Just back from Lexington, VA and I have 33,000 stories to tell. Unfortunately you won’t get any of them tonight.
OK, maybe just one: We stayed in room number 309 at the Hampton Inn Col Alto.
Well, because I’m a nice guy, two: On the drive back, a few miles short of the North Carolina border on I-77, the Purple Whale passed the 33,000 mile mark.
Instead of going to the state park near Dublin this morning we opted instead to just take a walk around a trail in a city park. We found two caches. One of which we thought we might be the FTF on, but when we found the cache and opened the log book there was one entry with 2 names there dated a couple days after the cache was hidden. Whoever it was that signed the logbook never logged it on Geocaching,com.
We made it to Lexington around lunch and met with Sally and daughter Claire (bride to be), Mark (impending groom), Stuart (her son) and Christina (bride of son) at Nikkos Cafe. Afterwards we caught up with Sally’s adventures with the State Department in Saudi Arabia as the rain storms passed through the area. Just when it looked like we wouldn’t be able to do the 3-1/2 mile Sally Lewis Loop along Wood Creek Trail and back through VMI and Washington & Lee, the skies broke, and off we went. A couple hundred yards into our walk I noticed a rustling in the bushes and spotted this young buck. He eyeballed us warily as we moved along and never took off further.
The photo above is the first hint as to where Donna & I went for lunch today. Here is hint#2 and this is the giveaway! Still don’t know? Email Mark Turner and ask him.
We are on our way to Lexington, VA for the weekend wedding of Claire & Mark. It was just a little over a year ago that we drove to Baton Rouge, LA to see Claire’s brother Stuart get married.
Doing a little geocaching along the way by visiting a couple SC State Parks before lunch. We were four for four in cache finds, we also found the first stage of a statewide multi-cache and picked up a Travel Bug to drag along and dip in our finds.
We got not too far from home when we noticed that we had left the cell phone in the Miata back home in the garage. But it was far enough that we didn’t feel like going back to get it. Then, more than half way to tonight’s stop in Dublin, VA1, Donna realized that the pair of jeans she was wearing was the only one she brought. We fixed both problems at a local Walmart this evening, Donna got four new pair of jeans2 and we bought a cheap Verizon burner3.
About 9:15 the hotel’s fire alarm goes off. Because we are on the third floor and in the middle of the building we took it kind of serious. By the time we grabbed our shoes, me my wallet and Donna her purse, the alarm shut off. Donna called the front desk and they told her that it was triggered on the first floor, but there was no fire. If that thing goes off again and there isn’t a fire, I sense a free room coming on.
1. This is the third Dublin we have been in this year. In February on the way home from Florida we drove through the Georgia version. In March we stopped in the Texas town by this name to visit the Dr Pepper Museum.
2. She says it wasn’t really her plan, but she did need new jeans anyway as her current group are pretty well faded.
3. So now the people who only turn on their cell phone when they want to call someone, have two cell phones. Actually three, but we never did activate that one, we just used it to upgrade our first phone…
Nothing.
We finally got around to watching the movie Lincoln tonight. It has been percolating in the rental queue from some time now and it finally bubbled up to the top. I’m glad that I didn’t really pay attention to American History in school because it sure made the movie more exciting. I was on the edge of my seat when they were voting for that amendment thing. And wow, the hero dude gets shot and killed, didn’t see that coming.
All kidding aside, this was a really good movie. I totally believed at times I was watching a documentary, Daniel Day Lewis nailed it. Plus it was kind of fun figuring out who the actors were under all that facial hair. Some were real easy, Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens and others were harder, like James Spader as W. N. Bilbo.
And we got a free one this morning on the way to work. While somewhere in the depths of my lizard based brain I knew it was National Doughnut Day, I forgot all about until I was pleasantly surprised when we hit the drive-up at DD to buy a coffee and hot chocolate. The disembodied voice from the order board said, “Because it is National Doughnut Day, with the purchase of those two items you qualify for two free doughnuts. What kind would you like?” I got a glazed blueberry cake one and Donna took a vanilla frosted with sprinkles.
In my inbox at work this morning was an email with the subject line that read: News: TOXIC BELLY-BUGS infest Nine out of every Ten people (is 1 of them you ?). Obivous spam, so I deleted it.
A few minutes later I tried to print something from Publisher and it wouldn’t connect to the printer. So to see if it was Publisher or the printer I printed something from Outlook. There was nothing in my Inbox, so I went to the deleted folder and printed the spam email. I could hear it printing out two cubicals over, so I kenw to end Publisher and restart it. When Publisher came back up, it printed fine this time. I went over to pick up my job and that is when I noticed that the spam email was longer than what I saw in the prview window. There was a second page that had a mini short story:
The grill. OMG. The grill is one of the baddest burger grills I have ever seen. Food constantly sits on it. A huge pile of onions sit in one corner the bottom of this pile caramelizes. Below this are jalapenos that do the same thing. To the left are the burgers and they’re huge. I’m guessing about 1 lb each. There’s a small space on the grill that’s not occupied with food. It really looks incredible. Like I want to just eat the food right off the grill. In a true Gourmet World the grill would have been my plate.
So I sit down and a lady tells everyone that she just flew in just to come eat here! Well, everyone knows she’s exaggerating about why she flew here but I ask where she flew in from. She says New Jersey and I laugh and tell her that I just drove from CA to eat here!
So I wait maybe another 10 minutes before my burger comes to me. Normally I’d be really worried about these wait times but as you watch Nic you realize the reason why the food takes so long is because he takes cooking these burgers seriously. And he shoots for perfection in each burger so you enjoy the fact that he takes so much time. In all honesty I think this may have been the longest I have ever waited for a burger. Guess what? Completely worth the wait.
My burger comes and it’s served in a plastic basket with all sorts of fantastic colors and smells just bursting from it. I grab my phone to take a pic to post to Facebook and the lady next to me offers to take a pic of me holding up the burger! Outstanding! Of course I take her up on the offer. As I grab the burger I’m wondering if I can hold up the entire thing. I manage but half my extras fall out. She takes the pic and I grab my phone from her then dive into the burger. Wow. I mean WOW! I just can’t believe it’s this good. Seriously one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. In fact, I it’s the 2nd best burger I’ve ever had in my life (want to know my 1st choice? Email me!). I’m in total awe. I munch down on it hard. Takes me a while to eat all this with the curly fries which are good too but nothing incredible like the burger. But I do recommend them if you’ve a huge appetite. Well, if you can’t finish it, you can ask for a box and take the rest home. They do to-go orders too but you still have to wait just as long. This is actually something I definitely do not recommend. As I started to get closer to finishing my burger it got lukewarm. Its taste really started to wane. I mean wane to maybe half of its taste. So if you eat here, definitely make time for the wait, and time to sit down and fully enjoy this burger of burgers.
And my whole meal? $10.50. This is a cheeseburger with everything and a drink. So completely worth it.
It may be National Doughnut Day, but now I want a hamburger for dessert.
