Ad-ven-ture: (noun) an activity that is perceived to involve risky, dangerous or exciting experiences.
Christmas break has been good to me, to say the least. Lots of family, food, friends, sleep, TV, Facebook, Twitter, whenparentstext.com, thingstobehappyabout.com, etc. to entertain me. But a girl can only watch so many episodes of NCIS, stalk so many people on facebook, and read so many people's tweets about their adventurous lives before she starts to lose her mind. Thankfully my friends Abby and Hamp intervened before I could go completely loco. Over the time period of one week and one day, we spent a total of 21 hours in the car and five full days together. Bonding time is probably an understatement.
Adventure #1--The Melting Pot, Dec. 27th, Birmingham, AL
Abby's birthday was December 26th so Margot (Abby's mom) planned a fantastic party, where she sent 11 of us to try out the Melting Pot for the first time. Let me just preface this by saying our group of friends is LOUD. We like to enjoy ourselves and say/do silly and random things. This is not a bad thing, but I don't think the Melting Pot knew what it was in for on December 27th. Our poor waiter Jacob probably thought that we were the weirdest people ever, but we are totally okay with that.
If you have never been to the Melting Pot, let me just tell you that it is quite the dining experience. We had a cheese, meat, and chocolate course. The meat course was definitely the most entertaining thing that I have seen in a while. On one side of the table, there were six people cooking in one pot, which resulted in many lost noodles, floating pieces of steak, and lots of laughter. The other side was no exception. I lost a piece of broccoli and I am pretty sure that we sat there cracking up for five minutes straight as I tried to retrieve it. The chocolate course was obviously the most anxiously awaited. It was totally worth the wait. I am a sucker for chocolate fondue. Dip pretty much anything and chocolate and I will be all about it. What can I say, the pudgy little girl with the "Mollie Belly" inside of me will always love her chocolate!!
The Melting Pot was such a fun and exciting dining experience (minus the raw meat--yummm). It was a wonderful to celebrate Abby's birth and hang out with friends from high school that I hadn't seen in a long while. We topped the night off by driving around Greystone looking at all of the Christmas lights that were still up, picking our favorite "classy" houses and laughing at the tacky houses with the big blow up Santa Claus in the door way and outside trees covered in four different colored strands of lights.
This was an excellent night, but little did I know, that it would be the first of many adventures.
Adventure #2--Skiing/Chattanooga, Dec. 28th
On Abby's birthday, Hamp and I went to her house to hang out and tell her Happy Birthday. As we were sitting around, we began talking about how bored we were going to be during the week ahead and we all decided that we were going to everything in our power to not be bored. This is where the craziest/longest/most interesting day of my break thus far was born. Abby's little sister, Maggie, was leaving for the church's ski trip the next day and we were all very jealous. Hamp told us that he thought there was a place to ski in north Alabama so we pulled our Margot's new iPad and googled it. What do ya know, there is, in fact, a place to ski in north Alabama: Cloudmont Ski Resort in Mentone, AL. It's only three hours away from the AC so we were like why not? (Another fun fact about my friends: we tend to be really gung-ho about doing something in the moment, but have a bad track record with following through and actually doing said activity.) I was pumped, if this was really going to happen! We decided to make it happen during the Melting Pot adventure on the 27th, and invited everyone that was with us. No one seemed quite as excited about this potential adventure as us, except for Blythe. Blythe loves to snowboard so we looked up Cloudmont's website to see if they have snowboards and it turned out that they did. So Blythe decided to join in on our adventure. Hamp told us to pack multiple outfits, planning for skiing, hiking, and dinner, and decided to leave the AC at 7 a.m. Whooo. We met at Abby's house and then picked up Blythe on the way out of the neighborhood. We stopped to get gas and breakfast on our way out of town, planning to not make any more stops. Abby and I fell asleep on the way, leaving Hamp and Blythe listening to music and chatting in the front. We arrived in the Majestical Mentone about 3 hours later. We followed Hamp's GPS, Susan/Betty/whatever he calls it for the day, which led us around the winding mountain to Cloudmont. We arrive, not really sure what to expect, and there are a ton of people already there and there is actually a good amount of snow/ice on the ground. We park and walk into the "lodge". On our way to the lodge, I fall, not once, but twice on the super slick ice. I guess Uggs and ice don't really mix that well. Oops. We got direction of where to rent our skis and buy our lift tickets and the lady tells us that snow boards are first come first serve. Blythe begins to freak out so we scurry to the car to change. We all changed and headed to get our gear. We wandered into the ski rental place and begin standing in line. We wait for about five minutes and then notice that everyone in line is holding a receipt. Uh oh. So we ask the lady in front of us where she got that and she tells us we are supposed to get our lift ticket before our skis. And she also so kindly informs us that they are out of snowboards.
Oh boy.
So we go get in line for lift tickets, where the woman's news about the snowboards is confirmed when the worker of the line shouts out to everyone that they are out of boards AND there is this little chalkboard sign saying it, too. Blythe hates skiing and did not want to pay for lift and gear so she decided to watch us play on the slopes. So Hamp, Abby, and I get our boots and skis, Hamp receiving the Big Blue Boots that they bust out for "the people with the biggest calves". Quality. Then we make our way to one of the three lines to get on the "lift". The lift at the Cloudmont does not deserve to be called a lift because it doesn't ever really leave the ground. It's what you call a pony lift: grab on to a handle and you are pulled up the slope, never leaving the ground. Sounds pretty relaxing, huh? Don't be fooled; the pony lift made me more sore than the actual skiing did.
Once we made it to the top, Abby, the pro-skier, takes off down the "mountain" and Hamp and I are content to watch her make her first run.We haven't been skiing in a good 2-3 years so we are a little nervous to take the initial plunge down the hill. I wait for all of the people to clear off and then conquer my fear and go down. I love skiing. I am very clumsy, though, so that means I am not a very good skier. I only fell twice on my first run,popping back up as quickly as possible to not be too embarrassed (fun fact: I got the "pop up" award on my first ski trip in 7th grade because I fell so much that I perfected getting up more so than skiing itself.)
Hamp took a little time at the top of the mountain to work up his courage, then finally went down and didn't fall once all day. We all did a few runs until we got tired and hungry, then we went to talk to Blythe and take a little break. We hung out for a few minutes then decided to do one more run then go find lunch somewhere. So we wait in one of the three lines for the beloved pony lift and we all grab on to go up the hill one last time. A lot of people had been getting messed up on the lift and falling half-way up and I was SO proud that my clumsy self had not blocked any of the lift traffic.
You know that saying, "Don't count your chickens before they've hatched"? Shoulda listened to that.
I am half-way up the hill and the man in front of my messes up and falls down, proceeding to scoot over a little bit and then just sit, with his skis still in the middle of the route of the pony lift. I am thinking to myself, "please move. please move. please move. I don't want to fall." What does the man do? Yep, you guessed it. Continues laying in the exact same spot, therefore, inhibiting my way and causing my skis to get caught on the bottom of his and next thing I know, I am being flipped over this dude. I land with a thud and the man starts profusely apologizing. I just started laughing because I knew I hadn't had enough clumsy moment of the day. (I have a daily quota) I get up and decide that I have enough time to get back in line and try to go up one more time. So my turn comes and for some reason I get real nervous and miss my handle. The guy in charge of the lift gives me this perturbed look and tells me to catch the next one. I catch it and some how manage to have another clumsy moment and fall on my face. This is when I decided that I should just return the skis because the next clumsy moment was bound to end with something breaking and we like to keep our adventures ER-free.
We turn in our skis and load up to find something to eat for lunch. By this time it is 2 o'clock, so we are fairly hungry. Hamp pulls out his GPS and I pull out my Google Maps (which we know from prior posts that I don't have the greatest track record with) and collaborate to find somewhere to eat while we're in the middle of no where. We pick this little cafe and decide to use the GPS to navigate our way. It takes us winding through the beautiful, snow-laden mountains of north Alabama. We all oohed and ahhed, pointing out the beautiful little cottages up on the hillside that we would love to retire to, as we made our way to our lunch destination. The GPS says it's about 10 minutes away. 20 minutes later, we are in an even more rural part of town than we started in and there are absolutely NO restaurants around; only a bunch of deserted buildings and a gas station. So we pull out the GPS and iPhone again to find a new place to eat. We settle on Mi Casita. We both pull up the directions on our technological devices. Hamp's tells us to go left and mine tells us to go right. Of course. We chose to trust the GPS so off we go, traversing through the mountains again. Instead of oohs and ahhs, we only heard tummys rumbling on the way to the second restaurant. A good 30-45 minutes later, we arrive to Henegar, AL, the home of Mi Casita and little else.
Mi Casita may not have looked like much on the outside, but it sure did the job, seeing as it was 3 o'clock and we still hadn't had lunch.
After enjoying a lunch of yummy mexicano food and making a new friend, (our waiter gave us to go drinks on the house..I think he felt bad for us) we loaded into the car again. At this point we could either go home or do something else exciting. Hamp's mom works in Chattanooga and he told her we might go to dinner with her and we were only about an hour away from Chat town so we decided we might as well go ahead and make it even more of an adventurous day. We saw a beautiful sunset on our way into town and, an hour later, arrived at his mom's office. We got an office tour and got to meet all of her co-workers. Then we sat around in her office trying to decide where to go. After about 15 minutes of Hamp throwing out suggestions and us rejecting all of them, we finally decided on the Melting Pot. If you are asking yourself, "didn't they go to the Melting Pot last night?", you are correct. We did. We loved it so much that we went for round 2,only doing chocolate and cheese this time. It was just as yummy the second time around, and we joked that we are going to begin a tour around the US to eat at all of the Melting Pots.
After saying goodbye to his mom, we loaded up into the car, this time with a lot less excitement awaiting us at our destination: the booming metropolis that is Alexander City, AL. Surprisingly, Abby and I were awake the whole way home. Many interesting conversations were held on this ride home and some great "tweetable" moments occurred. I won't bore you with them, seeing as they are inside jokes, and you probably wouldn't find them humorous because we were all half-way delirious anyways.
15 hours (9 of them in the car), 2 bowls of chocolate, 8 falls (Mollie-7;Hamp-1), and 0 snowboards later, we made it home. Our longest adventure, to date, could be marked a complete success.
What a day.
Adventure #3--Passion, Jan 1-4, 2011, ATL
Two weeks before Passion, Hamp, Abby and I were lamenting over the fact that we never bought tickets. We all wanted to go really badly, thus began our frantic search for tickets. Lo and behold, Hamp found tickets for sale on eBay. We emailed the people over Passion to check their street cred and turns out that a group from South Caroline bought too many and was selling their extras. We immediately decided that it was a God thing so we bought them! Then Hamp's mom had so many Hilton reward points that we were able to book a hotel a block away from the GWCC and Philips arena, where all the Passion events took place, for FREE. God sure does work out His will just how He wants it, and this was no exception.
The night before Passion, none of us had received our tickets from our seller and we were having a minor freak out about them. I received an email entitled "Passion ticket attempt 5", not having received any of the four previous attempts. The fact that this link did not open did little to calm our nerves over the whole ticket situation, but we didn't let this little detail hinder us from embarking on this FOUR day adventure. Our longest adventure, by far.
It was a very rainy day and we were just cruising along the interstate, and then we hydroplane a little bit. If you have never hydroplaned, it is a very unnerving experience, but thankfully control over the car wasn't lost and we arrived in ATL safe and sound. We tried to check in at our hotel, but our room was not ready and we were supposed to meet our ticket seller lady, Sara, at the GWCC (Georgia World Congress Center) at 3:30 so we decided to put our bags back in the car, go meet Sara, register, and then check in. We arrive at the center and are waiting for her at our designated area and I text Sara. Sara tells me she is "stuck" at her hotel, whatever that means. This leaves us to people watch. The good thing about Passion is that 22,000 people were there so we had plentyyyy of people to watch and allowed me to see Samford friends/South Africa friends, which was VERY exciting!
Finally, Sara tells me that she has become "unstuck" and has arrived. She tells me to look for her and that she has on a green shirt with an orange jacket. We beginning searching all over for Sara, looking for her outfit. We see absolutely no one with those colors on so I call her back. She finally finds us and it turns out Sara must be color blind. Her shirt was definitely blue and her jacket was yellow. Oh Sara. With tickets in hand, a huge weight of stress has been relieved and we get checked in at the GWCC and the hotel.
Passion was incredible. Wait, let me rephrase that, Jesus is incredible and He showed up in some huge and mighty ways at Passion 2011. Since this post is already freakishly long, I will post later on with all of the specific deats of Passion and all the cool stuff Jesus taught me.
Just so you know, this adventure is, hands down, my favorite one we have ever taken and I am so thankful that God allowed us to experience this incredible adventure. We can definitely check off another greatly successful adventure on our checklists.
(Title credit: "The Outsiders"--Needtobreathe. New favorite song. Obsessed, to say the least. Photo credit: myself. Taken in Mentone, AL)
