North Carolina Wedding Trip! :-)
I haven’t been out of town recently so it was about that time again. On Saturday morning I got up early and headed up to Charlotte, N.C. for the wedding of my friend Linda to her love Tom. Now, I had never met Tom before but everyone with whom I talked said he was just a great guy and loved her immensely. Then that’s all good by my book! But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The trip up was uneventful enough after managing to make it out of Atlanta. I left at 10am, allowing about 4 hours to drive, then time to check into the hotel and freshen up for the wedding at 4pm. It was a really good thing I did. Apparently every highway OTP is under construction. I sat on I-85 North between Jimmy Carter and Beaver Ruin until it almost drove me mad. I finally rationalized that I must be able to get off on Satellite Blvd. somehow and maneuver myself around the 316 split and back to 85.I hate Gwinnett. Gwinnett is NOT great no matter what their damn water tower says.
That being said, I did find a way to sneak around the mess much more quickly than if I had stayed on the interstate. By this time it was 10:45, however, and I was less than 20 miles from home. NOT cool when I had over 200 yet to go.Purple bear helped me to navigate Charlotte….if only I had had him out in Gwinnett. 
Thus began my great great weekend of horridly wonderfully bad-for-me food. An experience like that warranted at the very least a McDonald’s Happy Meal and a mid-drive snack of Diet Coke and M&Ms. I’m really not sure how it justified the Hardee’s breakfast and Dairy Queen Blizzard on the way home the next day….I guess I was still traumatized. I’d like to still say I am so I can order a pizza for dinner, but it’s time to get over Gwinnett while my pants still fit.
The wedding itself was a blast. I had met Linda a few years ago when we had driven together to Biloxi to help our friend Bryan dig out from under Hurricane Katrina (his house had been completely covered by water at one point, having lived only 2 blocks off the bay). Somehow we just stayed friends. Cool folks, that Linda. She became a hasher, which made it even more easy to keep in touch (mutual acquaintances if not friends).Linda and Tom, bride and groom: 
There weren’t a lot of hashers at the wedding and really only two (Linda and her maid of honor Stacy) with whom I’d really ever partied before. Apparently I had met and partied with Meghan one New Year’s, but I was a little distracted that year to remember her. Ooops! (I daresay she was too, however! It was New Years’, there were boys…you know the drill). I DID ask her if I was at least nice to her when and I met her and she said yes, so pheeeeeeew! At least I wasn’t a royal bitch to her. I’m going to have to see if I can find old photos from that party. (That was My Cow’s party, the one where she stopped speaking to me, for those of you who know the story.)
Anywho, Meghan was there with her very nice boyfriend Mitch, who actually officiated the ceremony as well and did one damn good job at it. Though…huh. If you do a damn good job at a wedding, is that good? In any case, I THINK we were the only five hashers there, representing (1st home hash anyway) Atlanta, Trash, Savannah and Charlotte. And I think Meg and Mitch claim another somewhere in there too….I can’t remember the sticker on his car anymore.
In any case…what a fun wedding! Linda and Tom rented out Lynn’s bar and had the ceremony and reception right there. It’s always a good time when you can attend a ceremony and have a beer and smoke at the same time. I love this picture of their Wedding License: signed with an ice cold beer nearby! 
Hey, if you can toast your ceremony with your favorite cold one *immediately* following, that’s gotta be some sort of good blessing, doesn’t it? There was some dancing, but more drinking. There was lots of picture taking and a little more drinking. Get the picture here? Then we left (after the bride and groom of course) and headed over to another bar to shoot some pool, have some more drinks, and bounce on this big huge bouncy thing in the yard that was ½-moonwalk and ½-trampoline. Very bizarre and very much fun, even though, in a skirt, I feigned modesty among hashers by trying to be a lady. HA! Here we are at the second bar (where Stacy works). From left: me, Stacy, Mitch and Meghan.
Alas, all good things do end and though there are more stories after this point, they’re going to live in a place where the public doesn’t know about them. ;-)The drive back was interesting enough as well. Thank God I had no Gwinnettian issues this time (HA! Even spell check hates Gwinnett), but oh yes, there were others. First, I don’t think I’ve ever in real life seen a car flipped on its roof before. You know, like you see in the movies? But driving south on 85, somewhere in lower South Carolina, there it was. I could see cars in the northbound lane pulled to both sides and people getting out, but it took a second (and only a second at 80mph) to notice the car upside down in the median with people running toward it. It must have JUST happened. I do hope the people in it were OK. It wouldn’t have made sense for me to stop too. But it did make me think for the next half hour or so….how on earth can you flip your car completely upside down on it’s roof while driving down one of the flattest, emptiest highways in the south? I wonder what the story was there. Of course, I would have liked to have gotten a picture but while travelling at 80mph, didn’t really want to end up there along with them.
I didn’t wonder about them for too long before I had a little drama of my own and became completely self-centered again. I stopped at a nearby gas station to fill up without noticing some AssPanda had thought it cute to stick down the handle on the pump to keep the gas flowing. Oh, it has to be done on purpose. It clicks off when you’re fill and you put it back in the holder, right? And then the gas flow doesn’t start again until you swipe your card and push the button of grade. So the AssPanda before me thought it would be a nice thing to stick down the handle so it would start spraying gasoline everywhere as soon as I pressed the grade. Luckily there was an attendant who just happened to be nearby to help me – and that no one was smoking a cigarette nearby. I did try to find an “emergency stop” button at the pump but to no avail. Wait….they have these on every tread mill but not on every gas pump? You kiddin’ me?
In related news, spell checker likes “AssPanda” just as much as it likes “Gwinnett.” Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Okay, in any case, there are more stories here but I’m going to go now because my fingers are tired. Travellogue Part 2 coming up shortly (before I forget too much) I hope!
My Cow’s party.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:48 pmYou know, if we had been playing the game then, we wouldn’t be alive now. And I’m not talking the real game, I’m talking the sticky letters on the bottom of our hash mugs game!!
April 30th, 2007 at 12:51 pmMORE real never-to-be-told stories? I’ve got contacts in the CLT, I’m on it…..
Mmmmmm, bouncy things……..
May 1st, 2007 at 9:10 amHa! That’s just my way of trying to be mysterious…I’m an old lady; I was in bed by 9pm.;-)
May 1st, 2007 at 9:19 amHaha! In bed with WHOM????? Distraction will get you no WHERE! My hounds have the scent! You old ladies tend to be the most secretive… and the worst… in a good way, naturally!
May 1st, 2007 at 11:50 amHA! I wish, dear boy! Nope, it was just little ol’ me in my bed. Stacy took the other, but we were both good little girls that night. (DRAT!!!)
I was teasing about 9pm though… I think we did make it until 2. :) (Starting at 4pm, that’s not so bad!!)
May 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm