Friday, August 6, 2010

Weather; scenery; things to eat


We beat our estimated ETA for Huntsville by an hour—because we forgot we’d be crossing back to Central Time at the state line. To propitiate the cosmic weather dudes (who did not altogether forsake us in Atlanta, showing up in the latter afternoon with some serviceable breezes to ameliorate the heat) we are again hiding in our rooms for a few hours until we rendezvous with Cousin Midge this evening.

Northern Alabama is prettier than expected, and our route has taken us through what I gather are some of the higher elevations in the state. Billboards seem far scarcer, at least between towns, than they were in Georgia. With Jeanne at the helm we rolled through a couple of dramatic squalls in the last hour before Huntsville, including about five minutes of rain so vehement and blinding that we’d have gratefully pulled off the road had there been some practical place to do so. That front appears to have missed the city, regarding which we have yet to form an impression save that it is on the warm and humid side.

We betook ourselves to the streets of Atlanta yesterday evening, wandering about in the “Centennial Park” from the 1996 Olympics, where a musical fountain played the 1812 Overture and the theme from Chariots of Fire to the slack-jawed astonishment of onlookers, and then to “Atlanta Underground,” which we earnestly exhort our readers to miss on their next visit, and where we had in a “sports bar” possibly the least distinguished meal of the expedition to date, and I’m including fast food joints here. Sated, or at least put off the whole idea of solid food for a while, we headed back toward our stark but inexpensive digs, traversing along the way a pretty tree-lined block designated “historic” and featuring three or four promising-looking eateries, all of them closed.

This morning Greg found us a quite serviceable breakfast place, “Rise and Dine,” at some distance from the Motel 6, which was pleasant because the drive took us through several green and stately residential precincts. All this was amply documented by Kinsey, who has now taken over 2700 pictures since the seventeenth.

In the previous entry I neglected to mention, speaking of fast food joints, that somewhere outside of Macon yesterday we stopped at a “Chick-fil-A” for poultry-premised sandwiches, and while I was discarding the styrofoam integument I noticed a sign—could it have been an actual plaque?—commending the restaurant (which, I should mention, also has a sign in the window proudly proclaiming that none of the chain’s outlets conduct business on the Lord’s Day) for its courage—its courage—in arranging for its exterior electric signage to flash the message “Happy Birthday Jesus” on Christmas day. “Wow!” I exclaimed, perhaps a shade too loudly, “What kinda brass ones does it take to come right out and say ‘Happy Birthday Jesus’ in central Georgia? And in, you know, in public and all?” I was prepared to enlarge on the subject, but by this time Greg had already pumped up the air pistol, hit me with a thorazine-tipped dart and hustled me out to the car.

Above: Never on Sunday. A Chick-Fil-A poultry-derived sandwich

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