The perfect way to enjoy Atlanta

The 3-Day rapidly approaches! Today Joy and I did an 18-mile training walk. The weather was highly agreeable. Not as delightful as last week (we've been doing 13-mile walks on the weekends) when we wore sweatshirts for nearly the entire walk, but still, reasonably cool. Joy planned the route, which was wonderful because I've been so busy at work I've done nothing but work, go home and collapse for the night, then go back to work.


We met at Harmony Park at 5:30AM. From there we walked to Little 5 Points, arriving just in time for Starbucks to open and for us to obtain our first latte of the walk. All walks over 10-miles seems to be 2-latte walks. From there we headed down the PATH and over to Virginia Highlands. We walked over to Alon's, ready for fresh-baked scones only to discover they don't open until 8 on Saturday mornings. There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth at this point, but we soldiered on toward Ansley.


The Alon's thing threw us off and we went down a different road than planned. This ultimately led to us being lost in, I kid you not, Sherwood Forest. We wandered down Friar Tuck Rd, Nottingham Road and finally found our way out by the WSB television station offices in midtown via Robin Hood Lane. How mortified would you be to have to direct someone through your neighborhood if you lived there?


Happily, once out of the forest, we found ourselves at our next Starbucks where we made a surprise move and went for bottled water and snacks instead of coffee. We're crazy like that. By now we'd done about 10 miles, I guess. So it was off to Atlantic Station. We walked across the 17th Street bridge and eventually over to Georgia Tech's campus. We passed a 5K just getting underway (just getting started at 8:30? Laaaazy).


Back through midtown with us, then! We made our way over to Piedmont Park, crossing the brand new pedestrian bridge over the interstate to get there, and then back over to Ponce de Leon where, what do you know, we were awfully close to Krispy Kreme and the "hot and fresh" beacon was aglow! No choice but to grab a doughnut. When you're walking 18 miles at 4 miles per hour, you need a lot of calories. Those doughnuts are delicious of course, but the employees seemed to lack a certain...sense of urgency.



From Krispy Kreme we needed to finish our last few miles and end up at Thumbs Up diner on Edgewood Ave. We passed the delightful view of downtown up near the Martin Luther King Jr Monument and then passed Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Ave and arrived at Thumbs Up just a few tenths of a mile shy of our 18 miles. So we walked around the block and then up the street again while waiting for our table.


We passed countless grand old homes, old-growth trees, parks and city vistas. Yes, yes, the traffic in Atlanta is bad - have you tried going it on foot once in awhile?