I went to pray for the ATL over the weekend. It had been going on five years since my last visit, when I got deliriously sick on the second day and spent the rest of the week focusing on getting well enough to board a plane for home. Needless to say I had a lot of praying to do.

Alex and I tirelessly crisscrossed the town for two solid days in search of fine furniture and clothing, good eats, and bike shops.

He’s a newly minted visual merchandiser at CB2. There aren’t many CB2s, and each store only has one, so there aren’t many in the same class. It’s like being in the Top Gun of making sure the store is looking sharp. On top of keeping everything in it’s place, he’s also responsible for three window displays every month, based on a theme handed down from the corporate overlords. His very first window design was featured on their company blog last month.

Enough said.

Boutique popsicles are a budding enterprise down there. He has a popsicle cart right across the street from his apartment called King of Pops with a healthy array of flavors. I was encouraged to go chocolate and sea salt but I opted for watermelon mojito. It was basically pure watermelon in frozen form, which would have been enough for me, but suspended within were the finely ground mints and spices required to garner the mojito moniker. So delicious, so refreshing.

I deferred at LottaFrutta (pictured above) and rocked the coconut.

Really, we jammed so much into two days that I could never recount everything. It won’t be another five years until my next visit.

This was our anthem as we drove around in the sunshine;

Gold Panda – Quitter’s Raga