Friday night was slated to be a private event at Six Flags. Once a year the company rents the park for employees and their families to run a muck, avoid and potentially even socialize. This year after Kelly and I began the night by adventuring into possibly the worst Mexican restaurant below the Maxon-Dixon with margaritas made of what I can only assume was cleaning solvent while being serenaded by a mariachi band from Cuba. When we arrived at the park with our brown bag of Guinness (purchased for $2.50!) in hand, we were foiled by lightning and rain. Luckily we were still tailgating at the time and made the best of our evening wandering about elsewhere.

Saturday morning Awake during the 4:00 hour (also known in our home was the we-bitching hour) for my 3rd year as the T-shirt Crew Chief at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure - which means I get to work along side amazing volunteers and hand out approximately 16,000 t-shirts to participants. You can see in their eyes when you hand them the cotton symbol of accomplishment how closely and how deeply they were touched by breast cancer and nothing makes me happier than to see a pink number and direct them to the survivor tent.

After boxing up the leftovers and making sure the gates were locking them in for freshness, I rallied “home” for a quick shower and threw a few bits into a bag so we could head south to The Mc’s momma and her sister for Mother’s Day. The fires in South Georgia had pushed their smoke all the way to Macon and enveloped the farmlands like an asthma inducing fog. Those sweet white haired ladies filled our bellies with “dinner” on arrival and responded to The Mc saying I must be tired/I wasn’t myself with “down here, we do whatever we want” and ushered me to bed at 6:30. God bless ‘em, I stayed there for the next 13 hours drooling on my pillow and sawing logs.

Sunday morning I watched the sun rise over a field of wheat (last year cotton, next year who knows) before a hearty country breakfast of sausage with mustard on toast made in an oven that stuck to my ribs in a way nothing I cook ever will. It fueled our hour-plus ride on the asphalt country roads up and down a few baby hills and past a turtle and a rotting armadillo and at least 3 tiny white churches on a 7 mile stretch. It was good to be back in the saddle, even if my *ahem* doesn’t agree with me.

Sunday afternoon when we had broken bread one last time and our already taut bellies were full of chicken casserole and butter beans, we pointed ourselves towards The Little Grand Canyon for an detour + intermission + short hike on the way home. If you’ve never been there but plan to visit, let me tell you what a dreary disappointment it was. Scratch that. Let me say this: if you go, take in the view from the top and leave it at that. If you want to hike down, wear galoshes and prepare for it to be less than what you dreamed of. Don’t be alarmed if; while watching the 13 minute movie in the interpretive center, you find yourself thinking “I can totally see this as the opening scene in a slasher movie”…me too. The information I gleaned when I was able to get past that made me want to go back in time and kick some farmer ass. This entire canyon/series of canyons are the result of clear cutting and erosion. It’s also the reason Kudzu was originally brought over. Thanks for that.

An hour and a half of leg stretching and sweating later we hopped in the car for an equally long jaunt home.

That, as they say, was my weekend…and this has been one of those horrific boring blog entries that reads more like a 3rd graders rendition of “what I did on my summer vacation” if it mated with your aunt Bessie’s sideshow of her trip to the yarn factory. Sorry about that and happy Monday anyway.