Trip to Atlanta: A Comedy of Errors
First of all, we’re sorry for not updating two days ago like we said we would - it has been nonstop busy for us since we left our town back at the start of this trip.
WARNING: The information contained in this blog is entirely non-fiction - read at your own risk!
We left Selene’s house at about 10 in the morning, expecting to drive straight to Georgia, but instead, we got a call from a friend/photographer who asked us to stop and shoot on the way there. We did a studio shoot, a sunset shoot, and even woke up at 5:00 in the morning the next day for a sunrise shoot! He made us some seriously boss garlic bread for dinner (deelish!). Because we were having so much fun, we ended up staying well into the next day.
When we finally got on the road to Atlanta, we assumed it would be a straight, easy ride. Alas, it was not to be so, for two coffee addicts cannot travel for an extended time without frequent stops for a caffeine fix. So when we passed Jacksonville, of course we decided to pull over - it’s a huge town; obviously it would have a Panera Bread (so we thought). After a huge fiasco in which our GPS malfunctioned, driving us in circles for what felt like forever, we found what we were seeking. What we forgot to take into account was that it was a holiday - the Panera Bread was CLOSED!
Needless to say, we were crushed. We drove around and finally found a Dunkin’ Donuts - not the best coffee, but when you need it, you need it. And it was there that we finally caught our first break of the day - FREE Independence Day donuts!
Having had our coffee fix, we got back on the road again, this time for real - or so we thought…
As we were driving, we noticed that there were beautiful locations along the highway, so being in the art industry, we decided to pull over and experiment with being on the other side of the camera. Amazingly, we got some really incredible shots of one another:
Not bad, eh? :P
After that, we drove uneventfully for several more hours. We finally stopped for gas right on the border of Georgia and Florida; the place we stopped was called “Crooked River” and was literally the creepiest place in the world! There was a blinking red stoplight swaying in the wind, flickering neon signs, twangy country music, trucks, dead end one-lane roads - the whole nine yards. Because of all this, we were good and creeped out when Selene discovered that her wallet was missing with the only money we had to get anywhere!
Eventually we did find it, but the event triggered our over-active imaginations to make an entire murder movie (starring us) which you will definitely see someday. We passed many exits discussing the details of it, which explains the next error: Us showing up in the wrong state.
That’s right - we found ourselves inexplicably in the middle of South Carolina. At first we were joking about it, thinking there was no way we could be so far off from our original goal, but when every city and road sounded better with “South Carolina” after it than “Georgia,” we started thinking something might be up. At about 2 in the morning, we finally pulled over at a random Waffle House to ask what state we were in and discovered we had added at least 4 hours to our driving time.
Finally back on track and with the GPS turned on and operational, we headed towards the REAL Atlanta, GA. Both of us were on the verge of falling asleep at this point, so we blasted some Disney music to stay awake. Suddenly, Selene happened to notice we were a little bit low on gas. We were going to keep on going anyway, but at the last minute we decided to go ahead and pull off at a random exit. Obviously with everything else going wrong that night, we stopped by a broken gas pump, which would have been no big deal had we not run completely out of gas at that exact moment, rendering the car useless. A random security guard had to come out and push our car to a working gas pump (which, by the way, almost did NOT work).
FINALLY, we made it to the hotel at about 6 in the morning (yes, literally) and went to pull into the parking lot. We noticed a creepy guy staring at us as we were pulling in, but we ignored him until he was banging on the driver’s window of the model-mobile. He started asking us for money and cigarettes, and when we gave him a couple of those, he wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He asked us if we had ever been “high” and wouldn’t shut up about how we should do it with the “right people” even though he had INTRODUCED himself saying he had gotten out of prison 3 days prior to our meeting. He ended up asking us if we could “hang out” for a few hours. Needless to say, we turned him down and went to our hotel room and to bed.
As of now, we just finished our first shoot of the trip, got some seriously delicious coffee, and are about to have Atlanta at our fingertips!
Peace,
-Lisa Marie and Selene xoxo
“We are famous - the world just doesn’t know it yet.” -Lisa Marie
