South

Free wireless has been spotty of late, hence the limited (okay, non-existent) posting. I've been in Hotlanta for about a week, and am wandering now. Today's trip has me in Greenville, South Carolina (a delightful, picturesque town) and continuing on to Charlotte, NC.

Lunch at the Blue Ridge Brewing Company in downtown Greenville (with free wifi all over the place!) has an excellent Total Eclipse XXX Stout: roasty, chocolatey, full, thick, and dark. (And I think it might be $2/pint for Throw Down Thursday!). Better have two. 4.25/4.5 ... YUM!

I visited the Shoeless Joe Jackson statue, and am headed to his gravesite after lunch on my way out of town. Weird, you say? Well, hell, his birthday IS on Saturday.

After that, on to Charlotte, and hopefully tonight's AAA baseball game between the Charlotte Knights and the Indianapolis Indians won't be rained out by the thunderstorms that Hurricane Dennis brought, and Hurricane Emily seems intent on perpetuating.

Then I fly out of Charlotte tomorrow to earn Delta Silver Medallion status with one flight: a ridiculously easy way to gain priority boarding (and in some cases, extra legroom seating and free upgrades). As importantly, though, it was a good justification for a fun road trip.

Greenville is remarkably pleasant so far, at least to my unstudied tourist eye. It's slow, but not dusty, and all the people so far have had (more apparently genuine than in Hotlanta) southern charm. Critically, it's a little cooler than anywhere I've been in Georgia or Tennessee in the last week.

Oh! We went rafting last week with the group on the Ocoee River in southern Tennessee. It was an excellent time, and seven of us had a great time camping the night before in the national forest. Well, it was great until the Russians showed up. A screaming, drunk, tweaking pack of Russians, about eight of them, wandered in to the campsite around 11pm and started wreaking absolute fucking havoc throughout the overflow camping area. They screamed and yelled until about 2am, when they decided to go back to their cars in the (very nearby) parking lot and blast techno music. After a member of our group (too) nicely asked them to turn it off, they did, and retreated to their campsite, where they screamed, yelled, played music, and broke things for another hour or two. Turns out they only sort of vaguely quieted down after one of their group stepped barefoot into some of the broken glass they were creating. Around 4am. Nice.

Anyway, it's more baseball for today, and trying to find some decent beer in the south, always a challenge. This has been a huge score so far: $2 pints of everything, though they are out of the Colonel Paris Pale Ale, so it's another Total Eclipse XXX Stout for me. And the $7.95 oven roasted vegetarian sandwich was excellent, with mounds of goat cheese, and excellent fries. They make their own amber ale ketchup, and apparently their own spicy grainy mustard, both of which are outstanding.