2 Days with 2 Friends

I spent a Friday and Saturday riding the mountains of North Georgia and North Carolina with two old friends from my youth, Lyle Branton and Jimmy Jimmerson. We live in three of the four corners of Atlanta- Lyle lives on the southside in the hometown of us all, Fayetteville, while Jimmy lives on the top end, in Alpharetta, and we live out east, in Dacula. We met up toward Jimmy, at a little Mexican eatery, then rode north.
Our travels first took us up to the Georgia/North Carolina border town of Hiawassee, where Jimmy's family owns a mountain cottage we would spend the night at. We took the long way around, to and through Helen, on up mountain roads into town and up the mountain (literally) to the cabin. After dropping our gear, we took off for a ride over to Dillard, where an annual Barbeque cook-off and Bluegrass festival was kicking off for the weekend. We wandered around, sampled a little of the local fare in BBQ and "pickin' & grinnin'" before hopping back on the bikes and making our way back to Hiawassee by dark.
We stayed up into the night, talking, laughing, reminiscing together. Anytime I can get with these guys is time well-spent. Lyle and I have been best friends since we were both 12 years old, and I befriended Jimmy at church in my 10th grade year. After high school, I introduced them to each other, and they in turn became fast friends over the years as well. We've been there for each other's life events over the decades, be it marriages, childbirths, adoptions, family crises, career changes, child graduations. I've heard it said that if you go through life with a couple of close friends, you've done well. That is certainly true of the three of us. Many friends have come and gone in each of our lives, but the bonds we share have stood the test of time. "A cord of three strands is not easily broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12

We were up early Saturday, cleaned up the place and hit the road, tackling the fantastic twisties and sweepers found throughout the hills of North Georgia and North Carolina. The guys had to stop in for some more BBQ at the festival in Dillard, and we found ourselves judging in the cook-off for the "People's Choice Awards"! That made for a fun, rather filling, afternoon, with more foot-stomping Bluegrass ringing in our ears. We took to the roads again, into North Carolina toward Otto, Scaly Mountain, and back into Georgia through Rabun, Mountain City, and Clayton, before making our way south to our homes again. A few hundred miles, many memories made with good friends.
Proverbs 17:17