Metal Omens.

Sometimes its good to be wrong. I thought Atlanta was the home of Krunk music, I fully anticipated seeing plenty of stanky leg and ‘Joose’ going on, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Atlanta is METAL. Full out tattoo, leather pants crazy screamin hillbillies metal!

My first experience came when I went to a local bike shop called ‘No Brakes’ to build up my masi for Trinidad. As soon as I walked in the guy who runs the place, Two-tone (very metal nick name), was drinking a beer and absolutely shredding some manowar (known in the guiness book of records as the loudest band on the planet) – this was clearly my kind of place. So we shredded plenty of sweet tunes, glued tubies and sorted my new machine out.

For dinner we went to this place called Vortex (picured above), which is sort of a heavy metal burger joint. Also amazing. All the waitresses had full sleeves of tattoos and they played only heavy music, extremely loud on the speakers. We ran into a chic who turned out to be the girlfriend of the bassist from Mastadon, which completely blew my mind. It was like having someone tell you they were dating God.

As luck would have it heavy metal karaoke was going on next door (pictured above) so we popped over to a packed house full of metal fans wailing away poorly at the mic, again my world was totally blown out of the water. I was planning on doing an oldie but goody, Dio’s Holy Diver, but the line was too long and I needed to get some rest.

Jeff and I in the graveyard hunting Mr. Zombie...

For the coup de gras, I found out Rob Zombie was in town filming a horror movie literally 2 blocks from Jeff and Leighs place where I am staying!!!! WHAT? I have been jamming that dudes music since middle school, I HAD to meet him. So after metal karaoke we popped over to this graveyard and tried to find him with the film crew… unfortunately they had the night off or something, so no Zombie yet, but I’m still here a few days so I’m gonna find him!

Training is going very well too. I got behind the motor with Jeff and hammered away at a tiny 80 inch gear, I’m feeling like I actually have some snap back. While at the track I also had the chance to work with a program Jeff is involved with called Project Adventure Kids, which takes young guys who have had a hard go of it and helps them get back on their feet. It was very cool for me to work with these guys, get them excited about competing and hopefully build up their confidence and team work skills up.

Leaving Wednesday for Trinidad!