Our Atlanta Vacation (June 22-25) What a great time!

Jenny & I had been talking for a long time about getting out of town for a while now.  We had discussed a few places and one that kept coming to mind was Atlanta, GA since I lived there for 3 years and she had yet to meet ANY of my friends from down that way.  While at a Tiger game in early may, we looked at their schedule, noticing they were to play in Atlanta the 4th weekend in June.  Half-joking we said to each other. ‘we should go to Atlanta then.’  By the 9th inning, we decided to go!

Friday, June 22nd.  Jenny & I get up at 3am and get ready to head down to the airport.  We touched down in Atlanta by 8pm and proceeded to pick up our rental car. Today was a jam-packed day so we were off to start it.  We took a tour of CNN Studios in Atlanta.  It was really cool and an interesting inside look to CNN. We also happened to see 2 of the day anchors and one of the Headline News sportscasters.  Fun stuff.  After that, we were on to the World of Coca Cocla for a history tour (they just reopened in a new location). We rolled out of there around 2pm or so and grabbed a quick lunch at Chick-Fil-A before heading through Sandy Springs to pick up our Six Flags tickets.  We stopped by Target to get some food and headed over to my friend Matt & Kelly’s house.  Kelly & I became friends as we spent years working together at Sony Music.  Her fiance, Matt Pruitt is a moster guitarist, spent the last few years as a member of the band Injected.  He’s also a great singer/songwriter in his own right.  They’re so great to let us stay with them this weekend.  We got there around 4pm and the 4 of us piled into Kelly’s car and headed to Turner Field where we all watched Kenny Rogers (making his season debut) pitch the Detroit Tigers to a 5-0 shutout against the Atlanta Braves!!  It was an amazing game.  SO much fun! (see the photos taken at the game on my profile).  Post-game fireworks followed and we headed back to the house where we grabbed some late night grub before heading to bed. A great first day in Atlanta!

Saturday, June 23rd.  We slept in a bit.. and that was fine with us.  Jenny, Matt, Kelly, their friend Jacob, and myself all went out and grabbed lunch at Chili’s.  Stories told and food eaten.  We headed back to the house and played some Nintendo Wii.  That was fun.  We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out a bit before Jenny & I left for the night. Around 6, we headed up to Duluth to stay with Ben & Kim Rowell (and their new baby, Roman). I’ve known Ben & Kim for 4+ years now.  We met when I started working with and co-manging Ben’s former band Big Sky.  We finally got to meet little Roman.  Such a great and adorable baby.  Ben cooked us a gread BBQ dinner which we all ate, talked, reminisced and just had a great evening that capped off with some Cheesecake and more great convo.  We crashed at about 12:30 or so.. Tired but yet another GREAT day on Vacation!

Sunday, June 24th.  Ben, Kim, Jenny, Roman, & I headed out to grab a great burger lunch.  We headed back to their house where Ben & I went over some Backspace Records business. And also listened to some Big Sky for kicks.  Running a little late (it’s hard to leave when you’re having a great time hanging out with great friends), we made our way to Alpharetta.  My good friend Danny (and former roomate) planned a GREAT BBQ get together.  Lisa, Marlise, Jen, Jamie, Danny, & Sarah were all there!  Thank you to all of you who came out and helped me reaffirm what great friends I have in Atlanta.  It was crazy having Jenny hanging out in the house I lived in over 6 months before I even met her.  I’m gad she got to finally meet all these names she hears about.  We left Danny’s house at about 9:30 and headed back towards Matt & Kelly’s. Picked up some Ray’s pizza and watched the rest of the Tigers game.  Matt and Kelly finished their movie and we hung out for a good while. We stayed up hanging and listening to music with Matt until like 3am… which normally isn’t totally late… but we had to get up by 8 to head to Six Flags.

Monday, June 25th.  Stopped by Matt’s work on the way and said hello.  We got into Six Flags just after 10am and hit the rides running.  We were getting tired from our vacation but still having fun.  The rain hit around 3:30pm so we opted to grab some food and hit up the gift shops.. well slowing down was all It took for us to realize we were done and tired.  So as the rain tapered off a bit, we headed back to the EZ Rent-A-Car and turned our car back in before being shuttled to the airport.  Checked in early at 6pm and noticed at this moment that our 8:05pm flight to Detroit was delayed to 9:15pm.  No big deal… we’ll go grab dinner at one of the concourses.  So we did.. I got crappy pizza from Sbarro’s and Jenny some pasta.  off to our gate which was moved next door as I recall. We waited and waited.  Wanting to get some food and knowing we’d have some time, I headed towards Popeye’s chicken and noticed that our flight had been delayed further to 10:55pm… So we sit and wait at our gate… so bored and frustrated.  We wait some more.. I said out loud “when are we going to board?” and then looked at my phone, noticing it was 11:02pm.. I stand up and look at the board at the gate and our flight info is still up and says on time for 10:55pm new departure… So I hopped in line to ask what the deal was now and as I do so, our flight disappears from the board there.  After nearly 15-20 minutes of waiting for an agent to finally show up, I ask and she replies… ‘the flight moved to gate XX we announced it 3 times.. didn’t you hear?’  so in a rush, I grab Jenny, telling her quickly that they moved the gate… we rush down to the new gate (which we never heard about)… the woman at the counter says ‘oh the flight to detroit is long gone.’  WHAT THE F$CK!?  Waiting for this flight for 4-5 hours.. and we MISSED it.. so she says ‘we can put you on a flight to detroit at 9am’  we took it.. and jenny being quick thinking, thought to ask about flint… they had one flight still going to flint… scheduled to depart at 1:15am.  Frustrated and down right mad.. we take those seats to Flint and go to our new gate.  We grumbled and cursed (under our breath) our way over to the new gate for the new flight.  We recognize a few folks who were sitting at the Detroit gate.. interesting.  Then, a guy sat down next to me, visibly annoyed as well… so we struck up a conversation and it turns out that his story was almost exactly like ours!!  And here the woman at the counter tried so hard to convince me that I was wrong about the whole gate change / missing flight thing.  So this makes me even more pissed off.. and we spent the rest of the wait for our 1:15 flight complaining about Airtran.  Feeling a little better but still soooooo tired we finally board the plane at 1:45 (even a half hour later).  So we finally arrive in Flint (luggage in Detroit) at 4am (only 6 hours late!).  So we get home at 4:30 and crash hard… dealing with the baggage issue today (Tuesday).

So Airtan flight rant aside…. This really was an amazing trip / vacation!  Jenny & I have to thank Matt, Kelly, Ben, Kim, Danny, Sarah, Jamie, Marlise, Lisa, and Jenn for taking so much time out of their weekend to have us, host us, and make us even more thankful for having you all as great friends… I’m so glad that the most important woman in my life finally got to meet most of the important friends in my life!  Thank you all!  So with that.. I am going to sleep some more and catch up on the sleep I didn’t get the last two nights!  We hope to see you soon, Atlanta!