Published Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:16 PM
Updated Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:17 PM
Not too long ago a simple trip to the store –probably a beer run – more often than not would result in a road trip, destination and duration unknown. The possibilities were endless and welcome. Now it seems I can’t get out of the house without a checklist and itinerary approximately the size and scope of the average multi-national military campaign.
Sadly, most of the time these things do make life easier.
One of the perils of such spontaneity is meal planning. Like everything else, you have no idea what’s next; it’s part of the adventure. I have eaten hot dogs out of the most rusted, pitted, algae-ridden containers of warm water in the most scrofulous gas stations in the southeast. I’ve noshed on snack foods so unnatural the manufacturers had to invent a 17-syllable abbreviation for one of the ingredients. Soylent Green looked like organically grown vegetables compared to some of the more heinous items of bomb shelter cuisine I ingested back in the day.
I can remember one trip to a remote ski slope in Western North Carolina when the only place we found open for hundreds of miles was this tiny clapboard gas station. To make matters worse, the merchandise largely consisted of cheap trinkets and souvenirs rather than food items. After intensely searching the grocery aisle, we disinterred one moldy sack of hot dog buns and two cans of potted meat. Fortunately, we had plenty of cheap beer in the cooler or we might have had to actually taste this stuff.
And yet, the best-laid plans generally get a belly laugh from God.
On another ski trip, determined not to have to survive on second-hand bomb shelter cuisine, we stopped at a fast food restaurant before hitting the slopes. By the time we arrived, I was bent double from severe food poisoning; apparently, my bacon cheeseburger had camped out under the heat lamp for several days before making its way to my bag. Try schussing a slope full of icy moguls with your gut threatening to fill your ski bibs the whole way down.
The last time I had road food was just a few years ago. My Beloved and I were meeting a group of friends for a camping trip; we had planned to spend the first night in a motel – clean sheets, hot and cold running water, real food – before spending several days on a remote barrier island in a tent with camp food and cold-water showers.
The first thing we noticed about our room was its creature comforts – it was a comfortable place for lots of roaches. The barely cleaned bathroom and bed with unchanged sheets completed the haute ensemble.
After berating the night clerk and changing the sheets ourselves, we decided to get some dinner. But at 9:30 p.m., there was not a single restaurant still open in town. Worse, when we tried to score some chicken wings in the motel lounge, the under-20-something door person wouldn’t let us in because my Beloved did not have her I.D. with her.
Fortunately, there was a carnival in a parking lot across the street. We found a food vendor closing shop and talked him into firing up his grill one more time. Then, trying not to think about how he had poured the dregs of a bottle of water onto the grill before wiping his spatula on his apron and scraping the grill with it, we feasted on what turned out to be pretty passable Philly steak and cheese sandwiches.
That was our carefully planned night in civilization.
The next three nights we would eat steak, fajitas, grilled seafood – with appropriate accompanying wines, of course – sitting around a campfire pit. Then, we would crawl into our tiny tent secure in the knowledge that our bedding was clean.
Roughing it, for sure. But that’s what happens when you try to make plans.