Finishing Atlanta and the GEORGIA GYMDOGS!

Day 97 – Grayson, GA/Pensacola, FL – Cloudy Low 40’s:

Not too much went on today. We got up and spent the morning catching up with Danielle, her parents, Aunt, and Nana. It was nice to see everyone and especially Danielle. We don’t get to see each other very often and so whenever we can it is nice to spend time. Hilary and Brad (the boyfriend) arrived late in the morning and we spent time with them as well. The boys were certainly outnumbered which was fun for all of us girls. Everyone had a busy day ahead, we were off on a long drive, the ladies were heading to the mall, Dan was going to do stuff around the house (I think) and Brad was going to study animal ophthalmology. He’s in VET school! He and Ben chatted a bit about that as he is in the same year as Hannah and actually knows a kid in her class as he transferred from GA to Minnesota. It was sad to say our goodbyes after such a short visit but we had to get going. Hilary did inform us that if the Gymdogs don’t do well next weekend we will have to start attending every meet. We told her that was fine as long as she was funding the flights!! Hopefully (for us) her regional will be somewhere out west and we will be able to attend…she hopes their close to home understandably.

We hit the road headed for Pensacola. It was a six-hour drive and I yes I being Heather drove the WHOLE THING! Ben worked on the blogs and napped! We arrived around 7pm…it’s a new time zone! Tomorrow we are off to the air museum at the Navy and then hopefully well make it to New Orleans to watch the Superbowl! Who knows…we’re sort of plan-less at this point!

Day 96 – Atlanta/Athens, GA – Rainy and 40’s:

Today we both started the day with a nice workout in the hotel gym and then headed back to the room for some breakfast and packing. We left the hotel around eleven and headed to meet Heather’s college friend Danielle at her parents house in Grayson, GA. We made it there in no time and got to meet Danielle’s Mom, Aunt and Nana who were visiting from Massachusetts. We then were back on the road toward Athens, GA to meet Danielle’s sister Hilary at the University of Georgia, where she competes for the five-time defending national champion Georgia Gymdogs (gymnastics). We met her in her dorm where Hilary had made a cake for her Aunt’s birthday, the cake was beautiful and very tasty…Hil is quite the chef! We chatted and visited for a bit as she had not seen her Aunt or Nana in a while and Heather had not seen her in seven or eight years. We would be going to her meet later that night so we had to get out of her room so the “hairdresser” could come and get her ready. While she was doing that we found our way over to the campus bookstore so the family and Heather could get some Georgia Bulldog apparel.

After the bookstore we quickly ran over to meet Hilary at the Suzanne Yoculan Training Gym. The Georgia gymnastics team is a very prestigious group of women and the school takes great care of them. The facility is a gym just for them with a media room, locker room, practice gym, and kitchen area. The girls can go anytime they want to study on the couches, play some Wii or just hang out. The whole place is decorated and dedicated to the history of Georgia Gymnastics. It was a really amazing facility and I really wanted to jump into the foam pit but that wasn’t allowed.

After our tour of the gym we headed over to the campus hotel lobby for happy hour. With a couple hours to go before the meet we had some beers and appetizers. Around six-thirty we headed over to Stegeman Coliseum to get our seats and watch the warm-ups. The girls get on each team (they were competing against Kentucky) get a fifteen-minute warm up on each event before the meet begins. The meet was scheduled for 7:30 but there was a small delay with the judges due to heavy rain and so instead the competition started around 8:00. At Georgia gymnastics is as big and fan frenzied as basketball, football, or hockey. As the meet started there were about 10,000 spectators many of them students. The team comes into the arena with fireworks and a professional style video introducing them...this years video theme...UNSTOPPABLE. The team has former world and Olympic medalists as well as former USA national team members, so the gymnasts are at a very high level. Hilary was scheduled to compete in the vault, balance beam and floor exercise. Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling well, so she opted not to do the vault, she is one of the teams top vaulters so while it was better for her both the team and spectators were sad not to see her show her stuff. She managed to pull herself together with the help of some great coaches to nail both her balance beam (9.9 a season high) and floor exercise (9.825 a season high) routines. The meet lasted about two hours and the Georgia Team beat the University of Kentucky by a large margin 197.2 to 195.550. The Gymdogs have been off to a rough start and so it was GREAT to see them come back and do the gymnastics they are capable of. Their score is the second highest team score in all of college gymnastics this season. After the meet was over we headed over to a “Ten-O” Club reception to catch up with Hilary and see the rest of the team. It was a nice change to mingle and meet some of Hilary’s fans. The team came in and Coach Jay spoke about how well the girls had done and invited everyone to join in for a WHO ARE WE? WE ARE GEORGIA chant. It was a great night and Heather was glad we had made the drive to visit and see some good friends. After the meet and greet we drove back to Danielle’s parents house in Grayson for the night.

** I put a couple of videos from the meet including the Unstoppable Intro and Hilary's Beam on the "Road Trip Moments Caught On Tape" section of our blog...it's located on the side of the main page!

Day 95 – Atlanta, GA – Rainy and 40’s:

Today we awoke to a crappy rainy day, so it was a good thing we planned on visiting the Georgia Aquarium. We started by visiting the local AAA office to get our discounted tickets to the aquarium and the Planet Shark exhibit. We then jumped on the MARTA and made it to the aquarium around noontime. We quickly found out that the Georgia Aquarium is the largest indoor aquarium in the world.

We started with the Georgia Explorer Room and I got to pet some stingrays and small sharks in the petting tank. Heather was too scared to stick her hand in and try. From there we went and checked out the rest of the explorer animals that included the Lion Fish, Sea Turtles, Alligators, Frogs and finally another petting tank with shrimp. Once again Heather was not into petting the animals but I gave it a try and the shrimp were really fast moving and hard to pet but I managed to touch a couple. The whole time we were looking at the shrimp we kept thinking how much Brady would LOVE to EAT them!!

We then moved over to River Scout Room to see another round of fish and animals. We saw Electric Eels, Elephantnose Fish, Piranhas, and Sea Otters. Through the entire exhibit there were fish above our heads in a man-made river. The Sea Otters were Heather’s favorite part of the aquarium and she wanted to take one with us but unfortunately we just didn’t have room in the car so she took a lot of pictures.

Next we headed to the Coldwater Quest. In this area of the aquarium were supposed to be the big Beluga whales but they were doing construction and the whales had been relocated for the time being. Next we went over to the Ocean Voyager which is where the main fish tank is located. The tank is 280 feet long by 100 feet wide, which is about the size of a football field. There were thousands and thousands (that is the official number) of fish within this tank. The main attraction in the tank where the four huge Whale Sharks they were about 16 feet long and two feet wide but could grow to be 30 feet long and 4 feet wide. Also, in the tank were hammerhead sharks, sand tiger sharks, sawfish and a couple huge manta rays. This exhibit had a moving sidewalk that transported you through a tunnel in the tank. The fish and other sea life swim all around you as you ride through their home.

After admiring the fish for a while we headed over to the Tropical Diver area to see all our friends from “Finding Nemo.” In this tank they have a living corral reef and need to keep the water really clean, so the filter all the water every forty minutes and about every two minutes there is a simulated wave the puts about 6000 gallons of water back into the tank. We then found some seahorses and Nemo (clownfish) around the corner. It was then feeding time in the large tank, so we made our way back to the viewing area and watched the feeding frenzy. We were informed that the art of feeding the animals is a really scientific process…here’s how it works…a man stands at the top of the tank and dumps pieces of fish into a tube that has holes along the bottom of the viewing area. The fish pieces come out the holes and the fish fend for themselves. They spot feed some of the bigger fish such as the sharks and the Whale Fish. It is good to know that even though all the fish in the tank have predators swimming around them, they don’t eat each other because they are very well fed and full.

Finally, we made our way upstairs to the special Planet Shark exhibit and found out that we unfortunately couldn’t take any pictures. So sorry fans no pictures of the shark exhibit. The main focus of this exhibit was to explore whether sharks are predators or prey. It started off showing the different kinds of sharks and their how they range in size. An interesting fact is that sharks lose thousands and thousands of teeth during their lifetime and can re-grow a tooth within a matter of 24 hours. The exhibit continued to show the sharks as predators and the enormous size and power that many sharks show toward humans. They told the story of how the movie Jaws in the 1970s caused such an uproar about the dangers of sharks that a mass killing was orchestrated by the Coast Guard to kill any shark they saw. There were many props from the Jaws set and it showed they used a midget to film some of the underwater scenes to make the shark appear bigger in size. Then they showed the different products that have been developed to keep humans safe from sharks with the most recent and effective on being the Shark Shield that emits an electric pulse that confuses the shark’s senses. Finally, they began to show how the shark is just as much prey as predator. Sharks are often caught in foreign countries for their fins. Often they are caught and the fins are cut off and then the sharks are thrown back in the water to drown. The fins are used in shark fin soup and many other recipes in the Asia. A really unique part of the exhibit was where they had commercials at the end that compared different facts about how people died. A couple that that we can remember are:

- Last year 786 people were killed by electric toasters, 4 were killed by sharks. Sharks predators or prey? You decide!

- Last year 742 people were killed by kites, 4 people were killed by sharks. Sharks predators or prey? You decide!

After the Aquarium we made our way back to the hotel and went to the gym for an hour or so. Then it was time for dinner. We headed back into the city to go to the famed Varsity restaurant. I saw the Varsity on a travel channel show because it is the largest drive in restaurant in the world and thought we should try it since we were here. Here are some stats from their website: “The World's Largest Drive-in sits on more than two acres and can accommodate 600 cars and over eight hundred people inside. On days of Georgia Tech football games up to 30,000 people visit The Varsity. It sells more than two miles of hotdogs daily, a ton of onion rings, 2500 pounds of fresh cut potatoes, 5000 homemade fried pies, and 300 gallons of chili, all of which are made from scratch daily. The downtown Varsity is also the world's largest single outlet for Coca-Cola.” The burgers, fries, and chilidogs were OK but their onion rings were outstanding and we both decided that our other burger joint “Five Guys” was way better. We were glad to have tried it though.

So to wrap up Atlanta, we went to the world’s largest aquarium, the worlds largest drive-in, the worlds largest non-profit dedicated to puppetry, and the worlds largest CNN. There’s a whole lot of large stuff going on in Atlanta!