Consistent with plans from night before, I had leftover half of club sandwich as breakfast before checking out of hotel, along with cold brew coffee had bought the night before.
Got myself packed up and on and out of my oceanfront hotel digs. I stopped at a Starbucks on the way out of Daytona Beach for a coffee for the road.
It ended up being a 8.5 hour drive drive from Daytona Beach, FL to Birmingham, AL. It was quite the trek. I crossed over from EST back into CST time, so it felt like an hour later than it was for arriving at Friend #4's place right at 7:30pm.
Not much notable for drive other than one part of it back across Florida through Jacksonville and starting into panhandle was backtracking for route I had previously taken heading into FL and down to Tampa. An audiobook on running and "being" accompanied me for most all of the drive.
Had my first Hardee's experience in Cottonwood, FL, which was just after turning off of the 10 to start to head up through Alabama from the coast area. I made pit stop and grabbed lunch through drive-thru. That immediate area was still in repairs from Hurricane Michael from back in October and looked pretty rough. Including for Hardee's tower sign laying on ground in parking lot. Unfortunately, ended up w/ sketchy meal from them w/ dirty grease lukewarm fries and warm-ish burger for combo I had ordered. Ate maybe half of each as I drove north, threw the rest away at future pit stop on drive.
Got to Friend #4's at 7:30pm CST. Time spent with initial catch-up and everything for newly-purchased Birmingham home, and didn't head out for late dinner until just after 9pm.
Friend was on a special diet for the New Year, so we had first went to a public market -type place in the downtown Birmingham area that had about 6 different dining options and a bar. However, turned out that all but the bar was already closed by the time we got there.
After some further deliberation we ended up headng over closer to UAB to a relatively newer place called Woolworth's, named for the fact that it is housed in the original Woolworth's building. It was a restaurant and bar, with some arcade games, shuffleboard, a mini bowling alley and a giant (8 ft. high) Pac-Man game. We were seated right away in dining area since were told the kitchen was closing in 15 minutes or so. I ended up w/ a flatbread w/ arugula, feta cheese, smoked chicken, harissa drizzle.
Had two local draft beers with dinner, and ended up hanging out there until about their closing time.
Headed back to friend's place to crash for the night. It was a late night sign-off in my digs for the next two nights, the Friend's 5 year old's twin size bed. Which also included a fostered cat named Simon that remained hidden under said twin bed until lights out and door closed, where he then (after lights out) decided he wanted door open and pawed/scratched at it enough to get me back up to open it. Some further delay in falling asleep due to Simon also having a habit of walking around low enough so that the metal tag on his collar drags and clanks on the wooden floors, not unlike the sound I expect a prisoner's ball and chain would make as the prisoner paces his cell.
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