Gone Eatin’

Gone to the cafeteria for dinner. Back in two weeks or so…

All packed and ready to go, we headed south tonight to the Best Western El Rancho Inn in Millbrae where our room — and two weeks worth of free parking — were waiting for us. I used a Borders gift card to pick up a book for the plane at the branch in San Mateo (which is, by the way, the single suckiest Borders on earth)…

 

San Francisco, Dallas, Charlotte

Today was spent largely in the air, and/or running around DFW airport looking for edible food. We got into Charlotte about 10:00, picked up our rental car, and made our way over the the trusty Red Roof Inn. After checking in, there was the traditional late supper at Waffle House. Let the weight gain begin…

In Charlotte

   

This was our big day to tour Charlotte, our potential new home. We hit most of the important and essential neighborhoods, from Fourth Ward to NoDa, from Elizabeth to Plaza-Midwood, and from Dilworth to Chantilly. And, of course, we made the annual pilgrimage to the intersection of Queens and Queens and Providence and Providence…

Being the geeks we are, we also made our way to the Map Shop, not to mention several assorted supermarkets. It’s always nice to be someplace other than the Bay Area, where the supermarkets actually sell food and manage to keep it in stock. Imagine being able to buy bread and milk, even on a weekend. What a paradise compared to the Third World country where we currently live…

We saw the current round of modifications to always-changing Charlotte, including the latest construction (destruction?) surrounding the Independence Freeway, the new Coliseum downtown (which replaces the 16-year-old one southwest of downtown), and the startling, bulldozer-assisted redevelopment of inner South Boulevard, where my former favorite queer bar has somehow been left standing, and is now a very brightly-lit Dunkin’ Donuts…

After dinner, we saw a movie at some 68-plex somewhere near the beltway — henceforth referred to as the Outerbelt so as to distinguish it from the Innerbelt and Charlotte Highway 4. Charlotte roads are always an entertaining topic of conversation…

Lunch at Gus’ Sir Beef and dinner at the Bayou Kitchen. I was close to heaven…

Charlotte to Greensboro

  

More exploration of Charlotte today, although our attempt to see al the church ladies and their hats at McDonald’s Cafeteria was thwarted by the fact that it no longer seems to exist. Instead, we settled for tortas at a really good Mexican place in a former Bojangles at Central and Sharon-Amity. Yes, there IS real Mexican food in Charlotte now that are real Mexican people. We like…

About 3:00 or so, we left for Greensboro via the nightmare construction zone known as I-85. Another big difference about the East Coast: freeways are maintained and sometimes ever improved there, rather than demolished or just left to rot…

I was very excited about seeing my mommy and daddy…

In Greensboro

 

The past few days were a rush (OK, not exactly a “rush”) or food, family, and forays about the city and countryside which were probably a little much for Mark, but he performed admirably. We saw all my relatives. I was shocked at how old some of them have gotten, but what admirable shape they’re in generally. They all seemed to like Mark unquestioningly, although I’m sure several were trying to grasp just what our relationship was all about…

   

On Monday, we largely just toured the city and its assorted changes, etc. On Tuesday, we visited my dad’s side of the family in Reidsville. On Wednesday, we drove to Winston-Salem and High Point…

  

I took Mark out the The 360 to see a Marilyn Rivers show and finally meet one of my oldest friends. As we arrived, they were playing “The Glamourous Life” by Sheila E, and I remarked that it was sort of like I’d never moved away, and that 1985 had just moved down the street into a new building. Greensboro is like that, for better or for worse, particularly with respect to nightlife…

   

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and we made the rounds of relatives on my mom’s side of the family. The family was good, the food was great, and the only mildly unpleasant moment was when one of my cousins made a few very presumptuous (if also very politely and sweetly-phrased) comments about how I should spend more time with my parents. She meant well, but it pissed me off just a little, particularly since a siginificant proportion of the major changes Mark and I are about to make in our lives are aimed at doing just that…

Gastronomic excess in Greensboro included Yum-Yum, J&S Cafeteria, K&W Cafeteria, Ghassan’s, and Stamey’s Barbecue

Greensboro to Baltimore

 

We left relatively early today for the Triangle, Richmond, and Baltimore. It was a very long day, starting with a drive-by through Durham (including my first visit to a Super Target) and lunch in Chapel Hill with Becky, with whom my contact has been too limited of late, through no fault of hers…

We also poked around Raleigh for an hour or two, and Mark seemed to rather like it there. We somehow managed not to have dinner until about 9:00 at a KFC/Taco Bell in South Hill, Virginia. It was 1:00 in the morning before we pulled into out motel in Baltimore and pounced on each other…

Baltimore to Schenectady

   

This was another rather long day. We toured Baltimore in the morning (or in the part of the morning which was left after we finally got up) and had a run of very bad luck accidentally turning onto really scary ghetto streets. I have a pretty high tolerance for frightening neighborhoods, but these were like Detroit scale…

Despite all this, Baltimore is still one of my favorite places. I’ve been spending time in the region since I was a kid, and I fell in love with the city itself when my friend Duncan lived there in the late 1980s. It’s such a strange hybrid of southern and northern, and it’s just plain purty, even the decay…

Anyway, we finally found our way out and had lunch before touring the more comforting northeastern side of town, finding that the neighborhood we like in just about every other city also exists in Baltimore, along Harford and Belair Roads near Northern Parkway and the Overlea Diner, where we wouldn’t actually eat until the return trip a few days later…

We finally left Baltimore by 3:00 or so, thinking it would be about seven hours to Albany. We were a little off on the timing, and all the assorted turnpikes were absolute raging nightmares. There were, however, some bright moments, at least for me. I got my Roy Rogers fix, and also got to romp through an actual A&P in New Jersey. And Mark marvelled at a well-stocked Stop & Shop in New York…

Finally, sometime around 1:00 in the morning, we arrived in Schenectady at Duncan and Rick‘s house…

Schenectady

 

I want a house just like Duncan and Rick have. It’s big and has multiple guest rooms and a king-size bed in one of them and heat and everything…

I was also pleasantly surprised by Albany and Schenectady. They weren’t exactly booming and bustling, but there were no funeral dirges playing either. And the area probably looks even brighter (which is not necessarily synonymous with “more attractive” in my book, but I’m a freak) when it’s not puring down rain all day…

We had lunch at a great Greek-Italian place which used to be a Pizza Hut, then did the Capital Region and even ventured over into Massachusetts for a minute so Mark could add another state to his collection. Then we had dinner at a great Greek-American place which was never a Pizza Hut…

I was sorry we couldn’t stay longer…

Schenectady, Niagara Falls, and Pittsburgh

  

We managed to spend another couple of hours driving around taking pictures of the places which had been a little too rain-soaked on Sunday…

And we had breakfast at Mike’s, which reminded me very much of the Baker House in Greensboro, which my dad used to take me to on the occasional Saturday morning when I was very young. It’s your basic diner dive where the clientele is almost exclusively male, the food is cheap, the seating is stools at a counter, and the predominant aroma used to be cigar smoke. I think my dad exposed me to places like this at an early age hoping I would learn how to be a little more of a “guy”…

  

By early afternoon, we were on the Thruway headed for Niagara Falls, our only major stop being for lunch and gas at a service plaza with a Sbarro. I think we arrived around 6:00, and pretty quickly crossed over to the Canadian side. Granted, Niagara is only moderately Canadian, but we did get to see Esso stations and Tim Hortons in their native habitat, and Mark added another country to his list…

It was extra fun when we got the “potential terrorist” treatment on the way back into the US, all because I’d forgotten to turn off the video camera. We have officially now informed an agent of the US government that we are domestic partners. And we were eventually cleared of being terrorists, although the border guard made us erase some of the video we’d accidentally shot. I knew somehow that this would come back to haunt us at the airport, but it didn’t…

After Niagara Falls, there was a very long drive to Pittsburgh, with a detour by a service plaza denny’s and the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Meadville or Grove City or some other godforsaken town full of very young white trash…

We arrived in Pittsburgh at our now-customary 1:00 in the morning…

Pittsburgh

   

Pittsburgh continues to be one of my favorite cities on a purely aesthetic basis. It’s just a quite fascinating place to drive around in, even though I realized I hadn’t driven any at all on my last visit and was therefore less familiar this time than I might have liked…

We had lunch at the Plaza Restaurant, where I was about half the age of every other patron in the place (and which made me consider asking for a booster seat for Mark), and then started finding our way around the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, concentrating today more on the hills and the more dense areas by the rivers. We also visited The Strip so I could visit the old abandoned, factory which had so fascinated me in 1997. It was now even older, even more abandoned, and even more fascinating…

As evening hit, we made a 30-mile trek across West Virgina to Steubenville OH, adding two states to Mark’s list with very little effort. On the way back, in Weirton WV, I saw one of the most beautiful and ancient (but still open) Kroger stores ever, and vowed to return in the morning for a good photo…

As sometimes happens, we ended up having dinner at the Olive Garden…

Pittsburgh to Baltimore

  

I crawled out of bed before Mark awoke and snuck off to Weirton for some quality time with my Kroger. It was cold as a witch’s tit outside and I actually even saw some snow on my windshield going over the hill, but it all pretty much ended by the time we REALLY ventured out into the world for breakast at Ritter’s. I love Ritter’s…

And I hate Giant Eagle. After a couple of visits, I’ve decided that it is one of the single worst supermarket chains I’ve ever patronized. And I’ve patronized a lot of grocery chains. The stores are a tacky merchandising mess and the employees range from incompetent to down righ surly. Of course, they have a virtual monopoly in Pittsburgh, and it shows. Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest…

 

Today, we toured Shadyside and some of the outlying areas on the way south to Charleroi, which is where Mark’s father and aunt were born. We saw the old family homestead and drove through the surprisingly large and active downtown, before stopping at the Sunoco and getting on the Turnpike. We got a price break because the toll collectors were in the last day of a strike…

Lunch was at a very sucktastic Bob’s Big Boy in a service plaza. And we actually made it to Baltimore at a reasonable enough hour to have dinner there, at a passable pizza place in Timonium, before touring the bridges and tunnels by night…

Baltimore to Greensboro

  

We’d grown better able to avoid the ghettos by this second visit to Baltimore, and we saw a fair amount of the city, although our time was a little limited. This time through, we did get to eat at the Overlea and we made it downtown as well. And then it was time to move on…

  

We took the old road, US 1, from Baltimore to Washington and I relived a little more of my childhood as we passed the Laurel Shopping Center, where my mom and I used to hang out while my did went to the horse races (and where George Wallace was shot in 1972). Hechts and the Hot Shoppes have moved on, but the Giant Food is still there, original sign in place…

We met Juan Felipe at a Colombian restaurant with amazing food on Glebe Road in Arlington. He gave us the tour of the town (which is more appealing than I’d remembered) and put up with us until rush hour subsided, while somehow managing to avoid being photographed…

And then there was a very long drive back to Greensboro, which seemed even longer since it didn’t start until 8:00 at night…

In Greensboro

   

The best thing for me about our altered itinerary was the extra day with my mom and dad. On this last day we finally made it to Libby Hill and managed also to squeeze in both one more cafeteria visit and one more cousin…

It’s always a little sad going to bed the night before leaving…

Greensboro and Home

Early (relatively) breakfast at Waffle House followed by goodbyes which tried with mixed success not to be tearful. Then Mark and I were off to Charlotte to take one more turn through town, drop off the car, and fly back to this place which we’ve both come to hate so very much…

Back to DFW, back to SFO, back to the Best Western El Rancho Inn in Millbrae, and then back to harsh reality of a smelly, undestocked, overpriced Bay Area supermarket where we stopped to get essentials on the way home. It’s only fitting that our first stop upon returning would be at Albertsons…

Our East Coast fate is pretty well sealed. It’s too hard to resist the more reasonable cost of living, the more rational population, the well-stocked supermarkets, the plentiful nearby road trip options, the better food, and so on and so on…

Details to follow…