Well, if you’re keeping track, I’m now in Alabama! Places I’ve been in 2017: Kansas, Tennessee, Philadelphia, Alabama. I. Am. Beat. I’m also incredibly grateful for a break from the cold before I head back up north Thursday night. I have a randomly long time in Alabama because it made no sense to fly clear across the country home from Philadelphia and be there for all of 1 day and then fly back across the country. However, somehow I managed to convince my zoo friends to drive down from St. Louis to hang out in Auburn for a few days. One of them went to Auburn for undergrad, so she comes down occasionally to see her friends here.
Sunday morning I woke up in Philadelphia and hopped on the treadmill for a quick and early 3 miles. For breakfast, I made a flapjacked muffin that I brought, plus a carrot apple ginger lemon juice which I bought at Pure Fare the day before. I felt like I was coming down with a cold, so #health.
Getting a cab to the airport went seamlessly, so I ended up with plenty of time to kill at the airport. The flight to Atlanta was seamless, and it was lunchtime when I landed. I figured my best bet for lunch was at the airport, and I found a “Food Network Atlanta Kitchen” where I bought chicken and rice soup and some cracker type things.
The Atlanta airport was buzzing on Superbowl Sunday! And yes, I did carefully book my flight to arrive at my destination in time for the Super Bowl. I drove the 1.5 hours to Auburn, and upon checking into my hotel, finally met up with my friends. Can you believe it’s already been 3 months??
At this point in my journey, I was so emotionally and physically tired, and seeing them was just the best thing ever. I seriously almost started crying. And look what they brought me!
You cannot get this outside of St. Louis and it is amazing. I am SO excited!
We laid low for a bit before going to an early dinner at a Greek restaurant. I got lemon chicken soup and Greek salad.
Then, we picked up some drinks (I got Blue Moon) to take to a Superbowl party with my friend’s friend from Auburn. I wasn’t sure if this would still fall into Falcon’s territory, but it seemed like people around here were pretty evenly split between the Falcons and Patriots. I went in undecided; I thought the Falcons played so well in the playoffs, but I normally root for the Patriots (over any other team in general) because Tom Brady is from my hometown. As it turns out, my loyalty runs deeps and I found myself cheering for the Patriots from the start. Admittedly, when the Patriots got so far down I got distracted with other Super Bowl party activities, but I definitely watched the epic comeback. WOW. I actually didn’t catch overtime. The group wanted to head downtown, and we tried to make it by the time overtime started, but we were a few minutes short. Darn!
However, I did get to experience what is supposedly the biggest bar in the SEC.
It was a fun night!
Monday morning I woke up STARVING so I helped myself to hotel breakfast while my friends slept.
^grits <3
But was still hungry for second breakfast.
Honestly there’s not a ton to do here. We hung around before it was time for lunch. We went to a create your own personal pizza place, and it was so good! I got jerk chicken on GF crust.
After lunch we went to see a movie, Split. I thought it was decent but just got weird at the end. Funny it was set in Philly though! Looked familiar!
Check out this “art” in from of an art museum here:
For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant. I ordered chicken soup (it had avocado!) with rice, and it came with basically an entire chicken in there! Seriously, SO much meat. I didn’t get close to finishing it!
We spent the rest of the night hanging out and playing cards.
The next morning, sadly, everyone had to leave and head back to their lives back home! We had a quick breakfast beforehand.
So sad to see them go, but I’m so happy they came!
However, that left me 2 full days in Alabama by myself, haha. I spent the rest of the morning doing nothing/doing laundry before popping into Panera for lunch.
I found a natural foods store nearby that was basically exactly like Whole Foods, so I stopped in to restock some snacks. I also found the ginger chews I’ve been obsessed with lately, and they even had an apple flavor!! SO delicious.
In the afternoon, I wandered around a mall, read a book, and took a nap. I was going to try to drive around the area a bit more, but there was an emergency severe weather alert on the radio for thunderstorms and I didn’t want to be driving around in that, so I huddled in my hotel with a book and watched the storm unfurled outside.
In the evening, I dropped into a Crossfit. As it turns out, there is a Crossfit literally right next to my hotel. I was so shocked when I realized it was so close! Like, it basically shares the same parking lot. I braved the storm to walk the 200 feet to the box and felt so welcome! All Crossfits are so welcoming, but this one especially. We had a nice, long workout. It was 30 minutes of 1 minute per station: walking lunges, farmer’s carry, rowing, bear crawl, shuttle sprints. Plus some handstand practice. My handstands, while pretty terrible, are finally starting to feel stronger since my shoulder injury forever ago. It was nice to get moving again after a day off!
Because I’m boring, I went back to the Greek place for dinner and ordered a Greek salad with chicken.
The rest of this night consisted of typing up this post, and a date with a massive chocolate chip cookie I picked up in the Philly airport. I’m honestly still so exhausted, so I’m embracing the downtime!
I’mm check back in probably on Thursday with some more “food and fitness as a nomad” adventures!