June 10th - Charlotte -> Decator (Atlanta)

June 10th, 299 miles so far.

We started off the morning watching some unintentionally funny CNN in our reasonably luxuriant hotel. The weather section comes on and announces that tropical storm Arlene is causing some damage around Florida, and that if its winds continue to pick up it will become a fully fledged hurricane. The projected path appears on the TV screen, it looks eerily familiar, ah yes we'll meet it on our drive to or arrival in New Orleans. Cool.

We get in touch with Josh and arrange to meet at his Hotel, We bail into the car and head off, this is my first driving in USA experience. As pre-arranged Keith shouts "right lane! right lane!" for the first few left hand turns.

We arrive at the Hotel to meet a Josh. He is donning a wicked grin and is walking with a spring in his step. He explains that he's going to be a bit late as he still has to pack and get Hannah out his room. Hannah? He pauses then grins. Hannah, it turns out, is an American lass who Josh successfully deployed "the chat" on. This was who Josh was on a date with last night. It was a proper American date as well, where Josh gets to pay for everything, the arrangements featured her asking "So, what's your budget?". He reckons he spent about $100 on booze, Hannah was trying, extremely unsuccessfully, to drink Josh under the table going head-to-head on Miller lites. Josh, being used to drinks with reasonable alchohol content was not effected.

Off we go! We check out, partially legging it before anyone gets to see the inside of Josh's room, which has Hannah's spew and various other detritus.

We're on the road to Atalanta!

Our first stop is a city called Greenville. Its a pleasant leafy place once you get into the centre but the outskirts are surrounded by mile upon mile upon mile of car sales lots. We have a mighty sized and yummy lunch, and pick up a road atlas from the map store and "pretty map girl", as she has been dubbed. Back on the road we continue heading toward Atalanta, we're making good time until we hit the outskirts of Atalanta and take a wrong turn. We're heading for a little city within Atlanta called Decatur (Dee-Kay-Tor). The wrong turn costs us about and hour and a half and a good number of sanity points. Honestly, the road signs in the US are non-existent, they are so bad! The map we have isnt high enough resolution to find out where we are.

We finally arrive in Decatur, find a motel and then hit the streets. Decator is a very nice little collage town with a sort of central square of a few streets. The atmosphere is good, lots of people out and about, feels like theres a lot of easy going fun happening. We dine at the 'Raging Burrito' have a few beers and then head out to the pub for a few more. The pubs we find are nice and a little art housey. The bar staff are all friendly and we manage to extract some facts about Decator from them, apparantly it is the gay capital of Georgia. Looking around this explains some things :)

Anyhow Im totally running out of time and writing far too much, so im off. Tommorrow we will try to find some Wi-Fi and start the trip towards New Orelans.