David's Blog

Labor Day Weekend in Atlanta

It's Labor Day! I've been here in Atlanta all weekend avoiding Hurricane Frances and attending the Mueller's get together / first annual corporate board meeting. I just realized that I haven't blogged at all this whole weekend so I thought it would be a good time to update the site with all that has happened so far.

I left Gainesville with Joy Friday afternoon around 2PM after putting my car in a parking garage at UF to keep it safe from Frances. We headed up I-75, which wasn't nearly as congested as we were told it would be... until we got about an hour or two south of Atlanta.

After we crossed the Georgia-Florida border we stopped for lunch at this Chinese restaurant that we had seen on our way home from Nashville two weeks ago. We got the lunch buffet there and headed back out on the road. That place didn't have the best Chinese, but it wasn't a complete loss either.

As we approached Atlanta we got stuck in some heavy traffic. That really frustrated Joy because she was the one driving. I was sitting patiently in hopes that my calm demeanor would rub off on her. If not then at least I wasn't adding to her troubles.

We finally made our way through it all and to Georgia Tech to pick up Matt. He gave us a quick tour of his dorm and some of its facilities and then we headed to Karl and Jenn's house.

Once we got to Karl and Jenn's we were almost immediately seated for dinner. That was pretty crazy as most meals with The Muellers are -- especially ones with Joe present. I survived it though, and we were on to the next thing. There wasn't really a next thing though, so Matt and I decided that we'd start a game of poker.

That was an adventure all its own. Joy's Dad (Pere) took Joy's car so Matt could take their van, which he almost drove off of this steeeep hill that is Karl and Jenn's driveway. He also nearly hit two trees. That adventure lasted nearly an hour as they had to rig up something so that Dave (Karl's video-game and motorcycle addicted friend) could pull the Van out of this mess with his Range Rover.

Finally we made it back to GeorgiaTech, we grabbed some cards, some poker chips, and Matt's folding chair, which he'd need at the races the next day. We ended up playing pool, poker, and doing other stuff until it was time to sleep. Then we all went to sleep.

Saturday we all woke up early and drove off to the RoadAtlanta raceway, which was about an hour away from where Karl and Jenn live. When we got there we set up our lawn chairs on a ridge at turn 10A -- right by a camping spot and the infield tunnel. We stopped for a few cases of beer, but we didn't get sunblock, so everyone except for Joy's Dad was severely sunburned.

The races were pretty cool, but there was a lot of down time during them, which was quite boring. I actually ended up taking two naps, visiting the Main Paddock Area and the Vendor Village, and getting free stuff while I was there.

There were two specific things that I really wanted to see at these races before I left. I wanted to see someone pass someone else in a turn and I wanted to see someone wipe out on his bike. I saw both of these things and more.

I saw people pass each other a few times, but the best pass was done on the last lap by the two leaders. Duhamel passed some other guy and he did it so closely that their bikes actually touched. Duhamel ended up winning, which was pretty cool because he stayed in second place the whole race only to win it after passing during turn 10 -- two turns before the finish line.

I also saw people wipe out. I saw two right in front of me on turns 10A and 10B. The first one was really cool, because the guy just jumped up off the ground and ran straight back to his bike ready to get back on it, but it caught fire while he was holding it up ready to re-saddle it. This was during a qualifier and I think that he had spare bikes to race in the actual race. The second wipe out was during an actual race and the racer went straight into a sand pit after basically riding and bouncing on his side on the track for a while. It was intense, but he got up and got pissed off. Finally he settled down, but he was out of the race.

That's almost it for the races. I saw a lot of interesting people though. I saw quasi-famous people -- the motorcycle racers. I saw Michael Jordan on a motorcycle from a long distance. (He has a cycling team and a bunch of bikes and stuff too. I got to see all of that in the Paddock area.) That was the closest I had ever been to seeing him in person, because I never got a chance to go to one of his games. I also saw a lot of augmented women. I have a strong intuition that guys who like races of all types also like augmenting all sorts of things and they like large breasted women, so this phenomenon is a natural mating of those two interests in my mind.

After all of that I came home and got to hear about Joy, Mere and Jenn's day. They probably had a better day -- at least for my tastes.

Posted by David at September 6, 2004 07:56 PM