We're There:)

Hey:) So the train was miserable, but we got to sit in the sun all day by a fountain while waiting for Michelle (friend from Alabama) to pick us up and that was nice (see Rumburg's comment for more). The first climate-related misery is... sun-burn, not frost-bite! Good thing we threw in some sun-screen at the last minute or we'd be blistering lol.
So Michelle picked us up and we traipsed around Atlanta for a while. First we spent 45 minutes hunting for the Sweet Water Brewery, which we had seen from the train on the ride in. We found it and there was chill music (Beatles covers and so on) and a ton of people, so we got into an exploratory mood. We met these cool guys named Ryan and Kurt - broke bread with them, and they recommended this town called Athens that's an hr away from Atlanta, said it was "mad chill". Then, we ate at an AWESOME pizza place called "Mellow Mushroom" and drove off to Athens. Very much a college town (think Thursday night on Marshall St. times 50), a ton of bars, but not so much our atmosphere. We saw a flier for a band (on the flier there was a dude wearing a Primus shirt so we thought the band would be cool), wandered over there & the headliner was done but "Laminated Cat" played and WOW they were AWFUL, sounded like a cat getting laminated to death slowly. Shocker. Rolled back up to the main area and found a really chill basement bar where two guys on guitar were covering Sublime and chill music like that. Stayed at a Day's Inn, so me & Jess got one last taste of a mattress:) (we've had a fouton for the last month).
So we're at the Public Library in Athens, heading up to Blairsville where the secret back 1/4 mile back entrance to the trail is (our other option would be 8.8 miles), so we end up back on schedule (on the AT Saturday) despite our random shinanigans. Next town stop should be Helen, GA, approx. next Sunday or Monday (9 days). If you don't hear from us they may not have internet access, but we will be in touch w/ our parents by phone so leave it to them to call the cops lol. By the way, give us till Wednesday cuz we're Out of Shape lol. By the time we get there we'll have our itinerary finished (we figured we'd hike a bit and see how fast we're going before we try to predict the next 6 months of hiking lol).
And just so everyone knows, this blog is a) totally public, b) being read by extended family and friends, and c) elementary school classes are keeping tabs on us (the kids won't be reading this from school, but the teachers will be reading this and sharing info with them, and you never know what kind of access they have from home - they may take it upon themselves to keep tabs on us over the summer or something). So please keep comments appropriate:) In the future, we will include a section entitled "Fo' the sho'ties" that includes more educational type information about our hike, so feel free to ignore it entirely if you don't care about such things.
Final gloating note - our packs are only 25 lbs. and we have nearly 3 weeks of food! Thanks Lorri/Mom (she used her nervous "we're-leaving-soon" energy to make us a bunch of AWESOME trail food!) :D