Road Food and Fun

Easy Peasy trip today, only six hours of driving, the usual rain storms, delays due to Truck Tag, when big 18wheelers decide to pass each other on the uphill on two lane roads but nothing major. Breakfast at the hotel consisted a cup of coffee and a spoon of flax seed meal with a prune that Cindy had thoughtfully remembered to bring. Since we only had a quarter of a tank of gas, I had promised an early stop to refuel followed by a proper breakfast. We found a perfect spot and when I opened the car door the smells were promising. While I filled the tank and cleaned the windows, Cindy checked out the options. They were unfortunately sparse, but the menu offered homemade breakfast biscuits which looked promising.  Unfortunately they stopped serving those at 9:30 and it was now 9:55, bad luck.  The only other hot things were five kinds of deep fried chicken, two deep fried types of potatoes and little tubs of gravy, that unctuous mixture of fried sausage in a milky roux.  We passed and Cindy ended up with a banana and blueberry biscuit and I opted for the breakfast of champions, an ice cream sandwich. I have to tell you, a bite of banana followed by a bite of ice cream sandwich is a marvelous combination and did the trick.

We drove for another three hours, this time though really heavy squalls, and once inside of Georgia, we stopped for gas and lunch. It turned out that for me, it was gas and gas.  I gave into the temptation of a Circle K hot dog, with all the trimmings.  I enjoyed every bite but it came back to haunt me for the next two hours.  Cindy had the delightful and always tasty two day old microwaved breakfast burrito, which she declared nearly edible.  Needless to say, we are looking forward to salads for dinner!

Do you remember when the current administration said they were going to be spending bigly on infrastructure?  Given it’s been a problem for decades we were hoping something might have finally changed, but there is zero evidence of any of that money having been spent on road improvement in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia or Florida.  The roads are a mess, mile after mile of potholes and poorly painted marker stripes, and no evidence of road construction, repair or maintenance. Very sad!

We finally got proper nourishment in the Marriott restaurant where the manager told us the grouper had just been delivered and the salmon was also very fresh.  We had one of each, simply grilled with lemon - and simply delicious.  The manager is from Albania and we’d had quite an interesting conversation with him earlier, all about the EU and Brexit and the perks that Albanians get from Greece (you read that right).

Heading south again today ... Cindy and Wm