Today we took off for Athens, to see the university where Bill went to college and the birthplace of REM and the B52s. It's the first state university in the United States (circa 1785), with a few of the old buildings still standing. It's a rather nice college town, and Katie liked the big art bulldogs (is every town doing this kind of thing now? It's just not as clever after you've seen 4 or 5 versions) and so here's her series:
Later in the afternoon, we met the real thing, Munson, the nephew of "Uga 6" and his owner. Katie was a little afraid of the gentle bulldog, partly because his breating sounded a little like a growl. Poor guy. Someone needs to breed noses back onto these guys.
Tomorrow is Saturday, and I'm hoping to go garage saling early in the a.m., before we go check out Atlanta. Sunday is supposed to begin a rainy spell that will last until we leave here, so tomorrow's our big day to see the Coca Cola factory and eat at the Varsity, and stuff like that...
(Friday morning) Well we managed to stay in Atlanta for a week and never made it to the famous Varsity hamburger stand. We did, however, see some of downtown, including Olympic Centenial Square and CNN:
And we toured the World of Coca-Cola, which sounds cheesy but was very very touristy but also pretty cool.
Mark's at the back of the line, which is short here, compared to later that morning.
Oh, I must be drinking this stuff for my brain!
They showed all the incarnations that the bottles went through; here's an early one with a label:
I loved seeing the imitators; why didn't Celery Cola catch on?
Here's the first prototype of our modern bottle. Only two like this exist. I like it better than the real thing.
There were kiosks discussing the secret formula (it still contains a little cocaine) (just kdding), there was a soda fountain created with genuine soda fountain stuff from the 1930s, with a soda jerk (but a nice guy) showing how they made cherry cokes back then, a small theater showing all the old TV commercials back-to-back (I hate commercials but stood there a good 15 minutes watching them. They were really beautful, many of them) and the whole thing ended in rooms where you could get free fountain drinks. here is one of them:
The best of the free coke rooms (which gave out Tab, root beer, 40 different drinks they said) had a machine which sent sprays of water jumping onto a pad, to start your drink flowing. Kinda hard to describe, and I didn't take out the camera because the room was so packed with people. The whole tour was like that, but seeing how many folks were lined up waiting to get in outside, you can't really blame them. The young folks working the building were very nice, and one woman took the time to answer some of my questions. Here's what I learned...
It is true that Coca-Cola used to be made with real cane sugar here in the United States, but is now made with corn syrup. The change happened in the 1980s, when we changed to New Coke and then "Classic" coke. Classic coke, which is what you get today in the US, isn't as sweet as the old coke from our youth, which had the cane sugar. (Of course, it's still too sweet for me, so I drink Diet Coke). But, if you go to Mexico and buy a coke there, they still use cane sugar. Apparently, each country buys the rights to the formula, and they're allowed to use whatever sweetners they have available to them. Also she said the Mexicans add lime to theirs. Sounds yummy.
Oh, one more thing. Corn syrup isn't kosher, so at Passover, Coke makes 2-Liter bottles of kosher Coke, and they are made with the old cane sugar. Maybe you can find it sometime. I have tried, but not successfully (not enough Jewish folks in Rocklin for Coke to send the stuff there, I guess). Okay, enough about Coke (as I take another sip). Naturally, by the way, at the end of the tour, they dump everyone into rooms filled with Coke paraphrenalia to buy. We really tried resisting, but bought Katie a light blue, 70s-throwback Sprite shirt on clearance. Mark was right--it looks really cute on her.
Another place we explored, near the Coke tour, was Underground Atlanta. It's a section of railroad, under the streets, which has been converted into a mall. All the stores have faces like old building fronts. It was charming and huge, if dark. Here's a picture I took near one entrance. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture of the storefronts.
I know that California has been getting really extreme weather while we've been gone (lots of rain and snow, causing mudslides and flooding and stuff. Even a tornado in Sacramento recently which tore off some roofs near ARCO arena), so this isn't such a big deal to folks from there, but to us it was a little thrilling... we got to hear what it was like to sit through a hailstorm in the RV. We had the TV on and the weather was bad enough to preempt regular shows, and the weatherguy kept showing pictures of hail the size of golfballs, but luckily all we got was peas and marbles:
It was so loud that we videotaped it; this thing might really be a tin can. Today Mark discovered that it bent the little fins on the A/C units on the roof, but other than that, no damage we can see.
Miscellaneous: Mark has missed having a gym or weights to work out with, but Katie was willing to be dumbells for him:
One day, Mark took Katie to Stone Mountain, which is a park just southeast of Atlanta. It has Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee (what? No Abraham Lincoln??) carved onto it, and you can climb to the top or take a train around it, or a tram to the top. Katie and Mark walked all the way up. Here are the pics:
Katie and Mark walked across these.
Today we're off to Mississippi. We have a little less than a month to see the rest of the south, before arriving in Washington DC on March 24. Our next stop is Columbus, Mississippi...
PS: (sorry this is so disjointed) The fridge stopped working again, and we thought we might have a leak after the thunderstorm. We think the fridge problem is being caused by anything pressing against the doors from the inside, and it seems to be fixed by turning the fridge off, waiting a few hours, driving the rig around to jostle everything, throwing away the milk products, and turning it back on again. who knows?
The leak might be rainwater rolling off the top of the living room slide when we pulled it in to try fixing the fridge. What else? I haven't been keeping as good a list of the problems with the rig, partly because they haven't been so bad or so dramatic as they were on our first trip. We're not sure about the dents in the A/C fins, but hopefully they're unimportant.
Also, I have a new hobby that's taking up some of my writing time: trying to solve the puzzles in the fairy tale A Treasure's Trove. I've joined a web forum for it (www.tweleve.com I think) and I"ve started compiling all sorts of lists of possiblilities and anomalies. The idea is to find one of 13 gold tokens hidden around the US, redeemable for jewels valued at $10K up to $450K. I can tell you more if you're interested. My sister-in-law told me about it and I am definitely hooked. And there is no way on god's green earth that I'll find any of them, and yet I can't help working on it in my free time. So I hope this website won't suffer. By the way, I changed out the background on our home page; you may have noticed it. We'll keep adding to it for the rest of the trip. bye for now...