Following the holidays, I had an opportunity to travel down to Athens,
Georgia for a week and a half to see my brother & his family
(and particularly my nephew, who was born on Christmas Eve 2010).
The Athens metropolitan area is about 190,000 strong (according to what Wikipedia tells me). Other than being the home of UGA
(University of Georgia)and the DAWGS (Georgia Bulldogs), R.E.M., the B-52s, & Kim Basinger, I knew pretty much nothing about the place until I arrived.
Okay, I’m warning you ahead of time that my “tour” kind of sucks…I did precious little research, only ventured into downtown
on one day (January 3 –which was before the university students came back from winter break, so the place likely looks more dead than usual),
and I didn’t get the cute coed “people pics” I wanted, cause I was
feeling anti-social on the day I went touring, and didn’t want to be some creepy f*ckwad that ran up to people and snapped first, and asked questions later.
I planned to go back another day, and take more pictures of the area east of the Oconee river, the UGA campus, and the grand Queen Anne homes,
west of downtown, but the snowpocalpse (more about that below) prevented me from getting out of my brother apartment
complex for three days, so that crap will have to wait until next time.
Most pictures taken on January 3, 2011.
Enjizzle:
The downtown Athens skyline (bow down and suck it, Valdosta!)
A handsome stretch of Broad St.
While Broad St/US78 is the main artery that runs through downtown, West Clayton Street is undoubtedly the primary commercial thoroughfare of the city’s core
– a leafy main street lined with attractive buildings on both sides for several blocks…vaguely reminiscent of the charming (but much larger) main street
in downtown Greenville, SC, an hour and a half to the northeast….
And speaking of Greenville, South Cakalacky!!!! Behold!
I defied death in order to bring you this shot from Paris Mountain, so appreciate the shit out it. Please and thank you.
Okay, now back to Athens:
The greek god Athena, which indirectly inspired the city’s namesake. Athens, Georgia, BTW, is also a sister city of Athens, Greece
(along with Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C.)
Palm Trees!
And here, I got bored:
And here I got bored again:
Coming Soon! (you can see a construction crane for this project in my very first shot in ths thread, featuring the “skyline”)
Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh!
Heh heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh!
On January 9-10, Athens received 8.8 inches of snow, an all-time record amount of snowfall over a 24-hour period for the city.
To make matters worse, the snow later changed over to freezing rain and created a nice blanket of ice to coat the snow with.
Since my dumb ass expected it to be somewhat mild in Georgia (like it was for the first few days of the year),
I didn’t bother bringing any heavy winter gear along for the trip.
So enjoy my eyewitness on-the-spot coverage, looking safely through the window from the confines of my brother’s toasty apartment:
Clearly Georgia does not prepare for this type of thing very well because…well, it almost never happens.
They dump a mixture of sand & gravel on the roads to create traction for emergency vehicles, postal trucks & daredevil drivers,
because there are very few large rock salt reserves available.
And supposedly there are only about 16 snow plows in the entire state of Georgia (Atlanta alone has ten of them).
Cleveland by comparison, has over 60 snowplows. But to be fair, Atlanta averages about 2.5 inches of snowfall a year,
whereas Cleveland averages about 80 inches.
Supposedly they get ice storms every other year or so,
but there hasn’t been anything remotely like this in Athens since the blizzard of 1993 (From what people told me).
Since I couldn’t really go anywhere interesting to take pictures of my own,I took pictures of the snowy scenes shown on the local
(Atlanta-based) TV coverage that I was stuck watching instead:
36-year veteran WSB-TV Anchor Monica Kaufman (*cough* Pearson) holding it down in the channel 2 anchor bunker.
Fun facts – The Louisville, KY native was both the first black and first female TV anchor in Atlanta.
And she beat out then-Nashville anchor
Oprah Winfrey who also wanted that coveted job back in 1975.
skylineshot!!!
Just how bad is extremely bad? I need specifics.
Woah, let’s not get too specific, now! My tiny brain can’t process all that info all at once.
So much for the postal carrier’s creed “Neither rain, sleet, nor snow…”
11Alive not only has the WTF-ometer (local joke that even most locals won’t get), they have 12 FUCKING plasma TVs informing me all at once!
It’s like they’re broadcasting from Best Buy.
BTW, Brenda Wood (DC native), seen here, is another local TV legend (she’s been an Atlanta TV anchor since 1988),
so she probably deserves some recognition too.
I can’t remember what channel this was…if only there was some sort of subtle reminder on the screen of what station I was watching…hmmm?
One last look at Athens, covered in white death, from above (on my way back to Ohio):
And last, but not least, a photo of my newborn nephew, Kenneth Jayden:
Thanks for viewing!
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