A Place at the Table, day 16

My wife is not very spontaneous.  Her idea of a perfect life is one that is planned out with very few surprises.  So when she decided yesterday that she wanted to take off today and head to Illinois on a whim, I was surprised and excited.  We loaded up this morning (all five of us) and began the trek north to family, telling the girls that we were on a mystery trip.  Only when we hit the turnpike in Oklahoma (new slogan idea for Oklahoma -- "Oklahoma, the state people pay to drive THROUGH!") did they figure out where we were headed.  They will be sitting at a table with cousins tomorrow, loving life.

I decided that the worst part of the fast for me is traveling while fasting.  One of my favorite parts about traveling is eating at places you normally don't get to frequent.  Normally, a trip to Illinois would have included at least one Steak n Shake stop by now.  However, we did Taco Villa and Cracker Barrel.  And from our experience at Taco Villa in Amarillo, it would appear that the Taco Villas in Lubbock have evolved.  No rice at a Taco Villa? Unbelievable, especially when that's one of three things you get to eat!  And my Cracker Barrel plate of rice, mashed potatoes and steak fries was among the most pathetic I've seen, especially when chicken & dumplings and chicken fried chicken are options.  (Side note -- the rice was phenomenal.  I had to order their 'chicken and rice" Saturday special without the chicken.  I bet the cooks had a good laugh at my expense.)

Tomorrow will be a great day.  We'll laugh with relatives and feast, probably at Culver's and Monical's Pizza.  (For those of you readers who are not from the Midwest, Monical's is a "must visit" pizza place!  Find them online, figure out where the closest pizza place is to where you're going, and plan a trip around it.  Seriously, it's THAT good.)  I will see my folks for the first time since Thanksgiving, and my brothers, sisters-in-law, and nephews for the first time since last summer.  There will be great laughter and feasting.  Authors will write books about it!  Descriptive words will fail to capture the epic nature of the feasting!  Many pizzas will be consumed!  Inappropriate jokes will be told (probably mostly by me)!  Clocks will be set forward one hour (don't forget)!  Peanut butter cups will be eaten at midnight (or 11pm, since we lose the hour during a feast day, which is SO WRONG!!)!  Blogs will be written that will quickly digress into long pointless series of exclamations!

And people will shake their heads and say, "See! I knew that Drake boy couldn't be serious for two whole weeks!"  And I will agree.  And think, "These people know me.  Did they REALLY expect me to last this long?"  And I will nod off to sleep knowing that my true colors have finally shown.  And I will wake up tomorrow and, if I weren't on the road all day, read this blog, realize that I started every sentence in the last paragraph with the word "And." And I will delete this blog post.  And it will go down in the conspiracy theorist lore as "A Place at the Table, day 16: the blog that revealed the truth about the Shroud of Turin." And you will never get the chance to read this.  And I will laugh as I delete this post.

And there goes the idea of turning this experience into a book someday. . .