The East Coast...In a Flash!

Sorry once again to everyone for the delay in posting. We didn't have too much internet access and frankly, spent more of our free time enjoying the end of the trip! Also...we recently passed the 2000 hit marker! (The ticker is at the bottom for those of you who haven't noticed) Thanks for reading everyone and the trip is almost over, so keep checking in and enjoy the blog while it lasts.

So...to catch you up on our recent travels. Andy left off last in Florida on August 7th and since then we've been to Atlanta, Greensboro North Carolina, Baltimore, Washington DC, Philly, Germantown and now Boston! The end of this trip has sure gone by in a flash. It seems like only last week when we were partying it up in San Diego with Matt.

We made our way from West Palm Beach to Atlanta, Georgia where we stayed with our friend Megan Bucheit from Northeastern. Megan's working for a music festival planning company down there for the summer, traveling all over the country as well from music festival to music festival. It actually sounded like a blast...another great way to spend a summer. So we got to her place in the evening and after catching up and resting up we headed out to a bar called the Vortex. It was a cool place and the best part is they had a bingo style game going on called "DRUNK". So we had some food and some beer and played that which was a lot of fun, and we even won some prizes! I got a gift certificate, so that paid for some of our grub. Andy got a chattering skeleton toy thing (hard to explain), and some other halloweenish flavored items like a rope with skulls on it and a skull bowl. Not sure what was up with the theme of the prizes, but it was a good time nonetheless.

The next day, Meg had to work so Andy and I spent the day seeing the sights of downtown Atlanta. We drove into the city (again, the public transit here was sub par it seemed) and first got some much needed food at a taqueria. I got the "diablo burrito" and, despite that it seemed pretty tame at first, I was sweating it out by the end due to its spiciness. After that we went to the Aquarium. It boasted the reputation of being one of the best aquariums in the world, and honestly it lived up to that. The place was HUGE! We saw whale sharks, other types of sharks, beluga whales, sea otters, just about every type of fish you could imagine, crocodiles, poisonous frogs...you name it we probably saw it. One of the bigger tanks had a tunnel built at the bottom so you could walk through and look up to see all the animals swimming above and around you. That was really awesome.

Across the street was the World of Coke so we headed there next. It started off with a lady talking about the history of the company and showing us all kinds of different memorabilia, new and old. The oldest thing they had there was a soda fountain from the late 1800s that you might find in a pharmacy, where Coca-Cola was originally sold. It was pretty cool. Then we saw a "4D" movie, which was a 3D movie but there were special effects as well like moving seats and mist sprayers and some weird thing that poked you in the back to pretend like a bug was stinging you. Scared the crap out of me, that's for sure. After the movie, we walked around a bit, saw a polar bear (mascot, fake), then went to the tasting room where we could sample 54 different beverages produced by Coke around the world. There is no way anyone could ever do all 54 though, wayyy too much sugar.

After that, we were super excited for the game because my friend from home, Joe DeBoer, and two of his buddies from work were meeting us to go to the Braves game that night! They work for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and were in Chattanooga, Tennessee for training which is only a couple hours from Atlanta. It didn't seem like they were going to be able to make after talking to them early in the week, so when we found out they were coming it was a great surprise. Two of Megan's friends also joined us at the game, so we had the biggest crew we've had at any game with the eight of us. The game started off on a good note, as I caught my first t-shirt toss t-shirt out of those air canons that they shoot off. I got pretty luck though, because he was aiming for the upper deck and it hit some rafters and fell back down to the lower level and I just happened to be walking by after getting a drink or something. You know what they say though, sometimes its better to be lucky than good. The Braves were playing the San Francisco Giants and we got to see a pretty good matchup between Tim Lincecum (last year's NL Cy Young Award winner for the best pitcher in the league) and Jaer Jurrjens of the Braves. It was a good game, and Eric Hinske blasted a homer in the sixth to help propel the Braves to a home victory. More importantly, I won 5 bucks as Hinske was my pick of the night in Home Run Derby! Atlanta won 3-2 in a great game.

I'll leave it at that for now. Atlanta treated us well and much thanks to Joe and Megan! It was great seeing you both! From here we were headed up to Greensboro, NC to stay with more of Andy's tremendously large family, this time his Uncle Tim. More will be coming tonight or tomorrow so be sure to check back.