Here I am in wonderful Marietta, GA (a suburb outside of Atlanta) waiting for a Hot Pocket I bought a little while ago at the Citgo up the road to cool off for consumption. It smells curiously like wet dog (it's supposed to be pepperoni) and my coffee tastes kind of like dirt and french vanilla hot water, but this is the fuel I need to help me document the last couple of days as there was no opportunity for me to get down to business before. We pick up where our hero left off five days ago..
9AM rolls around that Thursday morning in my room at the Microtel and I remember the continental breakfast that was promised upon awakening. Now I'm not sure if any of you guys have had one of these before, but my idea of a continental breakfast must be way different than Microtel's. There was cereal galore, of course, but no milk to use with it as they had ran out. There was one bagel left that was kind of gross and only fake butter left over as the cup that held the packets of real butter was drained of all but one which turned out to just be a wrapper. I toasted my bagel and had my horribly bitter orange juice and got to work packing up and showering. The night before it had come to my attention that I did not, and could not, have any cash on me because I didn't know my pin number to my new debit card. I had plenty of cash on it and no way to access it. My mom wired me some money that I picked up through a local Walmart as a quick fix. I promptly checked out, forgot all of my records at the room, and went to pick up the cash and move on. About half way to my next destination, Cincinnati, I remembered my ill fated records and that I didn't currently have them with me. Luckily they have a contingency plan for that sort of thing and I'm going to meet up with them in Florida when I get there.
The drive to Cincinatti, after the storm of the night before, went without instance. I didn't know where I was supposed to meet Sammi (my CS.com buddy) so I had looked into some record stores the night before and went to one called Shake It! Records in which I blew the rest of my record budget for the year on some gems. I had to leave behind Ice & the Iced which kind of bummed me out, but it was roughly $18 which is kind of out of the question for any one record save this Exploited one I picked up that I'll get into later. My haul this time looked like this:
9AM rolls around that Thursday morning in my room at the Microtel and I remember the continental breakfast that was promised upon awakening. Now I'm not sure if any of you guys have had one of these before, but my idea of a continental breakfast must be way different than Microtel's. There was cereal galore, of course, but no milk to use with it as they had ran out. There was one bagel left that was kind of gross and only fake butter left over as the cup that held the packets of real butter was drained of all but one which turned out to just be a wrapper. I toasted my bagel and had my horribly bitter orange juice and got to work packing up and showering. The night before it had come to my attention that I did not, and could not, have any cash on me because I didn't know my pin number to my new debit card. I had plenty of cash on it and no way to access it. My mom wired me some money that I picked up through a local Walmart as a quick fix. I promptly checked out, forgot all of my records at the room, and went to pick up the cash and move on. About half way to my next destination, Cincinnati, I remembered my ill fated records and that I didn't currently have them with me. Luckily they have a contingency plan for that sort of thing and I'm going to meet up with them in Florida when I get there.
The drive to Cincinatti, after the storm of the night before, went without instance. I didn't know where I was supposed to meet Sammi (my CS.com buddy) so I had looked into some record stores the night before and went to one called Shake It! Records in which I blew the rest of my record budget for the year on some gems. I had to leave behind Ice & the Iced which kind of bummed me out, but it was roughly $18 which is kind of out of the question for any one record save this Exploited one I picked up that I'll get into later. My haul this time looked like this:
- Germ Attak - Ouroboros
- the Joneses - Criminals
- Kegcharge - Sadistic War Glory
- Conga Fury - Chaotic Noise
- Hubble Bubble - S/T
- the Exploited - Innercity Decay
The Exploited record was kind of pricy, coming in at $21, but upon asking two of my friends who are also (if not moreso) big Exploited fans they hadn't even heard of it and couldn't find much info about it on the net, so I figured if anything it was a cool oddity to find.
So after the record shopping, I walked up the road a ways to meet Sammi at this coffee shop called the Sidewinder Cafe or something along those lines. I got a coffee to help me get my brain in motion again and relaxed in quiet observer mode. It didn't take me long after meeting her and her friends for me to notice that they were big into bikes. I mean everyone has their thing, but I have a hard time not discounting a lot of "bike punks" as contemporary hippies. It just seems the vests and patches and crust music is a good way to keep themselves seperate from their other leaf eating bretheren while still maintaining all other aspects. Nothing against their personalities, they were all nice and everything, but I have a hard time taking the sort of people that have words like "co-op" or "collective" in their daily lexicon seriously. Aside from that they seemed to be average college students, just clad in black and with basic knowledge of their decided trend. Er.. subculture.
We went back to Sammi's house, which was a really nice duplex in a pretty decent area, with her friend and her friend's dog (who was totally awesome) and she made us all some kind of vegan spaghetti. To get up to the apartment, there were black iron stairs similar to the ones a fire
escape would have going around the side of the building. Usually I can't stand vegan food and half the time I prefer to even avoid vegetarian dishes, but this was quite delicious. I chowed down and proceeded to sit in silence while more talk of bike rides and meetings for non-profit organizations and stuff were discussed. Her and her friends left to go to some meeting for something or the other, so I took the opportunity to listen to all of my new records several times over and play some guitar. I was amazed at the amount of Calvin & Hobbes books in their bathroom and ended up reading far too much and letting my legs fall asleep whilst defecating.
Upon their return, we went to meet up with some of her friends for some party 10 minutes across the Kentucky border. There was some restaurant or bar or something where a scene was filmed for Rain Man was shot a couple blocks up. This was also a
nice neighborhood which leads me to believe the standard of living is far greater in this area than in the Saratoga or Albany apartments I frequent. This crazy party ended up being a gathering of most of their bike crew at one of their apartments. Everyone was nice and we had some good laughs. Up with all the wall hangings, pictures, posters, flyers, and an electrical tape drawing of Kurt Vonnegut, there was a list of bands for something in Florida called the Fest. I was surprised to see After the Fall listed, another upstate NY band, amongst the bands that had played which was cool to see more local bands in far away places (I had also seen the Tragics 7" at the record store earlier which brought a smile to my face).
A short while after we got there everyone decided to keep going with their ride so we went with a couple of the people there to one of their apartments in which we listened to some records and drank more. I taught one of them how to shotgun a beer which brought on a new activity to follow the already heavy drinking. When people weren't paying attention I kept putting on the Dido CD or the Ryan Adams CD that I had found laying around in the stack of loose discs by the
boom box. To further the hippie aesthetic, the gentleman whose apartment it was started to discuss how punk it was of this one guy to play bluegrass and to live on a farm where he not only brewed his own beer, but he grew his own hops too. I tried not to think too hard about it and drank my MD 20/20 bought at a drive-thru liquor establishment.
We left the party and listened to some good tunes on the way back to Sammi's place where we hung out for a little longer before she departed for bed citing her early morning as reason for it. She showed me the couch which had plenty of pillows and blankets on it so I could be as warm and comfortable as needed and offered to let me stay another night if I wanted. I considered it but the next morning I was awoke too early by her room mate who needed me to move my car so she could get out. I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided I'd get moving. I wrote out my thank you, left Sammi the remainder of my Maddog as a gift of my appreciation, and took off for my next stop. The much anticipated Nashville, TN...
So after the record shopping, I walked up the road a ways to meet Sammi at this coffee shop called the Sidewinder Cafe or something along those lines. I got a coffee to help me get my brain in motion again and relaxed in quiet observer mode. It didn't take me long after meeting her and her friends for me to notice that they were big into bikes. I mean everyone has their thing, but I have a hard time not discounting a lot of "bike punks" as contemporary hippies. It just seems the vests and patches and crust music is a good way to keep themselves seperate from their other leaf eating bretheren while still maintaining all other aspects. Nothing against their personalities, they were all nice and everything, but I have a hard time taking the sort of people that have words like "co-op" or "collective" in their daily lexicon seriously. Aside from that they seemed to be average college students, just clad in black and with basic knowledge of their decided trend. Er.. subculture.
We went back to Sammi's house, which was a really nice duplex in a pretty decent area, with her friend and her friend's dog (who was totally awesome) and she made us all some kind of vegan spaghetti. To get up to the apartment, there were black iron stairs similar to the ones a fire
escape would have going around the side of the building. Usually I can't stand vegan food and half the time I prefer to even avoid vegetarian dishes, but this was quite delicious. I chowed down and proceeded to sit in silence while more talk of bike rides and meetings for non-profit organizations and stuff were discussed. Her and her friends left to go to some meeting for something or the other, so I took the opportunity to listen to all of my new records several times over and play some guitar. I was amazed at the amount of Calvin & Hobbes books in their bathroom and ended up reading far too much and letting my legs fall asleep whilst defecating.Upon their return, we went to meet up with some of her friends for some party 10 minutes across the Kentucky border. There was some restaurant or bar or something where a scene was filmed for Rain Man was shot a couple blocks up. This was also a
nice neighborhood which leads me to believe the standard of living is far greater in this area than in the Saratoga or Albany apartments I frequent. This crazy party ended up being a gathering of most of their bike crew at one of their apartments. Everyone was nice and we had some good laughs. Up with all the wall hangings, pictures, posters, flyers, and an electrical tape drawing of Kurt Vonnegut, there was a list of bands for something in Florida called the Fest. I was surprised to see After the Fall listed, another upstate NY band, amongst the bands that had played which was cool to see more local bands in far away places (I had also seen the Tragics 7" at the record store earlier which brought a smile to my face).A short while after we got there everyone decided to keep going with their ride so we went with a couple of the people there to one of their apartments in which we listened to some records and drank more. I taught one of them how to shotgun a beer which brought on a new activity to follow the already heavy drinking. When people weren't paying attention I kept putting on the Dido CD or the Ryan Adams CD that I had found laying around in the stack of loose discs by the
boom box. To further the hippie aesthetic, the gentleman whose apartment it was started to discuss how punk it was of this one guy to play bluegrass and to live on a farm where he not only brewed his own beer, but he grew his own hops too. I tried not to think too hard about it and drank my MD 20/20 bought at a drive-thru liquor establishment.We left the party and listened to some good tunes on the way back to Sammi's place where we hung out for a little longer before she departed for bed citing her early morning as reason for it. She showed me the couch which had plenty of pillows and blankets on it so I could be as warm and comfortable as needed and offered to let me stay another night if I wanted. I considered it but the next morning I was awoke too early by her room mate who needed me to move my car so she could get out. I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided I'd get moving. I wrote out my thank you, left Sammi the remainder of my Maddog as a gift of my appreciation, and took off for my next stop. The much anticipated Nashville, TN...
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