I cruised on down I-16, and made it to Macon, where 16 turns into I-75. I felt like having another waffle&eggs breakfast, so I headed to another Waffle House just outside Macon. It wasn't as friendly as the one yesterday in Summerville, but it wasn't bad.
I needed an oil change, so I drove along a road looking for a good automotice place. Following what seems like destiny, I wound up in downtown Macon. I didn't know how to pronounce it at first, but heard it on the radio. Just like bacon, only leaner, and less greasy. Found a GoodYear there, which was the place I was looking for. Asked them to also check the muffler (It was installed wrong, and was banging against the heat shield). Also asked them to drill the 1/2" hole in the trunk I needed.
While they were working on it, I wandered down to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. What a great place! They had all sorts of memoribilia from LIttle Richard to Ray Charles to the Allman Brothers, and lots of country folks and other musicians. Seeing filmed performances of Ray singing "Georgia on my Mind" and the Allman's vide live at Fillmore East doing "Whipping Post" was very inspiring. It seems that the further south I travel, the more love the people possess for their homeland and the more they want to portray it. A mock church had a 15 minute screening of gospel music history. Wow, talk about inspiring. Some kick-ass rocking gospel tunes were played, which would give me inspiration to attend church every Sunday despite me being Jewish and Buddhist. The love and power within the music is enough to override the religious differences to a common humanitarian good.
A VERY friendly woman in the gift shop was helping me find some good gospel music. She ran upstairs to the storeroom, and came down with some stuff by the Georgia Mass CHoir, which wasn't for sale yet. It was okay, but I wasn't into the newer synthy sounds. She also got some stuff by The Lewis Family , which was pretty cool bluegrass-type gospel. I told her of my plans to see Al Green at his church in Memphis, and she ran upstairs to search up info about it for me on the web. While she was gone another clerk told me of a gospel group which was probably the stuff I was looking for. But dammit, a minute after she told me, I forgot the name of the group. The woman than came back with three pages printed out of info for Al Green's church. Once again, the Southern Hospitality is manifested. We talked a bit about one of the rocking gospel tunes at the end of the gospel presentation, and she started to sing bits of it. I think it was called "By the By" or something like that, but I'm not too sure. Hopefully I can find more about it later. I bought a tape of some Georgian bluegrass, and wished the folks at the museum well. They were probably glad to see me go, I think I stank to high-heaven at that point.
I drove the rest of the way to Atlanta, and made it to the Magnolia Corners Bed & Breakfast where I made the reservations before starting out on my trip. Took a shower and napped in the air-conditioned room for 2 hours. It was nice to relax in an air-conditioned place, sipping iced tea, and not worry about the triflings of life. Hillary would land on Delta flight 2065 at 10:55 PM. I left to grab some food on the way to pick up Hillary, but only found nice restaurants catering themselves to the 20-something croud, it seemed. I wanted cheap quick nourishment. So I just left to go meet Hillary at the airport, and after several levels of obfuscation got to the gate. Some guy there was installing Mandrake Linux 7.1 on his laptop, so I talked with him awhile. He was a Computer Science major killing some time before his flight with a sample version of Mandrake 7.1 that came with a linux magazine.
Hillary's flight came in about 10 minutes late. She came out of the gate, and I was very excited to see her. After a big hug, we sought out a bathroom where she could wash off a purple ink stain one of her exploded pens. We thought about getting dinner after dropping off the bags at the B&B, but we were both too exhaused, so we went to sleep instead. It was nice to sleep in a real bed, a nice 4-poster Queen. Hillary and I cuddled through the night, it was comforting to have someone with me.
| Location | Atlanta, GA |
| Odometer | 130503.6 Miles Total 1749.9 Miles On Trip 265.5 Miles Today |
| Coordinates | 33° 47.953' N 84° 21.973' W |