Day 3: June 7, 2005
[Editor's Note: Now, when Lavinius says "navigationally impaired," he means it. When we took our MLB trip last year, we got lost more times than a high school virgin looking for his girlfriend's clit. Did we learn our lesson? Did we take the time to scope out our territories and get familiar with the maps? Did we even think that Mapquest could possibly be wrong? No, no, and no. When it comes to directions, we couldn't find the G-spot on a beluga whale - EVEN IF THERE WAS A HUGE RED TARGET SURROUNDED BY WHITE STRIPES STARING US DIRECTLY IN THE FACE. Seriously, are you getting my point?]
Comfort Inn and Cracker Barrel: Bloomington, IL:
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We start the day with a little bit of breakfast from Cracker Barrel - conveniently located in an adjacent parking lot to our hotel. Now, I say breakfast, but I believe we slept in since today was a travel day for us. So, breakfast was probably at lunchtime... From this point forward, our body clocks and eating schedules were totally messed up.
Anyhoo, Lavinius said Cracker Barrel was the shiznit, so I take him at face value - Lavinius has made some solid eating suggestions in the past (e.g., some deli in New York, Krispy Kreme, and Cold Stone Creamery). Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of Cracker Barrel's breakfast, but I attribute that to my Northern Maine sense of breakfast - eggs, toast, and home fries [home fries: i.e., grilled potatoes with butter and, perhaps, onions]. I can't even recall what they called their breakfast potatoes, but they were slightly more than mashed potatoes with some cheese in it - and some other substances I couldn't quite identify. Anyway, Lavinius' recommendation of the Barrel was based on his consumption of pancakes - I'm not much of a pancake eater.
The ironic part of eating at the Barrel was one of their menu items - Muffins with "Fresh Maine Wild-Blueberries." Um, hold on a second... Not sure how they were advertising the berries as fresh considering that they weren't even in season... They weren't foolin' me!
After brunch was finished, we were on our way to St. Louis!!!
Dropping a Deuce & The Goon Squad...
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Somewhere along the way, Cooch coins the phrase "drop a deuce" - i.e., take a shit. The phrase will live on in infamy, much like the term "goon squad." Lavinius and Cooch will make several references to both words throughout the course of the trip...
Despite our history of having "challenges" getting from point A to point B, Lavinius and Cooch didn't get lost once on their way to St. Louis - that's right, not once! A quick stop off the Interstate for some gas and quality time for Cooch to drop a deuce at the gas station was all that impeded our mid-afternoon arrival to the Hampton Inn at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Talk about great location - we were within walking distance to all the main tourist attractions, including the ballpark. We could see Edward Jones Stadium (home of the St. Louis Rams) from our hotel room window - the temperature on the EJ Stadium outdoor-display read 101 degrees.
Bored stiff and rustlin' around the hotel room, Lavinius and Cooch decided to order WebTV Internet access from the comfort of our own room. I mean, the hotel boasted break-neck speeds and unfettered access! 24 hours for only $9.95!!! What a deal!!! Of course, the shit was slower than my 28.8 bps modem used to be and the screen was so condensed that most of the web pages wouldn't fit on the screen. Oh, and no mouse - navigation consisted of using the TV remote and cursor keys on a wireless keyboard (a keyboard with dead batteries, that is!!!). Enough with the WebTV already! We had places to be...
A quick spray of odor eaters to their sandals and the dynamic duo (who other than Lavinius and Cooch?) were on their way to the Gateway Arch Riverfront to take a riverboat tour. Did I mention that it was over 100 degrees? After purchasing our tour tickets and making our way to the boat, a middle-aged woman collecting the tour tickets - who looked like a haggard grandmother - asked if Lavinius was a model, hitting on him with nasty come-on lines. I mean, who wouldn't mistake L for a model? She either thought he was cute or gay... Hopefully it was the former... The boat tour was a bit drab - we were on the Mississippi River and the primary purpose of the river for St. Louis' sake was interstate commerce. As such, there were many barges and unsightly riverbank spots, low-lighted by a filthy body of water. Quite frankly, if we both were to drop a deuce into the Mississippi, nobody would have been able to differentiate between that and the other particles floating atop the river...
St. Louis - famous for BBQ?
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Back to the hotel, with fresh batteries in the WebTV keyboard... Lavinius was dead-set on finding BBQ for dinner - metaphorically, he associates St. Louis to BBQ as Maine would be to blueberries or lobster. After a serious struggle with WebTV, we managed to find a respectable BBQ restaurant that met Lavinius' strict standards - Bandana's Bar-B-Q in Clayton, MO, just 15-20 minutes or so from the hotel. Why not? It's not like we'd get lost!
I'd give Bandana's 3 of 5 stars - just average; BBQ sauces were a bit runny and their "hot" sauce was relatively mild (we were drinking the stuff before our meal arrived!). We got some sort of sampler dish - chicken thighs (or was that turkey?), pork, more pork, some pork-stuff, roasted pigs' ass, garlic bread, and baked potatoes. Honestly, there was a ton of shit on the plate and I can't remember everything that was on it - but I do know that we polished off about 2 or 3 bottles'-worth of BBQ sauce before we were finished. Lavinius accused me of taking more than half of the pork giblets, but the muhfuckah was voraciously downing 75% of the dish's contents while I was drinking my beer - seriously, the skinny mofo can eat...
Back to the hotel for us. Some television before bedtime and day 3 was officially in the books...
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1 comment:
I'll dot the i's and cross the t's in Cooch's post.
We didn't end up getting to Bandana's until about 8:30pm, a half an hour before they closed. Good chance they had turned their ovens off by then which means they were serving their late-arriving customers dry food. Had we gotten there at a prime hour, that's a 4 star place, IMHO.
As it is, the portions we got were monstrous, and I was hungry as a mofo. I ended up leaving the place almost full, but Cooch had to bogart my pork giblets while I was talking to his woman back home. Is there anything more low than to steal another man's food while he's momentarily sidetracked? Wait, don't answer that...
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