HeAthens hangovers and fried foods
Friday night saw the return of one of my favorite bands to town Drive by Truckers, give them a listen if you've never checked them out before. Met up w/ some friends at the Yacht Club in Little 5 Points before the show to have a few drinks and "warm up" for the evening. Hit the door and hit the floor just as the Truckers were going on stage, they burned through a couple of favorites like Annette, about half way through the set I look to my left and see....FREDDY! One of the co-owners of Sweetwater. He looks down at the beer in my hand, Miller High Life (one of my 2 fav cheap beers) grabs the bottle and tosses it out and hands me two 420s, lets just say the night went downhill from here. I had planned on staying relatively lucid b/c I had to be up the next day for the Lisa Lee ride, however that didn't quite happen.
The show was amazing, the band is still on their From the Dirt tour and they were doing a mostly accoustical set. Patterson sounded good despite having some vocal issues early on, however after the second bottle of Jack Daniels gave up the fight to the band he started sounding better. Here's a few pics from the show, sorry for the crappy quality but the only thing I had was my cell phone.....
Ok, can you see the sweet devil moon overlooking the stage? That's an original piece by one of my favorite artists wes Freed, www.wesfreed.com He does the artwork for all of the Truckers album covers and has some amazing pieces, check him out and buy some of his work!
Sat morn came and the alarm went at 7:00, open my eyes and bring on the pain..... yep I was drinking last night.... yep I've got to get moving, told Code Red I'd be there by 9:00..... Nope can't quite find balance yet, back to bed. An hour and 5 glasses of water and one glass of Jittery Joes coffee later I was on the road headed for Chicoppee, running late and feeling guilty about it. I've had this issue of being on time that I've been trying to work on lately, I'm not one to run hours late, but I'm very guilty of constantly running 15 minutes behind the rest of society. Enough to where my friends have made the joke of "Matt time" where they would tell me to be somewhere 20 min before I actually had to be there so I'd be on time. Now I won't make excuses, it's just poor planning on my part and I feel bad about it, so I've been trying to be better about it. Which is why I was driving so hard and fast to make up time and get there. Thankfully no runins w/ the law b/c I really can't afford another ticket right now.
I pull into the parking lot and everyone is already on the trail, I was actually happy about this b/c I wasn't too sure about riding with a group as I wasn't too sure the contents of my stomach were going to actually stay there. There was a punch ride going on, I love these things b/c it makes for a fun mini race against yourself to see how many punches you can get in as short of an amount of time. Ended up with 5 of 6 b/c even though I was feeling better I really didnt feel like riding zig-zag. Oh yeah I forgot to tell you why we were there! Lisa Lee is a local and fellow cyclist who has been having some health problems as of late. Her health insurance covers most of her treatments however it doesn't cover things like food, gas to treatments and prescription medications, all of which are things that add up fast. So this ride was to benefit her and last I checked we ended up raising somwhere in the nature of $2700!
Sat night we met over at Bam-bam and Pebble's place to load up on the bikes and head over to the North Ga state fair, we were definitely in the minority among cigarettes and chevrolettes that were lining the roads as we rode past them on two wheels. We saw all the sites of the fair like the giant snake, 100 lbs rat, and the man eating chicken (ok so there were more than one of these, but that joke always cracks me up) The highlight was defintely the King BMX stunt show, these guys were throwing down big time going huge above the ramps. Pulling backflips and turn down 360s! I never get bored watching that stuff, there was some flat land riding mixed in and that took me back to the old days, riding my diamond back w/ the gyro headset and trying to do bar spins, watching my neighbor Teddy knock out his front teeth trying to do the same trick, we all kind of gave up trying after that day. So now that I've made my yearly trip to the fair, I've also amassed my yearly allowance of deep fried foods so today marks a new chapter in my riding plans. I'm not having to work as much now, so I'm going to take advantage of the fall weather and get some more rides in starting tonight. Hope to see y'all out there, P.O.A.S.
Matt-
(p.s. sorry for the long post, I'm still trying to figure out the art of condensing what I have to say)
