I woke this morning, seemingly healed from my close encounter with the Waffle House, and hit the treadmill for a brief workout (briefer than I would have liked, as the room had no air conditioning) before heading back to Georgia. The drive was pleasant, the GPS fairly reliable, and I had no problems until I got off I-75 and started heading to Colbert.
I've noticed that there is an inverse correlation between the urbanization level of a place and the number of auto shops and Baptist churches it holds. When you start seeing an overwhelming number of nondenominational churches, or churches housed in manufactured homes, you know you're getting out into the sticks. This relationship does break down, however; past a certain critical limit of salvage parts and sad-looking places of worship, everything disappears and you're left with only God's country, which in northwest Georgia means rolling hills of green that go on forever, crossed by oddly-named roads of dubious condition and pedigree. These are single-track roads masquerading as two-lane, their surfaces patched and pitted, and the trees grow overhead in a sort of half canopy as you pass through. It's almost claustrophobic in there, especially when you're not entirely certain where you're going, and once I stopped thinking of banjos, I recalled Stephen King's Lovecraftian story, "Crouch End," and hoped I wouldn't see signs for R'lyeh or some such around the next bend ("Beware the goat with a thousand young!" etc.)
Towns exist around Colbert, but most are wide patches that have grown up along the railroad tracks. To get there, I drove through Royston, the birthplace of Ty Cobb, and that was a booming metropolis compared to my destination. Again, thank God for the GPS, as there is no doubt in my mind that I would never have found the place if I hadn't been guided. Once I did stumble upon it, I realized two things: I had two hours to kill, and I wasn't going to find food in Colbert. Deciding a field trip was in order, I set my course for Athens and headed off in search of lunch.
Athens is a college town of the first order - it puts New Haven to shame - and to find the strip of restaurants and shops, I did what anyone would do: I programmed my GPS to find the nearest Starbucks to campus, then drove smack into the downtown area. I had lunch at Picante's, a decent Mexican place, then walked around, looking at shops and sweating in my dress clothes, as Athens was at least 70 degrees this afternoon. What was fun was explaining the nature and production of druzies to the girl behind the desk at the bead shop, who probably should have known, seeing she was trying to sell a gorgeous druzy and citrine necklace. A steal at $450, right?
Having eaten and strolled, and killed as much time as I could, I got back in the car and headed off to my interview, then set a course for Atlanta and my Holiday Inn, which is located in what appears to be a combination of Little Korea and Little Mexico. Fortunately, there's a restaurant on site, and the salmon was decent, even if the waitress hadn't the faintest idea how to operate the register. No matter; I've had a decent meal and I'm not sick to my stomach, which is all one can ask for, really.
Finally, a few interesting sights of the day:
1) Rhett Butler apparently sells real estate around Athens. Either someone's getting tacky with the agency's name, or someone's mom really loved Gone With the Wind.
2) A billboard for Bond, James Bond bail bonds. Yes, that's actually the name of the company.
3) This one was from yesterday, but I finally remembered to look it up tonight: there's a stretch of I-85 in Jackson County, Georgia named in honor of Lauren "Bubba" McDonald. Speaking as a Lauren...man, what did you do to your parents to make them hate you?
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