on our way to see the bulldogs play!

i headed outta athens around 3 pm on wednesday and caught a ride with whitney and her bf, mike. it was a little too awkward for me...so i took a little nap and woke up about 20 minutes from home. went to my church's reformation celebration to eat. its our presbyterian substitution for dressing up and passing out candy on halloween. after brats (bratworsts), went home and got organized for the big trip to florida!!

of course, i can't get back home before the election on tuesday (go Bush!) so i had to exercise my 18th-year granted right to vote by way of "early voting" on thursday morning. i was informed that the polls didn't open until 9 am and we had to meet our ride en route, so we had to get the voting done asap. we decided (that would be colette and me) to get there at 8:30ish. when we arrived, i was like "wow! its so busy that they opened early!" no. that wasn't the case. turns out they actually opened at 8 am and we had to get in the back of the hour-wait line. crappit. we were gonna hold up our ride. oh well. the actual voting part wasn't bad. we use e-voting...so it was quite painless. W '04.

hit the road around 9:40, met our ride outside a shoney's and then were on our way to see the bulldogs play! oh man. it was quite interesting to see the entire road filled with mostly red/white/black cars all decked out in georgia magnets with their tailgating flags flapping in the wind at 85 miles an hour. the bulldog nation was on the move to the ga/fl game. colette and i rode with joe and bryan/b.o. in b.o.'s suv. we had a not so polite statement on my side of the car...reverse UF and then UF. behind us we dragged (is that right?) a little squeaky gator...only one of the casualties on the drive down. we also lost two flags, one at the fault of colette, who decided to roll down her window when we were going 79 (yea, have to make a point of 79. b.o. believes in playing the 9-miles-an-hour over game on cruise control) to exchange hollas with other dawg fans and...well, i guess you can picture it. the other we lost later; we just lost the flag. the stick remained. everyone we drove by had to check to make sure they weren't suckers to the wind as well. finally arrived on amelia island around 6 pm. of course, we made a few stops along the way...one at wally world to replace the squeaky gator that lay somewhere along I-95 south.

ate at a restraunt for dinner with really really bad service. food was good though. so the parents were all worried about this whole hotel thing with the guys and girls sharing a room. as cheap college students, we couldn't figure out how to do it any other way. i was not that happy about it either and understood what they were saying, but other parents were going as well, so i felt it was safe. turned out to be perfectly fine. the five girls got to sleep in the beds and the two guys crammed themselves into the hallway of the room with their sleeping bags. i'm glad i'm a girl :). we played cranium until 1 am, then joe jammed a little on his guitar even though our goal was to be quiet to avoid being kicked out, and the other three girls giggled themselves to sleep.

beaches are awesome. aside from the dead sea turtle a few meters away and the drop off about three feet into the water from the hurricane, it was perfect. we got to toss the frisbee around for a little bit. i had to do a rescue swim for my smiley face frisbee that somehow found its way into to slightly cold waters and began to drift out. crappit. i think i was the only one that ever got in lol. the weather was warm, though. about 80 degrees...at the end of october, that ain't shabby. afterwards, i constructed the georgia arch in the sand. all 3Dish and stuff. you'd a been proud. of course, in spirit of the game, we also made an awesome depiction of a bulldog rodeoing on a gator. i'll have to post a pic of it, cuz it was super awesome. it might be hard to see, though. man, we coulda won some kind of contest with that. we tried playing adventure golf, but it closed at 9 pm. what kind of putt putt place closes at 9 pm?? it was also iteresting how everything within 100 miles of the game was advertising to the ga/fl fans. i mean everything from the car dealerships to the laundromats.

so we resorted to another game of cranium...john, some of our gang's friend from high school, showed up to visit and joined us. went down to the beach, too, and sang a few songs with the beautiful fullish moon sparkling on the dark ocean waters in the background. how lovely.