a call telling me that I was going to have to pick up students down there and bring them back to Richmond, which would have cancelled my trip because I wouldn't drive RVA->GA->RVA->GA. I was extremely disappointed because I'd been looking forward to this adventure for so long. This definitley challenged me as I'm working towards not being attached to outcomes. I did process it and came to accept that, if that's how things had to be. Luckily, things changed and I only had to pick up those students and bring them to Charlotte. Still that was an additional 3.5hrs after the 8hrs I'd already driven on 4hrs sleep. But, I do whatever I'm asked to do. It's my job and since it meant I could still do my trip, I did it with a smile on my face. I didn't even mind getting only 5hrs sleep and then hanging out in the Charlotte train station for 6.5hrs because after that, I was able to drive the 3.5hrs down to the capital of indie rock: Athens, Georgia!

Fortune smiled on me once again when I found what was listed as a hostel near Athens. Trying to keep things on the cheap, finding a place to crash for $15 seemed a dream come true. It was that and so much more. I plugged the address into my phone and followed it to a residential neighborhood. After searching around a bit, I found the mailbox at the head of a long gravel driveway. The recent rains had left the drive muddy and bepuddled but with my newly acquired RAV4, I had no worries about that. I got to the house and wasn't sure if I was at the right place. There were no signs of there being any kind of a business there, just someone's house. I approached anyway and found out that I was in the right place and the small one room cabin on the side yard was the "hostel". Bonnie, who lives there with her husband and daughter, showed me around and told me I could use the downstairs bathroom and kitchen. She also told me that they do the hostel thing for money for their daughter. I thought she might be special needs or something but it turns out she is recent high school graduate who was a varsity volley ball player and just has this arrangement with her parents. I can't imagine that they get too many people. It's about half an hour from Athens, there's no website or anything. I just stumbled on it. Still this little cabin was cozy and far better than the bunk in a shared room that I had expected.

After settling in and resting a bit, I headed out because that's what one does when in Athens. Kind of the whole point, if you're not going to a UGA game. First, I stopped at Harry's Pig Shop, which was voted best BBQ in Athens. The decor is sort of 50's diner, which was cool and the food was good but the service was even better. Besides being fast, they were extremely friendly. June, my waitress sat down in the chair across from me and chatted with me every time she came around. Granted, the place wasn't very busy, but being a lone traveler, I appreciated the company and the conversation. I told her about this journey and how I'm going to write a story based on it and she thought it cool, especially when I told her she would be a part of it.

Finishing dinner, I headed downtown. There was a show at the Caledonia Lounge I wanted to catch, but doors didn't open until 10 so I had to find a place to kill some time. I wandered around a bit until I came across a bar called Barcode (clever, no?) where a guy was putting out a sign that said Sam Adams $1. Not my beer of choice, but it's passable and it was cheap, so in I went. I wound up chatting with a bartender named Kelly who's studying to become a therapist. As we got closer to 10, the place got busier and I headed out. The show was alright. I actually liked the first band best although I thought the fire spinning and burlesque between acts was fun. I wound up chatting with another guy who looked less than impressed with the second band on the bill and I gained from him insight into what it's like to be bisexual in the south.

Just a day into my post-work trip, I've already met a lot of interesting people and heard a lot of wonderful stories. It's so interesting to see how excited people get when I tell them what I'm doing. I can't help but feel, whether or not they say it, as though they wish they could be doing a similar thing; that they wish they could go out and have an adventure. I think this is part of the problem with society today. There is almost no room in the lives people construct for them to do things that they want to do. It seems so dysfunctional to me. I can't wait to see who else I'll meet and how they will contribute to this experience. I'll next be heading to Atlanta to visit some of my best friends. That will be brief, but wonderful. In classic me style, I'm trying to fit a lot into a short period of time and so I can't stay in one place to long. Story of my life...