09/20/2007

The Friday before school started back I left Birmingham for a 9-day wakeboarding vacation. I took a couple of summer classes and worked full-time which had caused a severe deficiency in water time this summer. That situation was definitely remedied this week.

 

Friday got to work and I was supposed to work until 5 p.m. then make the 4 hour trek to Hazzard County to meet up with ODB for Saturday and Sunday epicness on the Flint. Early Friday morning I received confirmation from ODB that he would be riding Friday afternoon. This was too much for my fragile little mind to handle. At noon on Friday I told the office manager that I was leaving at 2. At 12:45 I went back to visit the office manager and these were my exact words, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving now. See you later.” Thankfully I am still employed, but even if I wasn’t, it was worth it.

 

I arrived at ODB’s parent’s house at 6 and we immediately headed out to the Flint. It was definitely the way to start off my vacation. We were joined, by Steve (the guy who got me into wakeboarding), his son Miles, and my sister. We ran close to a dozen sets on the Roam, a wakesurfer, and our boards. My highlights of the afternoon were ODB’s backside three attempts on the surfer and Steve carrying Miles while they rode doubles, on the same wakeboard. At dark we headed in and met up with Diamond and Lizon for some Mexican food and then called it a night shortly after dinner.

 

Saturday and Sunday saw the rest of the crew take it easy on the river. We took it so easy that after Diamond was finished killing it on the surfer the angels who keep the Flint glassy actually came down and sang his praises.  Lizon ended up taking six sets on Saturday which clearly had a positive impact on his performance in the legends division at the Rome Tournament, but I digress. Fiona ripped on her new Ronix setup while ODB again shredded on the surfer.

 

On Sunday I arrived at ODB’s at 7am. You may wonder what the hell I was doing awake much less arriving at ODB’s house at such an hour. Saturday night ODB said, “As king of this castle I hereby decree that we shall be up and riding at 7am.” Oddly enough he didn’t remember giving those orders and everyone was still sleeping when I walked in the house. I immediately crashed on the sofa and took a nap until everyone else woke up. As you would expect I heard bitching in the form of, “You should have made us get up.” Yeah, right and then the bitching would have been, “What the hell are you here so early for?” Either way we were up earlier than usual shredding the morning butter on the Flint.

 

We said our goodbyes on Sunday and I headed home to hang out with the parents for a bit. I’ve got the greatest folks I could ever begin to ask for and with the insanity that was this summer it was nice to hang out for a few hours and catch up. I should probably disclose that I also had some laundry that needed to be done as well. After we finished lunch, a Braves game, the majority of a Nascar race and PGA Championship I packed up my truck and pointed the autopilot toward Kennesaw. Before I could get out of the driveway Mom loaded me up with some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies for the House of Style crew. Rock on Mom.

 

When I arrived in Kennesaw Brandon and Rhett had yet to return from Tennessee where they locked up 1^st and 2^nd in the Between the Bridges contest. Brett was at home and this was actually one of the few times he would be around. We headed up to the grocery store as I had promised the guys I’d cook them dinner in exchange for sofa space during the week. As I had anticipated Brett purchased tons of health food and as you would guess, a dozen eggs. Shortly after we returned Brandon and Rhett got home and proceeded to tell us stories of how they went to a far away land, destroyed the locals, scotched the earth, and brought back a bounty of gold and silver. Actually they just told us about their runs and the tournament but making it sound like they were some sort of villain made me laugh. I cooked tacos and they were quickly destroyed while we watched Innuendo and 300 into the wee hours of the night.