Eating Out

The Auxiliary Wing of the ROMEO Club

Atlantic Rainbow

Today I was invited along to the meeting of the Palm City ROMEO club and because I don’t actually have all the requirements of membership I was made the first member of the Auxiliary Wing.

A small group of Paul’s friends come over once a week and give him a break from his caregiver duties and take him out to lunch. Because one member of ROMEO is an ex-Marine helicopter pilot that served during a couple of our country’s armed conflicts, he is a member of the local VFW and can get everyone in. The guys like to go here because draft beer is a buck and a half and mixed drinks are just two and a quarter. My lunch fish sandwich lunch today with chips, a pickle, a side of potato salad and a beer cost $5.00. Compare this to my $17.95 fish tacos plus $2.50 for a soft drink yesterday at Conchy Joe’s in Jensen Beach and you can see why this is the default spot for the Club.

If you haven’t already Googled “ROMEO Club” to see what I’m talking out, it is an acronym for Retired Old Men Eating Out. And if you did Google it, you found out it is actually a thing sort of, but this isn’t in anyway affiliated with either that website or the Young Adult fiction book. Anyway, I’m in the Auxiliary because I have not yet retired.

The above photo was taken this evening off the 5th floor balcony of the Marriott Courtyard on Hutchinson Island. It wasn’t until I resized it for posting here that I realized it was actually a double rainbow.

134,000 Grains Of Salt

Bridal Veil FallsWow, another thousand miles has gone by. This one in less than a month. Almost seems like old times when the Emperor was our only car and we drove it everywhere. A good chunk of this thousand miles can be directly attributed to our trip to Deals Gap a couple weekends ago.

On our way back home that Sunday we stopped just outside Highlands, NC at the Bridal Veil Falls for a small photo op. We thought with all the recent rains in the area it might have a lot more of a flow, but it seemed to be about the same amount as any old fall day.

Tonight we went out to get some dinner and were surprised by the amount of traffic at, admittedly the busiest intersection in town, Whiskey & Pine Log Roads to turn left. It was backed up about a 1/4 mile with about a hundred and thirty four thousands cars in line. We were going to go left there, but opted to go straight through and turn left further down the street to sneak up on our destination, Captain D’s. Even that left turn was a bit of a wait and the short circuit we were making was crawling (literally) with cars.

We left the house with the odometer on 133,999 and by the time we parked it was right on the 134,000 mark. One mile traveled, but it felt like about five. Our drive brought us to a parking lot area where the were several restaurant options, so when we arrived Donna changed her mind, since she was going to have fish for lunch tomorrow, she would rather go to Five Guys and get a burger. Very little arm twisting was needed to get me to agree. The burgers are pretty darn good and the fries are awesome as well, except they sure do sprinkle on the salt. I bet but our small size had about 134,000 grains of salt on them.

Really?

P1010152

Geocaching.com has been running a promotion something or other event all month, that if you find a cache or attend an event on any day in August you will be “awarded” a unique 31 Days of Geocaching souvenir. Just to be contrary, we have avoided going caching all month, but could put it off no longer, so we went out this morning and did a little searching for hidden ammo cans using satellite signals.

After caching we changed from our sweaty T-shirts and went out for lunch at a Ruby Tuesday in nearby North Augusta. They open at 11:00 AM and we were there about 11:30, so there were hardly any people in the place. Just three tables were occupied and all threes were right next to each other and right next the hostess station. Sure enough when she showed us to our table it was right next to everyone else. We asked her nicely if we could move a little further away from all the other diners, so she led us a couple more steps along, skipping just one table.

There were like 40 empty tables to choose from, but here we were all grouped together. It is not like we are totally anti-social, but we would have liked to dine and have a conversation without having to talk over, or listen to, other conversations.

As we sat looking over our menus, before our server even arrived, the hostess came in with another group and sat them right behind us, filling in the one spot that we had skipped over. Donna looked at me, I shook my head, we stood up, walked right around her and folks she was seating and exited the restaurant.

We drove back to Aiken and stopped at the Applebee’s near our house. There were maybe 6 groups of people eating there already and they were all spread out evenly through out the restaurant. When the hostess seated us we were led to an empty table 20′ from the next closest diners. There, was that so hard?

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1251

Breakfast at Betsy’s

We had 4 Miatas and a Bug-Eyed Kia Soul meet Donna and I at Greg’s Gas+ in North Augusta this morning. Dennis & Karol Mason were waiting with John Haff for us to arrive and then not too much later Rudy rolled in followed by a Kia Soul containing ex-members Jim & Judy Creer who were visiting Augusta from their current home in Florida. The lure of seeing Jim & Judy even brought founding member Anita Wylds out to join us at the start too.

It was kind of like old times as everyone stood around in the parking area chatting to well past the scheduled departure time. The only thing missing was Jim Creer’s hood up. When we finally got going, luck was on my side as we made the 20 mile drive with all six cars together in spite of having to navigate 10 traffic signals, arriving at Betsy’s on the Corner only about 10 minutes late.

The entire Aiken Wing of the Club (the Woomers, the Dyers, the Ormerods and Tom Varallo) were inside waiting on us at the traditional Master’s Miata Club long table consisting of several separate units all pulled together. Whoever did the joining, the Club members or the restaurant staff, they were very in tune psychically as there were exactly as many chairs needed to seat both groups.

We then spent the next 1-1/2 hours talking, drinking coffee, ordering breakfast, talking drinking coffee, talking waiting, redirecting mis-delivered meals, correcting the oversights of our ordered meals, eating, talking, drinking coffee, eating, waiting of the waitress to figure out all the separate checks, talking, waiting, talking and then paying our checks.

The above photo was taken by a random patron, who volunteered to take a shot of our whole group and promised that it would come out great, as she was the daughter of a professional photographer. I was a little worried at first as I had to show her which button was the shutter on my camera, but by golly she did pretty darn good.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1245

Salt Lick

Out behind our plant in a wooded spot, co-worker Mark has a trail camera where he captures photos of the wily white tails that live out there. Tired of capturing just one or two deer per photo he started to seed the ground in front of the lens with something called Deer Crack to create an irresistible mineral lick. Within a day or so he was capturing 5 or 6 deer in each frame.

Last night was the monthly MMC Dinner Meeting over in North Augusta at a Ryan’s Buffet. It was lightly sprinkling when we left the house and by the time we got to US1/78 (AKA: The Aiken-Augusta Hwy) it was raining pretty hard. And for the entire second half of the trip it was coming down in buckets, so much so that 40MPH seemed like a dangerously high rate of travel. I wish we\’d taken the hint and turned around.

We had the worst meal we have ever had, as far as we can remember. My salad was fine (although the kitchen help should learn to slice the onions and bell peppers instead of whacking them to bits with a cleaver), but it went downhill from there. The green beans were cooked to complete water loggedness and the corn had no discernible flavor whatsoever. The piece of steak I got off the grill, when cut into, looked medium-rare, which is fine when it is a nice cut of meat, but this must have been cooking over the low temperature side the grill for several hours as it had the taste and texture of, pardon the cliché, shoe leather.

Donna’s meal was no better; she stopped eating her soup after a couple of spoonfuls, with the piece of white fish she tried getting dumped in that bowl shortly afterwards. And after listening to me grumble about my meal, she tried to help by sharing some of her skinless chicken breast with me. Which after one bite I learned was a clever ploy to rid herself of this, so dry it was crunchy, bit of poultry. We both agreed that if there was a predominant flavor that did show through, it was sodium chloride, salt.

Even dessert couldn’t save it, as her cake, although covered in soft serve ice cream, still was almost too dry to eat. My chocolate chip cookie was stale and somehow they managed to remove the every bit of flavor from a crumbled Oreo cookie and Cool Whip mixture.

The meeting itself was a nearly typical MMC meeting in which the Treasurer announces our bank balance, we briefly discuss past events and then quickly go over the upcoming events, what set it apart were the elections of new officers. The current President has held the post for several years now and has wanted to find someone else to take the reins for at least the last two years, but no one wants to take the job. This year when he asked for nominations there was the usual silence and looking at the floor, just when it looked like he was ready to sigh and reluctantly accept the office for yet another year, his wife nominated someone else. It was quickly seconded and the nominee had the choice of being a schmuck or accepting the job. He took the job, but only under the condition that we actually get someone to fill the VP spot (for the last few years Sarah Palin has held the position in absentia.) One of the newer members stepped up and agreed to fill the #2 spot on the ticket.

The meeting broke up and as we left the “party room” heading for the door I noticed that the restaurant was pretty full and there were families in line at the cash register to get in. With the food tasting so crappy and it not really being cheap (for the two of us it almost $30) the only explanation I can come up with is that this place acts as a human salt lick.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1237

Live Bait

Live Bait

The photo above is the first hint as to where Donna & I went for lunch today. Here is hint#2 and this is the giveaway! Still don’t know? Email Mark Turner and ask him.

We are on our way to Lexington, VA for the weekend wedding of Claire & Mark. It was just a little over a year ago that we drove to Baton Rouge, LA to see Claire’s brother Stuart get married.

Doing a little geocaching along the way by visiting a couple SC State Parks before lunch. We were four for four in cache finds, we also found the first stage of a statewide multi-cache and picked up a Travel Bug to drag along and dip in our finds.

We got not too far from home when we noticed that we had left the cell phone in the Miata back home in the garage. But it was far enough that we didn’t feel like going back to get it. Then, more than half way to tonight’s stop in Dublin, VA1, Donna realized that the pair of jeans she was wearing was the only one she brought. We fixed both problems at a local Walmart this evening, Donna got four new pair of jeans2 and we bought a cheap Verizon burner3.

About 9:15 the hotel’s fire alarm goes off. Because we are on the third floor and in the middle of the building we took it kind of serious. By the time we grabbed our shoes, me my wallet and Donna her purse, the alarm shut off. Donna called the front desk and they told her that it was triggered on the first floor, but there was no fire. If that thing goes off again and there isn’t a fire, I sense a free room coming on.

1. This is the third Dublin we have been in this year. In February on the way home from Florida we drove through the Georgia version. In March we stopped in the Texas town by this name to visit the Dr Pepper Museum.
2. She says it wasn’t really her plan, but she did need new jeans anyway as her current group are pretty well faded.
3. So now the people who only turn on their cell phone when they want to call someone, have two cell phones. Actually three, but we never did activate that one, we just used it to upgrade our first phone…

It’s National Doughnut Day! Part 1

And we got a free one this morning on the way to work. While somewhere in the depths of my lizard based brain I knew it was National Doughnut Day, I forgot all about until I was pleasantly surprised when we hit the drive-up at DD to buy a coffee and hot chocolate. The disembodied voice from the order board said, “Because it is National Doughnut Day, with the purchase of those two items you qualify for two free doughnuts. What kind would you like?” I got a glazed blueberry cake one and Donna took a vanilla frosted with sprinkles.