Chicago > ATL epic drive

We loaded the van at Quencher’s and immediately hit the road towards Atlanta. The plan was to drive as far as possible during the night without dying and then picking up the driving in the early AM.

I put on the audiobook version of A Bit of a Blur by Alex James, who is one of my bass heroes and is also rather entertaining to listen to reading about his rise to fame with Blur. Call it our version of a tour movie, like Spinal Tap was to so many bands before us.

Somehow our GPS had us driving through the sketchiest part of Gary, IN in the middle of the night. It was bizarre and quite frightening. 

We drove straight down toward Indianapolis. We drove through what I thought was an airport at first, but it turned out to be an endless row of blinking red lights for miles and miles. It took literally 15 minutes of driving through this weird field of lights until it finally faded into the distance. I thought we were going to get transported to some space station or something. 

Just about the time Alex James was rushing to the hospital to see the delivery of his twins, we were a few miles outside Indianapolis and it was nearly 4am. I decided to pull into a rest stop (the next one was 75 miles away and I didn't think I could drive that much longer). We set our alarm for 6:30am and decided to catch a few hours of shut eye. Except no one did. First of all, it was freezing in the van, and Will and I had no blankets. There were bright rest stop lights glaring in from every direction. And tho Nadia was wrapped in blankets, the images of Gary made Nadia have paranoia about sexual predators and truck drivers. So None of us slept very well. 

When the alarm went off Will took over the driving. Actually he kind of grunted and wobbled to the rest rooms first, and then he climbed into the driver's seat and grunted and commenced driving. The sun was coming up as we drove past Indianapolis:

The sun was well up by the time we crossed the border into Kentucky and into Louisville:

And onward toward Nashville:

I might add at this juncture that Nadia was sleeping this entire time. And Will and I were in the front making funny videos of her sleeping. Yea, I suppose that's kind of creepy, but that's what you get for sleeping through two states. We pulled into our first Waffle House (and Nadia's first ever) somewhere in Kentucky north of Nashville. We woke her up in the Waffle House parking lot and all her dreams came true!

One thing about being in Kentucky: You can still smoke in restaurants. I did. And then instantly thought it was pretty gross. We all did. 

Finally into Tennessee and Nashville:

It was quite confusing being in these middle states. We kept on going back and forth between Eastern and Central time zones and we never had any idea what time it was. So we entered Georgia sometime around 12:30 or 1:30pm. No idea. Did I mention we only slept for a couple hours? 

We finally rolled into Atlanta in the late afternoon and went straight to Little Five Points and the Vortex, which is where Jeremiah suggested we go. There was some dude getting arrested outside when we rolled up. And we met up with our friend Lauren. We were pretty crazed by this point:

 

I ate a black bean burger with a salad, Will had a salad and a veggie chili, and nadia had tuna salad sandwich with a salad. Yea, we like salad. We were craving it, actually. I think our collective brains were begging us to consume something healthy for a change after being abused by hours and hours of being trapped in the van, and coming from the midwest and fried everything.  amusingly enough we chose to eat salad at the home of the double coronary bypass burger

thanks jeremiah joyce you meat loving caveman!

We headed to Wonder Root after dinner, and I made the mistake of thinking coffee would somehow help me feel better. I got an iced coffee and downed the delicious beverage in a matter of minutes. And then it made me feel like I was going to die. I hate coffee. I will never drink it ever again. 

We got to wonder root and nearly mowed over a pack of bikers who were occupying the parking lot shared with wonderroot and drinking beers. luckily, we didnt. but maybe our lack of wallet chains and leather led them to believe we were gay. 

anyway! the first band was places which was really a one man band by nico, the drummer of the second band the compartmentalizationalists. we love nico. we want to take him home in our pockets. and listen to him play and self deprecate all of the time. 

nico of places and compartkejs,n,sdnsdffists

Then the compartmentalizationaliists played. most notably, the theme from kids in the hall! awesome!

they also played with andy warhol wigs on, which is always awesome.

then we played. it was purty good! the speakers couldnt handle our major bass noises so it sounded kind of like farts. but generally speaking the show was a success! thanks to our atlanta friends for coming out!

then new animal played and they had a big following despite the fact that it was their first show ever. new animal was great and we expect to hear big things about them in the future!

Thank you so much to Sean from Small Reactions for putting us up in his mansion! Nadia is really so sorry that she single-handedly destroyed both your bathrooms in one fell swoop. We assure you it had nothing to do with the toilet. we swear.

We finally got to getting to bed around 2am. our epic journey finally come to a close. On to Chapel Hill!