Text 18212, 103 rader
Skriven 2007-07-25 07:41:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 880
================
We forwent the wonderful continental breakfast buffet and
joined our friends at the Village Inn for a hearty meal.
The good thing about this place is that as well as breakfast
being available all day, lunch is also available all day.

It's apparently a sizable chain, but I'd not encountered it
before. It has the flavor of Cracker Barrel before that
company became huge and unwieldy and under the thumbs of the
bean-counters.

We arrived in dribs and drabs - it was nearly 10:30 before
we'd all arrived, with the drama of car-switching, who's
picking up whom, dealing with Sam the unholy terror, and
so on. So some of us sat an hour before even ordering,
emptying numerous carafes of mediocre coffee. 

The table ended up with an assortment of chicken-fried steaks,
waffle sandwiches, breakfast burritos, and similar things,
most served with two eggs and a side of hash browns. These
breakfasts ran $7-8 each, with coffee $1.69 extra; when the
bill came, Ella Lou fussed at the breakfasts running $10 each.
Of course, as the birthday girl, her opinion counted for
naught, as she wasn't paying.

The breakfasts ran from generous up to absurd.

Carol had an order of hash browns topped with pieces of
CFS topped with sausage gravy, with a side of fresh fruit
(looked like airline fruit) and I think two eggs. Also
three pancakes, which she pronounced excellent - most of
the people at table got breakfasts that included these,
and the consensus was that they were good as homemade.

I had the All World Double Cheeseburger, the nationalities
represented by Swiss and American process cheese, oh, yes, also
Russian dressing. The burger patties came medium-rare (I didn't
specify). It was a large and quite good sandwich. I got hash
browns (pretty good though a little underbrowned) instead of
French fries, imagining that that would save them from having to
fire up the deep fryer that early. Wrong - I got a pair of lovely
fried onion rings as well.

After a long and chatty meal, Carol and I broke things up as
we had to check out of the hotel before noon, a deadline we
made by 5 minutes; then repaired to Ella Lou's for a little
impromptu concert and then to Kenneth's for a general sitting
around and bull session. Troy and Wendy wanted to go to Eureka
Springs (there's an opera company that they both performed with,
and the place holds apparently happy memories), but we couldn't
fit that in and make our plane as well, so inertia prevailed and
nobody went; we all just basked in the sunshine.

When it was time to go, we took a detour to Andy's, home of
the famous concrete, which is vanilla or chocolate frozen
custard blended (a la concrete mixer, hence the name) with an
ingredient of your choice, these ranging from pecans to fudge
sauce to peaches to raspberries to pretzels to "a whole slice
of Key lime pie." I think the teenage helpers were taken aback
when Carol and I were in the vanguard followed by a mob of ten
others, in the middle of a quiet afternoon! I had a simple small
chocolate, which was fine and tasted Carol's Key lime pie concrete
(pretty good) and Ella Lou's raspberries and cream (okay).

0723 US6189 XNA ORD 1717 1905 CRJ 7CD

Carol was eager to get to the airport lest we miss the 5:15,
so we left town at 3:30, got to the rental car return around
3:50, boarding passes by 4, and through security five minutes
after. Sat around for an hour, boarded up, and off we went;
we switched seats as the exit row doesn't offer any extra
room, as it turns out, plus it gets cold. Other rows are
nicer. Especially, as the seat rating websites point out,
the ones toward the front, because then you get off the plane
that much more quickly.

I have some booze coupons to use up (they started putting
expiration dates on them!), so I ordered a Jack and ginger,
Carol a Tanqueray and tonic. She didn't like the tonic water.

The flight attendant admitted she didn't drink and couldn't tell
one booze from another, but she didn't seem to mind our drinking,
as we didn't make a ruckus.

Landed at F1, close to the little Red Carpet Club, so hightailed
there to get our seats changed to the exit row thrones (8D and E
on the 757); which being done we camped out and got some snackies.

I was sort of irritated by an old woman's oily cellphone
conversations next to us - she sounded like a politician's
politician, and I wondered how anyone could fall for this,
but she'd obviously done well using such behaviors. I was
thinking Margaret Chase Smith, only she's been dead for
decades: Carol pointed out that it was instead Sandra Day
O'Connor. This didn't interest me, and I confined my gawking
to the baby carrots, slightly stale red pepper slices, cherry
tomatoes, Cape Cod 40% reduced fat potato chips, and Timber
Lake sharp Cheddar ("Wisconsin's Premium Cheddar"), which
was although not sharp at all to my palate fairly decent.

At length it was time to truck back to the B concourse, where
our onward flight awaited.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)