paragiraffe

Saturday. Oak Ridge. Because, you know, everyone should spend their Saturdays in Oak Ridge. (If you are not from Tennessee, you can get a little background here, except leave off the sophisticated part. Heh.)

After getting up early and going to the gym, this morning I headed out to check out Brandon‘s fencing tournament. Liz and Joey were already there (and had apparently already had their own Oak Ridge adventure involving Shoney’s). So, fencing was interesting. It took me a while to figure out how the scoring worked, but eventually I realized there were lights and beeps and they meant something. Yes. There was quite a lot of mocking going on from our perch on the stage, but all in good humor. Anyway.

Around this time, Liz and I decided we desperately needed pizza from Big Ed’s. Big Ed’s is a hole-in-the-wall which serves great, big, greasy pizzas and nothing else. They give you tiny little paper plates, cheap forks, and pathetic little napkins to handle the pie, which of course is part of the charm. It was fantastic. And, to its credit, Joey cheated on his Atkins diet for a bit and indulged in a few slices.

Oh I forgot a part! Big Ed’s does not accept credit cards, so we had to pick up some cash prior to getting lunch. We stopped at Tony’s Market, which had the most ghetto ATM I have ever seen. You put your card in, make your transaction, then the machine prints out a carbon paper ticket which you sign, take to the register, and get your cash there. Fun.

We then returned to the fencing tournament but ultimately decided to leave; the sabre portion was not going to begin for an hour, and we were all fenced-out. I then returned to Knoxville, aka civilization (barely). Adventure over.

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