Our Excellent Adventures

Finally we are back from Atlanta. I really didn’t like the trip too much. Too many lines, too many people, too much humid heat, too much smoking.

I did see one passenger Sprinter in Atlanta that was re-badged to Mercedes.

Six Flags looked a little run down to me but Goliath was still working as well as Mind Bender. We were roller coasted out after those so we missed a lot! The concert was great! Pink was the main show - she is quite the entertainer. Daughtry followed Pink with his band playing hits from his number 1 album.

Seeing CNN was ok but frankly, I’d rather see FOX. The flights were fine - no lost luggage and United on the Oakland end is much faster than Southwest getting the luggage off.

Back home. The cats are fine thanks to our terrific cat sitter. The Sprinter is in the drive. Life is good.

And in just 10 days we leave for Alaska!

I had forgotten about the rare tornado that happened here in May. The Westin, where we are staying, had some pretty major damage to windows from flying debris. People had no warning as a warning system does not exist. The Sunroom, a bar and restaurant on the 72nd floor was full of people when the windows began to break at 9:35pm. The black squares in the photo are where windows were broken.

A tornado caused widespread damage across downtown Atlanta, including to the CNN Center and to the Georgia Dome, where the 2008 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament was postponed. Other buildings that were damaged include the Georgia World Congress Center, Philips Arena (during an Atlanta Hawks game), and the Omni Hotel, which was evacuated after many windows were blown out.

Work is ongoing at CNN, the Omni Hotel, the Westin and others that were damaged. Apparently the glass windows, two layered and quite large, have to be special ordered. Of course, there is delay while the insurance companies try to get out of paying for the damage.

Here we are in beautiful Atlanta sans Sprinter.

My wife is here on business and talked me into coming along. So far it has been a great trip (with the obvious flying discomfort).

To the right is a view from the room towards . . . somewhere in Atlanta. We are on the 61st floor and the view is pretty good - little smog, lots of ants - oh, those are people!

Looking down it is easy to figure out why we don’t have a balcony. I think if I dropped an ice cube from here it would cause a big problem.

Yesterday we went to the Hard Rock Cafe (we compare them all to the original one in London we were fortunate to visit) - looked at Tom Petty’s guitar and of course, J. Lennon (accompanied in my book at least, by the much disliked Yoko Joko).

This is looking towards California and the cats, Bamm Bamm and Pebbles. I’ll be spending part of my time here finishing up the planning for Alaska.

Oh, I almost forgot. There are lots of the older Sprinters here be used commercially. Several had the “Powered by Mercedes Benz” on them so I guess that is where that particular sign was used.