Never lost
DISCLAIMER: the opinionated political satire expressed here is in no way affiliated or aligned with the views of Cornell University.
DISCLAIMER: the technical investigations of this team should in no way be perceived as anything but a dedicated and rigorous research effort. Please do not reproduce or otherwise make available any portion of the material found within unless permission is obtained from the author first.
There isn't much to do in Mojave that doesn't have something to do with airplanes. The only problem is that everybody here is a gearhead, leaving very few people skilled at cooking and restaurant ownership. The choices are somewhat limited- in part because this is the middle of nowhere, and in part because we have an irrationally picky eater on the team (I will not name names). We've tried just about every restaurant that looks decent (our criterion is that the restaurant's sign is fully lit up and made this century). Some have resulted in disastrous gastrointestinal results, and I will leave it at that. Those that remain are Denny's, the Voyager Cafe, and Mariah's. The Voyager Cafe (named after the voyager airplane that flew around the world a few years back, by the way) is absolutely fantastic. I always get something different on the menu, and I've never been disappointed yet. I even braved the peanut butter burger (burger + swiss + bacon + peanut butter). It sounds absolutely disgusting, but I was shocked at how well the flavors went together. The only snag is that Voyager is only open for breakfast and lunch, and since we are not early birds, we hit it for lunch almost every day. Mariah's is a decent Mexican restaurant- run of the mill, but a nice environment. I've only been there once, but I was happy with what I ate.
And then there is Denny's. A friend of mine once said that you never go out expecting to go to Denny's, you just "end up there." I think that's probably true- one of those universal truths that people meditate on for some absurd length of time before achieving enlightenment. For us, the dinner conversation usually goes something like this:
"Want to eat?"
"Sure."
"Where should we go?"
"Well, it's 9:00, so most places won't serve."
"There's always Denny's."
"Yeah... I guess so."
And that's that. I think it's funny how it takes us three days or so to get over the time shift from New York to California, and then we're back to eating dinner near bedtime and burning the midnight oil. The problem with that schedule is that there's a marked decrease in the quality of food served by the night shift at Denny's. The carrots, for example, were perfectly cooked... if they'd been taken out of the steamer a year ago. No big deal; we just drown our sorrows in Mountain Dew (thankfully, there's a very nice grocery store here).
Anyway, on to the relevant story. Last night we decided to try something new- a place called Al's Barbecue, in California City. Cali City is a few miles north of Mojave, but even the night driving is safe. There aren't any big animals I know of to run over (except maybe the occasional coyote), so everybody drives 90. Normally I'd be worried about directions, but we have two rental cars from Hertz, and one of them is equipped with Hertz's "Never Lost" system- a typical dashboard GPS navigation unit. We followed its directions to Al's Barbecue, which twenty minutes later dumped us in an abandoned dirt lot in a residential complex, with no evidence of a building ever having been there. Since then we've used our technical know-how to make a few minor improvements to the system:
DISCLAIMER: the technical investigations of this team should in no way be perceived as anything but a dedicated and rigorous research effort. Please do not reproduce or otherwise make available any portion of the material found within unless permission is obtained from the author first.
There isn't much to do in Mojave that doesn't have something to do with airplanes. The only problem is that everybody here is a gearhead, leaving very few people skilled at cooking and restaurant ownership. The choices are somewhat limited- in part because this is the middle of nowhere, and in part because we have an irrationally picky eater on the team (I will not name names). We've tried just about every restaurant that looks decent (our criterion is that the restaurant's sign is fully lit up and made this century). Some have resulted in disastrous gastrointestinal results, and I will leave it at that. Those that remain are Denny's, the Voyager Cafe, and Mariah's. The Voyager Cafe (named after the voyager airplane that flew around the world a few years back, by the way) is absolutely fantastic. I always get something different on the menu, and I've never been disappointed yet. I even braved the peanut butter burger (burger + swiss + bacon + peanut butter). It sounds absolutely disgusting, but I was shocked at how well the flavors went together. The only snag is that Voyager is only open for breakfast and lunch, and since we are not early birds, we hit it for lunch almost every day. Mariah's is a decent Mexican restaurant- run of the mill, but a nice environment. I've only been there once, but I was happy with what I ate.
And then there is Denny's. A friend of mine once said that you never go out expecting to go to Denny's, you just "end up there." I think that's probably true- one of those universal truths that people meditate on for some absurd length of time before achieving enlightenment. For us, the dinner conversation usually goes something like this:
"Want to eat?"
"Sure."
"Where should we go?"
"Well, it's 9:00, so most places won't serve."
"There's always Denny's."
"Yeah... I guess so."
And that's that. I think it's funny how it takes us three days or so to get over the time shift from New York to California, and then we're back to eating dinner near bedtime and burning the midnight oil. The problem with that schedule is that there's a marked decrease in the quality of food served by the night shift at Denny's. The carrots, for example, were perfectly cooked... if they'd been taken out of the steamer a year ago. No big deal; we just drown our sorrows in Mountain Dew (thankfully, there's a very nice grocery store here).
Anyway, on to the relevant story. Last night we decided to try something new- a place called Al's Barbecue, in California City. Cali City is a few miles north of Mojave, but even the night driving is safe. There aren't any big animals I know of to run over (except maybe the occasional coyote), so everybody drives 90. Normally I'd be worried about directions, but we have two rental cars from Hertz, and one of them is equipped with Hertz's "Never Lost" system- a typical dashboard GPS navigation unit. We followed its directions to Al's Barbecue, which twenty minutes later dumped us in an abandoned dirt lot in a residential complex, with no evidence of a building ever having been there. Since then we've used our technical know-how to make a few minor improvements to the system:
posted by iceman at 12:02 PM
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