Birthday Balloons

So the slightly funny story from the last post I was going to tell y’all about? It happened last weekend and as many a story in the south starts, this one begins with “What had happened was…”

My college alumni has a local Atlanta group that hosts / schedules events at various places in the Atlanta area so we can gather and mingle. Some events are with other alumn’s only and others involve friends and family too. Last weekend was one of those “gather with friends and family” events and it was going to be hosted at Stone Mountain.

We had a LOT going on last Saturday so I wasn’t sure if we’d attend, but I brought it up to Alex. At 5:30 we basically made the  decision that we would indeed go join this fun little party that started at 6. As we loaded up the car we booted up our GPS and realized problem #1. We didn’t have ANY idea of an address to enter for and thus be directed to in order to GET to the event.

As we started driving my gas light came on and then the car started shuddering. Truly this was going to be an interesting drive. At the gas station Alex pumped gas and then checked out the transmission fluid only to learn I was almost empty. Now we had to stop at an auto store on our way to Stone Mountain.

Multiple stops, lots of Atlanta traffic and several wrong turns later we pull into the park. Now we grab all of our gear (two blankets, camera, snacks, etc) and start walking to the big field where we are all supposed to meet. Now – per the Facebook info we were all going to be meeting under some balloons. Balloons that are green, purple, white, and red.

Catch is – we get there after dark. So….finding balloons, damn near impossible in a crowd of thousands. Nonetheless we make a valiant effort as we wind our way down to the bottom of the field. On our way down I THOUGHT I saw some balloons, but they were birthday balloons and well there was no way I would stumble my way into someone’s birthday party.

We ended up catching a seat without finding anyone to watch the show.

This happens to be a laser show that uses both laser, projected images, and all of it is projected on to the side of Stone Mountain.

They call this technology “MountainVision.”

All of the show is set to music and often times its fun music you know so they crowd will sing along. The last bit of the show is various American pride songs including but not limited to the national anthem and God Bless America. The entire crowd stands during these songs and if you are me, you sing.

Then the entire show ends with a very very big bang. This bang is extremely loud if you are sitting basically front and center…which we were.

After this last moment we rushed to a bathroom because I was dying and may I just ask – WHY do women’s bathrooms take so damn long? Ladies its get in, use it, get the hell out. This is not a primping station. We headed home like everyone else and once we got home I came to a striking, and ironic, realization.

My alumni group posted this great photo on Facebook before kindly explaining what had happened to the “balloon” issue and thus why we could not find anyone. You see…they had bought BIRTHDAY BALLOONS because they had difficulty locating regular balloons but forgot to let people know.

/FacePalm. In other words – WE WERE RIGHT THERE and I walked away for fear of interrupting a private party. That teaches me to be polite. :-p

And that my friends is the story of MountainVision.