Day 1 in Atlanta
I’m not entirely sure I’ll finish this in one sitting. But let’s give it a shot. I’ll have to make grammatical edits later.
Friday October 6th, 2009 8:15 AM it begins…
Well only somewhat. I woke at 8:15 to start looking for the ticket with James on the adventure weekend we planned out the month prior at Dick’s River Road House. Checking my phone I find out ol’ Jimmy Z has been up since the crack of dawn and texted me at 6:36 to say he found tickets to Cleavland, OH with car rental and hotel for some ridiculous price, like $221 or so. He hasn’t bought them yet.
I’m not thrilled by the idea of Cleavland but I do start singing the Drew Carry Show theme in my head as I dial up James so we can get to work on buying our tickets to Ohio. And here’s our first lesson learned: BUY THURSDAY NIGHT. I suppose you could buy Friday but who the hell wants to get up at 6AM? Besides James. Cleavland was sold out, Dallas, New York, Minneapolis, Cincinnati… the list was growing of places we wouldn’t be visiting today.
8:50 rolls along and the list of sold out destinations is just growing and the frustration of bad travel sites is starting to show on both our ends. It seems like 90% of travel web sites all do the exact same thing and are developed by the exact same person. This could be why they all suck exactly the same. You might think that you’ve had great luck in the past with Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak, Orbitz, etc but when is the last time you went to that site and tried to find a destination to anywhere, they’re not friendly with that. Going straight to the airline site and using their Last Minute Deals section would be the ticket – not so much.
Bing wins. Surprisingly Microsoft’s new search engine, which claims to leverage Orbitz, was the answer to our prayers. No it would not help us find that last minute destination, we just ended up trying all the cheapest places in order on Bing until we found a place that we could still get tickets to. I’m still a little baffled why Microsoft’s site had different results than Orbitz but I just don’t care anymore and hope to never go through this process again. By 9:30 James had purchased us two tickets on Delta for $226.20 each to leave at 7:14PM out of Chicago O’Hare. We’ve already broken one rule. The ticket is over our $200 limit. I guess it’s true that rules were made to be broken; because this wasn’t the last.
Fast forward through a day of work which I don’t really even remember because I just wanted to get out of town and it’s about 4:45 and James is over. We cracked open a few Cold Activated cans and searched for some things to do in Atlanta. I’ll just go ahead and admit now, I’m a little nervous about this flying by the seat of our pants thing. That’s why I’ll drink two more beers in the next few minutes before we catch our ride from Diane to O’Hare.
We hop in James’s car around 5:30 and head over to Diane’s. She’s already outside waiting when we pull up so maybe she’s more excited than us. 
O’Hare is only about a 20 minute drive from her apartment; of course this is Friday so it ends up being closer to an hour; not really a big deal when you have no luggage to speak of anyway. Side note: Diane really likes rap.
We go the self check-in route and the airport is pretty much dead. While going through security though I realize I forgot my pocket knife on my key chain so that’s thrown away and lost forever. Or TSA kept it – If 
I was TSA I’d be keeping all the free knickknacks that came my way.
Once when crossing the Canadian border the patrol officer took our Bananas but no other fruits. I’ve always believed it was because he was hungry and like me, loves bananas.
I pick up a cup of black coffee and a cheese Danish from the Starbucks on the way to the terminal. I gotta say this was probably the worst idea I made that night. Or maybe it was when I hadn’t even drank my coffee and was already buying a cheese burger and Pepsi outside our terminal at Gold Coast Dogs. Interestingly James ordered a double cheese burger and had no drink with it. Who the hell eats a meal without anything to drink? That’s stupid and I’m embarrassed to know him sometimes.
It’s final boarding call so we go in the Gate just so we can stand in a line outside the plane. It’s hot waiting there, James compares it to the tropical temperatures that blasted through Diane’s car.
I think this is hotter; but that’s not really what’s on my mind. Beer, Pepsi and Coffee, Danish and a side of cheese burger begin to create a tornado of pure Hell inside my stomach. Queue the bitching and moaning about my stomach for the next three hours starting…. now.
Posting an update to the site from my phone
When we get inside the plane and get to our seats it’s great. A guy who was on the plane before us knew how great they were but moved when he saw us coming. I look threatening, what can I say. The exit row is basically how every plane row should be and isn’t. Though my seating ticket claims I’ll be sitting in the middle for this flight no one else comes and I don’t have to play the armrest game with anyone.
So we blast off into the night sky. James and I start the beginnings of our list. Essentially it’s a city wide scavenger hunt which proves to be more difficult than it looks. The drink cart passes by and I’ve already been whining about my stomach for at least 45 minutes. I figure some pretzels and ginger ale will ease my pain, oh and James and I will both have a Martini please. The Martini option seemed like the best alcohol percentage per dollar we could find, and we weren’t let down. Before we could even suck down the drinks the captain is on the radio telling the flight attendants to prepare for our final destination. I hoped slamming my drink would induce some sort of buzzed state where my stomach could be ignored, it doesn’t.
After we arrive we’re not really 100% sure where we’re going. I guess the baggage area is as good as any to start so we head over there. On the way there’s some strange African exhibit that I ponder the point of.
Atlanta also has people movers in their airport, but unlike O’Hare they lack the 80′s lighting over head. At the end of our brief tour through Africa I find a picture of elephants and shoot a shot of it over to Dana Too from my cellphone because she loves elephants. She doesn’t respond.
Originally our plan is to rent a car and go find a place to stay. James had found this hotel that would be $67+tax a night in downtown Atlanta. I throw the idea out that maybe we could find a hotel near the airport with a shuttle and have the shuttle driver take us to a bar to start our night. The new hotel might cost more but after car rental fees and what not it will be a wash. Plus drinking and driving is against the law so we’d end up having to probably cab everything anyway; there’s better ways to complete number 2: Shake a Police Officer’s Hand.
I haven’t totally convinced James that calling a Hilton is a good idea so we stop in at Hertz to see what kind of car we can get. We’re in luck! If we want to rent they have a sweet Minivan or Truck. It will be a cold day in Hell before I’m driving Atlanta in a family minivan and the truck is expensive. We’re also informed that our coupon for one free weekend day does not apply at the Airport Hertz. Of course not, just like there’s no dollar menu at the airport McDonald’s.
The women at the counter agree we should just stay near the airport for the night and get over there around ten the next day if we want to get our car. We never go back. This however is enough to convince James that we should go find a shuttle. Walking towards the door we stop at a phone area with hotel names and numbers everywhere and decide it’s too confusing to look at but aren’t able to walk away fast enough before some Asian guy asks us to help speak Spanish to a seemingly very frustrated Hispanic gentleman. ¡Lo Siento, No Comprende Español Mi Amigo!
Outside the door ol’ Jimbo takes my phone and calls up Hilton. $99 Bucks a night. That sounds good to us. Unfortunately after hearing the rate he stopped listening and we didn’t catch where to meet the shuttle. After a bit he calls back and it’s discovered that the shuttle will be somewhere around the area 4-9; which good for us we happen to be right there. It’s not coming though, other shuttles keep passing by but not the one we want. Getting bored waiting we start to wonder around the shuttle area and I notice a hand scanner sitting all by itself. The Klepto challenge is calling and I’m praying our shuttle will just pull up some I can steal that scanner and win without a doubt. James on the other hand finds the airport wheelchair to be more interesting and continues to talk about for at least five more minutes about how great it would be to steal a wheelchair over my hand scanner. Some guy eventually asked us what we were looking for and what do you know we’re in the wrong shuttle area.
Heading towards the correct shuttle area we find a Hilton shuttle trying to pull into the parking area. He’s stopped so I walk up to the door and ask if he goes to the Hilton we’re trying to get to. He does and we get inside. Upon entering we say “Hi” to the shuttle driver and some old man who I think was just hanging out. Everyone in the shuttle is checking out the girls outside waiting for other shuttles and we wait to get out of the airport. The old man gives us some tips on where to go out and grab a drink and the shuttle driver backs him up on the recommendation. Good news, it’s right down the street from our hotel too.
And So The Night Begins…
That’s right. All that up there was just to get you to tonight.
We cruise up to the hotel, thank the driver, and hop out and into the lobby. No reservations no problem. We score a room on the first floor for $89. The room is nice! Some how James has never seen a keyboard in a hotel room next to the TV before so I think he attributes this with being nice. The ceilings are high and James makes girl moaning sounds to hear the echo off the walls. My stomach still hurts by the way. Waaaaah why don’t I cry about it some more.
We grab our room keys, the list of tasks and write down the room number then head out. We’re fully prepared to get annihilated. Our first destination by recommendation of old man and shuttle D? It’s called Joe’s and Joe’s sucks. Really, fuck Joe’s. Walking over we pass a fountain and I say we should think about swimming in that later if we’re drunk enough. James isn’t interested in the fountain he just won’t shut up about the fact that it’s sorta warm in Atlanta and that means there could be snakes outside.
Joe's on Sullivan - 2144 Sullivan Rd, Atlanta, GA - (404) 844-5000
Again, Joe’s sucks; far more than this crappy picture James took. What you can’t see here is the complete lack of cars. It’s about 11PM and we were told this place would be hoppin’! What you can’t smell is the stench that encompasses the bar area. As we enter James yells “DIBS!” and proceeds to complete task number 3: Grab a Handful Of Mints. I deny him this task completion because I said we couldn’t do tasks without our clothes that we haven’t purchased yet. It also wasn’t photographed. Later we decide to break this rule but as it stands James never got credit for completing a task.
We sit at the mostly empty bar in the middle of the establishment. We go over the list some more and grab a few beers. I start whining about my stomach again and blaming it for my inability to properly drink a beer to completion. The beer here is horrible, their lines are junk. This night is going to be a huge bust. Night 1 in Atlanta; Fail. Never the less we order one more beer and I find a new Bar on my google maps.
While we are sitting there drinking we start to listen in on the other two business guys sitting to the left of us at the other side of the bar. One was from Colorado, the other from Texas. Protip: When in Atlanta and your bartender is a big black man do not proceed to tell him that “they all look the same.” While you’re busy taking notes you also might want to refrain from insinuating that the two girls who just walked up to the bar are hookers. Though they didn’t seem too insulted by this comment from Mr. Texas so maybe they were after all.
We leave Joe’s on foot again in search of the new bar that is just right up the street from the hotel. James again starts talking about snakes. Sante Fe Bar and Grill does not exist. All is not lost though… while standing around trying to figure out what to do now that our bar is gone we decide to make our first video.I’m going to jump over a bush because it looks hard and I think maybe the beers are kicking in a bit.
But of course I’m too big of a pussy to Jump the Bush. Also to make things more clear, there was a guy watching me from the parking lot and that’s who I was telling “I’m just going to jump this bush real quick” to which I think he replied “I don’t care.”
We’re not really sure where we’re going now but we decide to walk back to our hotel. “I don’t care” guy is standing outside, looks like he’s the porter for the valet service. We talk to him for a few, he doesn’t know where Santa Fe Bar and Grill is either so obviously this is a place of fiction and fairy dust. I can’t remember where he told us to go or do but we didn’t listen because we ended up back at our hotel looking to see how the bar there was. There’s nothing there, nobody. It’s a ghost town. We walk back outside again and I make a comment about swimming in the fountain once more. It’s still too early for that. No change of clothes and I don’t want to get kicked out of the Hilton just yet. James suggests we check out the Marriott across the street.
There’s a lot of cars in the parking lot, and I sort of have to pee for about the 100th time of the night. Apparently it’s in the rules that I’m not allowed to pee in public places so I’m told to hold it until we get inside. We walk into the lobby and I pretend like I have to go to the ATM so that we can scope the place out without the front desk being too suspicious about random dudes wondering their hotel at 12:30 AM. No luck we head back towards the door but spot a sign on the way out. AHA! There is a bar in this hotel! We go around the corner and walk in. There’s people we sit down and I order two beers to double fist James orders one. This place is a little better than Joe’s and a conversation between ourselves starts up about the old name of the United Center but I don’t know why we even bother to have this conversation since neither of us know the real answer. Well James thinks he does but he’s wrong.
We’ve been at this bar for about 30 minutes or so and last call came and went. While we’re sitting there James says we should steal the cook’s hat. This is where I’m a little fuzzy on the details. Here’s an outline of what I remember:
- Cook offers us hats for free, we don’t have to steal.
- We explain why we were going to steal hats, show list of tasks and talk about trip.
- James goes pee and I take a shot with the people across the bar.
- Bartender gives us some advice on the next day. Tells us not to bother with renting a car.
I'm feeling sufficiently drunk here.
The remaining people in the bar seem pretty stoked about our plans and this gets us excited for tomorrow. Bar guy claims that the area we’re planning on visiting, Underground Atlanta is open till 6AM. This means we can really do some serious damage on the list.
We walk out and I have to pee, again. I already peed once while we were in that bar but liquid is shooting through me. As I exit there’s music playing.
This seems fun I grab a 
picture too though my melodies aren’t nearly as nice. Okay fun is over we walk outside thinking we have to find our next place. We’ve kind of decided we’ll show up to Joe’s again. Maybe we’ll see the guy from Texas get knocked out by a huge black man. Outside of the hotel two of the people who I took shots with earlier are having a smoke. We stop by to chat for a few minutes and I invite them to come along with us to Joe’s. I assure them it will be fun and they’ll be back in plenty of time. I figure Joe’s will definitely be more fun when we have more people. It’s 1:45 at this point. Joe’s closes at 2:00 so we don’t have a lot of time left. There’s a shuttle just sitting around outside so we hop in and I ask the driver if he can step on it and get us to the bar. He agrees but reminds us that it closes soon and also says he’s not supposed to do this so please don’t call him to come get us. We tip five bucks for the ride and run out to door of Joe’s…. AND IT’S LOCKED UP AND CLOSED. Seriously this place gets worse by the second. Hughbert our shuttle driver hasn’t left yet so we plead with him to find us something open longer. He hesitates for about 30 seconds then says to come on he’ll drive us somewhere else. This place is too far to walk and he tells us we’ll be needing a cab to get home.
Spondivits - 1219 Virginia Ave, East Point, GA - (404) 767-1569
This place is sweet! It’s filled with people and open till 4AM. As we enter James sees a cop and decides we’re allowed to tasks tonight so he complete number 2: Shake A Police Officer’s Hand. Well at this point it’s on. I mean I didn’t think we were going to do tasks tonight but if that’s the case I’m gonna get a few things done. The first order of business is acknowledging the fact that I’ve just completed a task too. Number 14: Convince a Girl to Relocate. 
As we sit at the bar I get the first round of drinks from the bar. I also just realized I don’t remember paying for the drinks but I’m sure I did. We sit and start going over the task list. Now that the flood gates have opened I want to do anything and everything on the list. We sit and talk for awhile about the possible solutions and our new friends order up two shots four ways, at least that’s how I think it went. I guess there’s something about South Carolina and their old mini bottle laws that makes people order drinks in strange ways. No I think they ordered it even more different than that. Somewhere in my mind 3/4ths and other fractions of numbers are appearing. Really it doesn’t matter, shots are shots and down they went. Someone I’m with decides I should do task number 4: Get a Girl In a Red Top to Write on You. They point to this cute girl, who we come to find later is a monster bitch along with her stupid bitch friend, and tell me to go ask her. Fine I say, I’ll ask the cute girl even though I’m certain she’s not wearing red at all. She’s wearing pink. James grabs the camera and heads over with me. I ask “Excuse me this sounds really stupid but what color is your shirt? “Pink why?” I say “thanks for your time” and walk two tables down where I notice a black woman in a red shirt.
"Come Suck Me"
I convince her to write on me instead and have now completed another task. James complains I need to shave my chest. I don’t know why he cares but it makes me reconsider sharing a hotel room with him.
The chest incident has drawn some attention to us in the bar, not that the hats were keeping us under the radar. People want to know the point of getting my chest drawn on and why I needed a girl in red… so we whip out the list and begin to explain that. Since I’m many beers in right now and a few shots I’m not entirely sure how it all came about but I’ve agreed to get slapped to fulfill another item.
Task #10: Get Slapped By a Girl (18+)
Task Number 1: Get a Girl's Phone Number
This girl is 24 so it counts. Immediately after my slapping James scores her phone number. Damn! I wish I would have thought of that first but oh well. I sit down at the Bar with the Marriott crew and James decides he’s going to go talk to the girl in the pink who originally said she was wearing red. He’s over there showing them the list or something and I’m hanging back agreeing that we’ll leave around 3:30 because now my face hurts and everyone is a little bit tired. James isn’t coming back and I’m intrigued so I go over to say hi to the people he’s talking to. The guy is nice, he’s at school in Butte Montana and surprisingly I might be the only person who knows where that is besides him and the two girls he’s with. After a little bit of talking girl next to me informs me that she might be an undercover cop. Good for her, if she’s seriously trying to brag to me right now that she’s an undercover cop she’s stupid. The girl across from her says out loud “These guys are boring me” and James knows what that means and says goodnight to them and leaves. I stick around for I don’t know why just to talk to them a little more and make sure I indeed do hate these two chicks.
We get another round of drinks and put it away real fast then James pays the tab for that round. As we step outside there’s a cab right there waiting to pick people up. He’s trying to pick up the girl who slapped me at the bar and she’s not really having it. I already like him so we hop in. Everyone piles in the back and I get in the front.
Call For Other Good Deal
I don’t know why but I don’t feel like buckling my seat belt. Stupid things flow naturally to me when I’m drunk so I ask Mr. Andrew the Cab Driver about the seat belt laws in Atlanta and he reassures me by telling me not to worry about it. I value my life so this will be the last time I ever do that. Andrew and I talk about the girl at the bar for a little bit and before you know it we’re back at the Marriott. WAIT STOP THE CAB LOOK AT THAT BUSH. This bush is twice the size of the bush James jumped. I inform the cab that I wish to jump over the bush and Mr. Andrew agrees to stop the meter and let me get out to jump the thing.
I’m not very successful, but at least it was funny.
Mr. Andrew the Cab Driver drops us off and gives us his business card telling us to call him tomorrow for a ride to the train station. He says he just started work early today so if we call him in the morning he’ll still be around if we need a ride. We walk our new friends back to the front of their hotel room, but as we’re walking there we remember something… right before they left with us they hid their pizza from the hotel bar behind a bush to get later.
After saying good night we are going to head back to our hotel. But not before I get another chance to jump over that bush from earlier. We walk around the back of the Marriott towards the original bush location and I break the public urination rule because I can’t stop peeing. 
I remind James to watch out for Snakes and we arrive at the bush again. This time I will do it for real. My judgment is starting to hit rock bottom.
Back to the Hilton we go. We decide that we’ve had a good night after all. It was looking bad but everything really worked out. My stomach didn’t hurt anymore either.
There’s just one thing. I want James to prove he got Miya’s phone number and not some random grouping of digits that leads nowhere so I made him call her and recorded it. Unfortunately I can’t put up the video at this time because aside from basically saying her entire phone number out loud he held it up to the camera for the world to see while he called. So yeah, it’s her number and her glasses aren’t real they’re just for show.
Walking up to the hotel I eye the fountain outside one more time for that midnight swim but can’t figure out how I’m going to get passed the front desk if I do it. Plus, I have no other clothes. We go inside into the room of echos and lay in bed. I write an update to the blog while James falls asleep.
We got a big day ahead of us.
The YouTube Videos didn't upload to here so I'd probably just look at it on the site if you're going to look
The YouTube Videos didn't upload to here so I'd probably just look at it on the site if you're going to look at it.
Yeah, the gaps in the story confused me a bit at first until I figured out the parts I was missing were in the v
Yeah… Facebook wasn't so hot about porting my blog corr
Yeah, the gaps in the story confused me a bit at first until I figured out the parts I was missing were in the videos.
Yeah… Facebook wasn't so hot about porting my blog correctly.
I think that my favorite part about Day 1 was that it was completely unexpected. Just as we thought all hope was lost and that the night was going to suck more than sitting at home by yourself watching Ghost Whisperer on a Friday night, it caught us completely off guard like getting Rickrolled… but in the good way. Another good thing coming out of Day 1 was that of course our adventures with Mr. Andrew were far from over.
The fact that you guys wore the chef hats around town continues to make me laugh.