A March birthday gift turned into a June adventure this weekend after several cancelations and reschedules, but this time the rain would not keep us away. Peachtree Dekalb Airport has always held a special place in P and I’s relationship, we’ve found ourselves hanging out there from pretty much day one. It only seemed fitting to celebrate his birthday this year by actually getting up in a plane for some flying lessons.
Even though I’ve already posted pictures to Instagram and Facebook and told just about everyone about how fun this adventure was, I couldn’t help but document it here as well (wupfh, anyone?).
American Flyers took great care of us. When I went looking for lessons, I came across these guys on Groupon and knew it was meant to be. After a quick intro video and a half an hour in the simulator, we were heading into the skies.
Pre-takeoff allowed for some pretty good selfies. #guilty
As the pilot (which I was not) you basically do everything except landing. Once we were in the air, we were given clearance to fly just about anywhere we wanted as we were below a certain altitude. This meant we made it out to Stone Mountain, over downtown and Buckhead and even up I85 for some neat spots like a giant rock quarry that neither of us even knew existed.
Another adventure in the books. If you’re looking to check out a new view on the horizon, I’d suggest giving this one a try. It’s always fun to see home from another angle 😉
A mere several hours after I wrote this post forcefully putting my summer dreams into stone type, my dear friend Kristy asked about about heading to Scott’s over the weekend. It had been several months since I last visited Scott Antique Market to explore what is best known as “America’s favorite treasure hunt.” So Saturday morning, after a brief stop at the Peachtree Hills Festival of the Arts, which included King of Pops (check another for the bucket list) and free Applewood hotdogs (delicious), we ventured out to brave Atlanta traffic.
If you aren’t familiar with Scott’s, picture two separate buildings, the size of … well I’m not sure exactly … several airplane hangers each? Who knows, let’s just say it’s HUGE. There’s a $5 entry fee and that might as well be $5 to get to go the Six Flags of Antique Hunters for adults.
Here’s your cheat sheet for navigating:
North building: Really, really old and beautiful things (aka expensive)
South building: Think fixer-upper (aka diamonds in the rough)
Don’t be afraid to negotiate on prices, in fact I think it’s a must
If you can’t find a dealer, just ask the neighbors. Even sellers have a habit of getting a case of wanderlust in this place
Bring cash
So with cash and game faces in tow, to the South side we went.
Here are a few of my favorite finds:
Who needs a mummy in their house? Probably us.
I was fascinated with these bottles and their story. They sure didn’t come cheap though (around $50 for the bigger ones.)
Sometimes you see things like this.
After all of those antics and some more exploring, I finally settled on a rather simply jewelry purchase of three necklaces, for a grand total of $4. I was fairly pleased with this one, and I even negotiated, even if it was only a dollar.
So there you have it, we will be back, soon I’m certain. To more adventures and bucket list items I go.
You know those pre-first day of school butterflies? The ones that leave you ready to throw up and want to just quit the whole thing before it even starts butterflies? Welp, for some reason, I couldn’t shake those same little butterflies on Friday night, the eve of our third Great Urban Race.
Couldn’t sleep, terrible dreams, woke up every 20 minutes butterflies. And for what? An awesome day of exploring where I knew I wasn’t going to die (fingers crossed, they had made me throw up while eating squid and unhand-cuff myself at a mob museum in the past), making friends with strangers would be incredibly easy and I was going to partake in taking obsessive amounts of photos and video…long story short, I’m a big wimp.
As excited as I was to be finish and be rid of my nerves, the Great Urban Race isn’t your typical run as fast as you can for X amount of miles and cross the finish line race, as they say it best, GUR is a wild urban adventure and the stories that go along with it are the best part.
After winning tickets to compete last minute in 2012, P and I wound up falling in love with this race concept and followed it to the National Championships in Las Vegas last November (you can read all about those adventures here and here).
In 2013, we came prepared. No more of the single smartphone, map-less planning for us.
We arrived at the starting line with a map ready to go and were lucky enough to have one of our best friends join us as photographer / navigator extraordinaire. We also met up with some dear friends who were crucial in helping to solve the clues and keeping us all going.
We split the clues 50 / 50 between our two teams and less than 30 minutes after the starting horn, we were off and running with a plan and most of the clues solved. The worst part was over, phew.
I’ll spare you the play-by-play of the next hour and a half, but here are some of the highest points:
1. We got to walk on broken glass. How cool is that? And despite what it looks like, it didn’t hurt one bit (I was pleasantly surprised).
2. The photo tic-tac-toe clue is always a favorite. This year we opted for: take a photo with a stranger with a tattoo (how cool is she?), take a video giving a stranger a high five and Tweet a photo of all teammates “Smizing” (apparently a Tyra Banks thing? I don’t think we mastered that one).
Our tattoo friend. How great is her hair?
“Simizing” Tyra wouldn’t approve.
3. The next clue took us to a “secret” prohibition bar in Edgewood that is actually buried behind a bookcase in a pizza joint named Vesuvius. So. Cool. We put our googling to the test to answer questions like “What Minnesota republican was the major voice behind he National Prohibition Act in 1919?” in record time.
4. We dug up our best “every good boy deserves fudge” knowledge to decipher music notes to give us a phrase, and then act like them in a photo. We were bees if you can’t tell from our stellar impressions.
Our best bee impressions.
In all, it was another fantastic day and took me to more parts of the city I haven’t explored on my own (which is secretly my FAVORITE part about this race). A huge, huge thanks to all of the stop locations for their incredible generosity and pure southern hospitality (check out a list of our favorite places below).
Now, just as we were a year ago, we are counting down the days to Nationals where we will be in the hunt for the $10,000 (or more likely, another great adventure to share). Until next time masterminds.
It’s not all fun and games: sometimes they make you think TOO hard.
Our tops picks for the 2013 race locations (aka, go check out these places Atlanta):
Vesuvius Pizzeria: look for the bookcase in the back hallway. Have a great time.
