Five Hour Adventure

In the night, I got a good sleep and a solid start. I went from my bed to groce. It had been some time since I’ve last done it and it was a cheaper, maintenance trip more than a full restocking. My plan was to load up and then make a stop on the way home to grab a McBreakfast. I got close and saw there was a huge lineup of cars. There were two or three cars stacked up in three directions waiting to get into the lineup. I pulled into a parking spot a little further back as I normally do in this situation to wait a few minutes for things to settle out. They did not. It got to the point that there were so many cars in queue that I couldn’t leave the area if I wanted to. Eventually I got free and noticed on the short drive home that it was the same situation at Starbucks, Tim Hortons and Burger King. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then again, I am not usually in the area at 9am on a Saturday, I’m usually in and out before that but because I’m not sure if we’re still giving the first hour of business to the seniors I have been pushed back a bit. It was apparent that I wasn’t going to get a quick and easy meal like I wanted so I made breakfast bullets when at home, taking down three this time in anticipation of a long day. I stowed the groceries and grabbed my plot walking gear and set off on an adventure. I had about a 105 minute drive to the first location. I was going up to check out two somewhat isolated Northern spots. The trip didn’t start out smooth. You can see in the distance of the below photo that there is a train. I’ve never seen one going slower. It was moving at a walking pace. We did keep moving up as people bailed from the lineup and turned to go the other way. I’m not sure why because these tracks are a barrier no matter what road you choose and the train was all kinds of long. If they gave up on their excurision and returned home I’d have some serious questions why they’d left in the first place.

The next forty five minutes were filled with Siri jogging back and forth every mile or two. I was ready to lose my mind completely when I hit a long stretch of nice road and calmed down. I got the first location and it was all short, standing sticks that looked relatively the same. It’s not the greatest for what I was trying to do. But I did see a helicopter rip by as I was getting started. You can see below that the sun even found it’s way through the cloud cover by the time I was getting towards the back of the trial.

When I got back home after a leisurely five hour drive and hour and a bit of plots I was getting quite hungry. I had a handful of shrimp remaining and had purchased some of the “requires milk” dishes from my past that I wanted to relive. I decided to try the one pictured below. The last time I made it, I didn’t cook the pasta as soft as I like it and it sort of ruined it for me, for the last 15 years. I’m finally willing to try it again. I’ll say it now, it was delicious. The shrimp didn’t really mix in well with it’s sweet coconut breading and soggy microwave finish but it was a tasty meal and I found that it filled me up nicely. I will keep this one in the game now. I think I missed sprinkling some parsley flakes over the top of the final photo but taste outweighed aesthetic.

I had some Cool Ranch Doritos and Pepsi later in the evening as a snack in lieu of supper. At half eight we had a video chat scheduled for the boys. Only a couple made it on and all were late. We had a few beers and more laughs. I took the call into my bed after 9:30pm and listened in for a bit before sliding out when they said they couldn’t hear me aways. I managed to fall asleep not too long after ten I think.