Day 1: Atlanta

Today we woke up early (5:30) to say good-bye to Dad and Beth. We will miss them very much and are grateful that we had this couple of weeks in the same house to spend quality time before our departure. We especially enjoyed watching the karaoke shows and competing as a family—we really need to figure out a way to get on one of these shows and make a million dollars.

After they left for work, we worked like maniacs for the next 6 hours to go through our remaining stuff and pack the Element. Maggie, ever the optimist, estimated that we would be leaving for our trip at 9am. Not so much. We were nearly paralyzed by the weight of all the random items we continued to find during this process. How did we get all of this STUFF? We are happy to be freeing ourselves of most of this weight.

Neil was extremely helpful during our packing. When we stalled out, we all went over to Waffle House in Hillsborough for some rejuvenation. This brought back many memories of me, Neil, and “Stone Face” in high school. We sat at the bar and enjoyed our hashbrowns (smothered and covered, of course) and enjoyed watching the people of Hillsborough do their thing.

At 11:30am, Neil helped us pack the last of our items into the Element. We gave Matzah a kiss, many hugs to Neil, and took a departure picture with the car (see above). It was particularly sad for Maggie to say goodbye to her brother, and we hope that he will be able to visit us in Hawaii this year.

The, WE WERE OFF! We were both too tired to really even appreciate that our journey had started. Maggie fell asleep before we even reached Charlotte, but woke in enough time to document the first “WELCOME TO (insert new state)” sign.
We arrived in Atlanta around 6:30 and broke out the champagne given to us by Ruth and Joe at our luau. David helped us celebrate our first stop in our cross-country journey. David lives in a great apartment in the Virginia Highlands area. After hanging out and admiring his absolutely ENORMOUS television, we went for soul food at EATs. Tommy and David had delicious jerk chicken, and Maggie had turkey meatloaf. Afterward, we got some beers at The Independent, a bar with one of the coolest jukeboxes I have ever seen—it was full of Elvis Costello! Even better, it had a Ms. Pac-Man arcade game. You can see that it doesn’t take much to make Maggie happy.  We returned home to lounge in front of the ENORMOUS television.


Pictures from Day 1:
1. Neil and Maggie at the Wild and Wonderful Waffle House
2. The Redrams and the Element
3. Some tempting real estate just north of Spartanberg.
4. Tommy takes a nap.
5. Celebratory Champagne with David Redram, Tommy’s brother in Atlanta