The ATL

Road Trip! To see the photo album, click here! (This photo thing is new to me, so comments are welcome.)

Thursday: "Commish!"

The plan for this trip was to get down to Atlanta in time for the UVA/Georgia Tech football game on Saturday, so I took a couple of days off to start my drive by going from DC to Richmond, to crash out a night before making the big eight-hour drive from Richmond to Atlanta the next day. I have a couple of friends that live in Richmond nowadays, but I haven't seen one of them in many, many months--Maria Schweitzer. Schweitzer lived in my dorm first-year, so whenever I see her, I am greeted with...

"COMMISH!"

I walked into Maria's very handsome one-bedroom apartment in a new development in Richmond's suburbs after a traffic-laden drive, and after getting the big hug I threw down my things and looked for a big couch to slap my big ass onto to relax and catch up. There was one catch--

Although she's been living in this apartment since July, she hasn't bought any furniture yet, save for a bed.

"Yeah...remember how I was telling you that the place was kinda sparse? Well, see, I wasn't kidding!"

Schweitzer laid it out for me: although she has been in this apartment for four months, she has a boyfriend that lives in Europe--Portugal, I believe--and she spends an inordinate amount of cash going overseas to visit him, hence the lack of cash for silly things like furniture. I have never dated someone overseas, so I couldn't really comment on where my priorities would be, but it did seem odd that Schweitzer's living room had about 20 boxes still unpacked, a half-moon wicker chair that she's had since college, and a so-new-it-might-not-be-hers vacuum cleaner, complete with the original box tossed into a corner. Hey, let me put it in print--it may have been barren, but Maria's apartment was clean as a whistle.

[Sidenote: After visiting Maria, I'm thinking about a new Bellview essay series on friends' apartments. There have got to be other jewels like this one locally, and to think, I have untapped material right under my nose!!]

I razzed Schweitzer about some other stuff, but as always, it was good catching up. I hit the sack (and, by "sack", I mean "sleeping bag", because that's what she threw at me before I tucked away for slumber) and rose at 5:30 to hit the road.

Friday: The ATL!

Okay, the drive from Richmond to Atlanta isn't the sexiest thing out there (unless you love barren landscapes and billboards touting "Dockside Dolls" or other reputable Southern businesses; no lie, one of the strip joints touted "Free Showers", the scariest thing I have ever read), but the drive is soothing for a road trip junkie like myself. I mean, I LOVE road trips, and I think I love them more and more because no one I know loves them like I do. It's like the one thing I can guarantee will turn off a friendship--"wanna take a road trip?" People seem to be less and less in love with hopping in the car for a roadie, which is sad, because road trips are what seeing America is all about.

This time around, I stopped off at the Prime Outlets in Gaffney, not exactly the most original thing to do until you factor in that locals work at these stores. So, imagine going to a Hugo Boss Factory Store in South Carolina...the people actually talk to you without the attitude, and they actually care about you having a nice day! It's fuckin' crazy! When they say "Come back and see us!", they actually want to see you again! You almost don't believe that these people are working in retail, because they seem happy to be at these jobs. Man, the kids working at the local malls here in DC don't know how good they've got it.

I got to Atlanta (a.k.a. Phatlanta) in time to see my friend Claudia, who just had her first child a few weeks ago. Her daughter Ella is adorable, but for me, the thing I adore the most is seeing my newly-minted parent friends doing parent-like things, and watching Claudia in her new element was pretty cool. None of this really surprises me any more--just on a quick count, I have 9 other friends that have kids, three of whom have two kids--but it's fun to see any of them try to estimate how their lives will change before they actually have the child and then to see them after they have the child...it's beautiful. Ella is so young (four weeks) that when I came over, Ella was still in bed and she was wrapped in a cocoon that made her look like a doll; save for the fact that Claudia claimed that was her baby, Ella didn't look real at all. Awesome.

Blew outta Claudia's place and went over to see my buddy Scott "Domesticized" Bryant and his girlfriend Nora, since I was crashing at their domicile later that night. Although the two of them claimed that they are consultants that are constantly on travel, their house (more correctly, Nora's house) looks like a Crate and Barrel catalog; beautiful accoutrements to their simple yet homey split-level made Scott look like the sixth Queer Eye and Nora look like a part-time consultant from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." (You're right, I've never seen either of those two shows, but play along, okay?) From the bedrooms to the couches to the aquariums to the matching dinner plate collections (don't most unmarried couples have stray plates here and there?), I couldn't contain myself as I took the tour. Scott claimed, after showing me the basement master bedroom suite, that a gay couple lived there prior to their move-in and did most of the design work; maybe, but either way, I was slightly green with envy. The pad was sexy. Did I mention that Nora's a big football fan, too? Talk about hitting the home run ball; good work, Mr. Bryant.

I went to the Bull Roast that night, a traditional UVA function where folks show up, eat pulled pork, drink and go home; it was mostly uneventful for me, since I knew almost no one there, but Karl "Big Money Biscuits" Shin did a A-class job putting the thing together. Guy's a monster. The band, a group called The Tams, made up for a $40 entry fee...that, and the fact that Karl kept feeding us free drink tickets.

Saturday: UVA 30, GT 10

Yeah, the good guys won the game, but anyone watching this game knows a couple of things:

The UVA offense is really, really not good. They're not bad, they're just not good. Here's what I mean--we run two-receiver rollout plays to the short side of the field so much it's amazing we ever make first downs. One of those two receivers is Heath Miller, a.k.a. The Best Tight End in the Country according to ESPN. So, he sees a double team almost every time now on his routes. That means we really have just one receiver running curls on the short side of the field all the time. Sure, our QB is 5'9" and he can't see over our offensive line, but we have to get more creative in, oh, a week...otherwise, you KNOW that Frank Beamer and Friends over at Virginia Tech's offices will have us figured out by the end of the first quarter in that game.
We have a linebacker core right now that I would put against any three guys in the history of college football...which, for me, means the last 25 years or so worth. Seriously, Ahmad Brooks, for lack of a better term, is a man-child...and, I have an internal debate every week as to whether or not he's better than Daryl Blackstock, for my money the best all-around defensive player in the ACC. He's the kind of guy that in one or two years will be Ray Lewis-level good. I'm not even being bold by saying that; when you see Blackstock playing in person, you realize that his coverage abilities match-up well with Lewis, but it's the speed that is downright scary. Add Kai Parham to the mix, and seriously, you put this group against Ohio State from the late 90s, or Washington from the early 90s, or maybe Florida State from a few years ago...man, this is scary. Brooks will probably come back next year, but he's gone after that for sure...I don't think he's even attending classes any more, kind of like Bobby Sura from FSU a few years ago.
Georgia Tech fans suck. Man, I thought UVA's basketball fans suck...they do, but GT's fans really suck. Getting in and out of the stadium was so easy I thought there was a women's lax contest going on. (Sorry, women's lax fans.) The GT fans were punchless when the home team needed them most...you just got the feeling that they knew their team sucked, and that watching them lose wasn't "if", it was "when."

After getting back to Nora's place, it was a quick nap and on the road again, this time up to South Carolina to see my friend Beth. It was a quick night of catching up and getting some sleep...I had a big event planned for Sunday.

Sunday: The Monster Thickburger!

I woke up to the sounds of Beth's kids, 4 1/2-year-old Sam and nearly two-year-old Sarah, running rampant throughout the house, but on this day, I needed to stay calm, relax and recuperate. I had a piece of fruit for breakfast, read a couple of magazines, experimented with Beth's husband Blanton's new TiVo (soon, everyone will own one...EVERYONE) and generally laid around...but, when Beth & Co. came back from church, Blanton walked up to me and asked

"So, you ready?"

"Let's do it."

Blanton drove me to the local Hardee's for the most anticipated moment of the weekend outside of seeing my friends: eating the new Monster Thickburger, a burger so large it requires two large words to describe its being. We walked in and I decided on the spot that it would be useless to eat just the burger, so I went ahead and got the Monster Thickburger Combo--a burger, a small fry and a small drink. It should be noted that a small soda at Hardee's is a 24-ounce cup (prompting me to ask the cashier, "This is your small?"), so when you take into consideration a 24-ounce Coke, the nutritional value of this meal was going to be...

Monster Thickburger: 1400 calories, 104 grams of fat
Small fries: 390 calories, 19 grams of fat
"Small" Coke (24 oz.): 310 calories

After taking pictures of the signs outside and inside, we drove home so that others would see me devour this monstrosity (pun intended) and so that people would be around to call a coroner should I succumb to this thing. Before taking my first bite, I called a few friends, plus my mom, just in case I had an on-the-spot heart attack. Hey, you never know, right? After all of this, I took a big bite, chewed it all up, had a splash of my soda, and then I looked up at frightened onlookers:

I'll tell you what...that Monster Thickburger is fuckin' good!

Sure, I had one of those immediate eyes-are-way-too-dilated moments, like when the Simpsons go to Japan and they try to watch TV there; man, I could literally feel those calories running through me, there were so many of them consumed with each bite of the damned thing. And yes, buttering the buns does make a difference; I love that those guys at Hardee's decided that putting more lard on the buns was a good move, because even though it's bad for me, it tastes so damned good. The four slices of bacon are four full slices of bacon, two on top and two on bottom, meaning that if wrapped correctly, you will be consuming about a eighth of a piece of bacon with every bite.

It was so disgusting that when I tried to explain the taste to Beth's mom (who had stopped by after church) after finishing it, I thought she was going to throw up, she looked so stunned that another human being would put themselves through such a thing. I haven't decided yet if the burger or the experience was better, but both were pretty cool at least once. Most of you pansies will pass up this opportunity, but for those that give it a roll, man, I think you'll be happy you did.

I spent the rest of the day trying to fight off a food coma; we did go see a movie but otherwise chilled out. I had to make the drive back to DC the next day, so I needed to conserve my strength. Hey, eating two days' worth of food at one meal takes a lot out of a man, you know?

(To see the photo album for this road trip, click here.)

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

Karl Shin in bright orange pants: Opening Weekend
UVA men's b-ball beating a ranked team in November: $9.50 Show
Fantastic egg-and-bacon casserole...until you factor in that you're going to have bad gas all day: Matinee
Video game withdrawal: Rental
The Malice at the Palace: Hard Vice

bellview--whole lotta zoomin'

The ATL