Alum Escape: May 2009

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Foster Falls (May 29: Day 7)

Friday morning we headed out of Hotlanta and said goodbye to all the fam.

The road between Atlanta and St Louis is pretty boring so I dont have many pics even though nate drove most of the way. Nate did a great job driving, by the way. He only stalled 4 times.

This is the most interesting thing we saw on the first half of the road.

Later we stopped at Burger King to fuel up for some climbing. I found out that my Double Whopper with Cheese had only 1010 calories. YUM!

We stopped an hour past Chattanooga at a SCENEic little climbing spot named Foster Falls.

We needed to make sure we didn't get lost so nate looked up directions on his computer back in Hotlanta. We had no way of printing them so we snapped a pic with my camera.

After enjoying the view for a bit, we got to the fun stuff. Nate knew of a few sport climbs so we strapped up and and went for it. After a few tries, Nate led a 5.10a (then I followed on toprope) aptly named "Tea and Strumpets" - a reference to the american classic "Dumb and Dumber". It's an intellectual comedy about two young chaps leaving their small hometown in the Northeast to explore the great American West.

It was a super sweet climb, but we had to run as St. Louis was still another 6 hours away.

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, which was actually nice because it allowed me to catch up on this blog writing. We did manage to snap a few more SCENE photos.

Photo by Nate

We arrived in St. Louis around 9pm and were immediately treated to a delicious dinner prepared by my brother Matt and his wife Katie. After a few local brews we headed to bed in anticipation of all that St. Louis had to offer tomorrow.

HOTLANTA: May 27-28 (Day 5-6)

We left Charleston early Wednesday morning to head to Atlanta, GA to visit my brother and his family. I had to wake up Nate as we was pretty tired from beer tasting and cuddling all night. I ended up driving the whole way for said reasons, and unfortunately I don't have any scene pictures from the drive to Hotlanta. However, we did see a large female pulled over on the passing lane of a 4 lane highway (each direction). She felt that she didn't need flares or even her flashers on, so she stood infront of her car on her cell phone, sharking for a car to run into her at 75 mph.

We finally made it to Hotlanta early Wednesday afternoon. Chris and his wife Lindsay have produced quite a litter of kids and dogs for themselves:

After hanging out for a few hours we went to a nice Mexican restaurant. After following the advice of The Most Interesting Man in the World, I got myself a Dos Equis. I went wit hthe large glass, not knowing it was actually a Big Gulp cup. Nate got sot down for the first time in 3 tries getting served so I was well ahead of him for hte night. Later we explored the greener side of Atlanta and overD'd.

We woke up early the next morning and Lindsay put Nate's farming skills to the test. He helped her out in the backyard by turning over her garden and placing new soil. She then put my Alum engineering skills to the test when her refridgerator stopped running. Luckily we both passed and we were able to stay another night.

After completing our taskin's I introduced Nate to my scene: Indoor Gym Climbing

Photo by Nate

Its all the fun of outdoor rock climbing minus the SCENEry, and instead of falling onto rocks, your landing on soft foam pads (i.e. way lamer). Its a good workout though and fun to mess around.

We came home, Nate got hit on by some 6 year old girls, ate a ballin dinner and watched LBJ impose his will all over the Majic. All in all Hotlanta was a blast. I will totally miss my family, but not the mosquitos. Next stop St. Louis.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

May 25-26 (Day 3-4) Charleston, SC

After a couple days of living the tough outdoor life in tents, we were ready to take it easy and head to the beach. What better place to go than Charleston, SC to visit our good boardin' friend Alec Stackhouse.

We got up early and knew we needed a hardy breakfast to last us the long 7 hour voyage. We spotted Tudor's Biscuit World a few days ago near our campsite and knew we needed to stop there before we left.

Each biscuit weighed about 1 kg, and they were only $5.95 for 5 of them. Nate was a huge fan! We could only bear to eat about half of them and save the rest for Alec as a housewarming gift. No suprise, he was just as excited to eat them as we were. After taking a bite, he threw the rest into the yard so the wildlife could enjoy the delicious biscuits as well.

Once we arrived at Alec's place, we were pleasantly suprised to see all his nice shit. He and 4 of his friends live on a huge plantation home filled with stuff for me and nate to break.

Around the back there was even more nice shit, including a big dock, a boat, and some old trees.

I felt obliged to take some more artsy photos.

So then we unpacked our car, said hi to all the roommates, and stopped by Alec's sweet retail job. We found out that if Alec sells 10 pairs of Costa Del Mar sunglasses, he gets a free pair! So, we spent the next 5 minutes helping Alec sell some pairs to customers, unfortunately to no avail. However, all of Alec's co-workers were super friendly - they even were nice enough to escort us out of the building!

Anyway, after that we had some time to burn, so we went to the beach to work on our awesome farmer's tans.

Unfortunately, my awesome "body and scalp" sunscreen was absolutely terrible, and now my entire back and chest is bloches of pale and burnt skin. Yum!

After that we went back to Alec's place to do some speed beers and hang out with the Lewisburg crew of Alec, Jeff, Drew, Molly (Nate's crush) and Jamie.

Day 2 was pretty similar to day 1, we spent another day on the beach, and then went back to Alec's place for some more beers.

At this point things got a little loose. Everyone decided it would be a good idea to draw tattoos on each other. Drew's came out really good. He should get a part time job on the beach as a henna tattoo artist.