7/5/09: Off Day; Thunder Bay, Ontario.
First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say: Judy, happy belated 4th of July, and see you before Labor Day to wish you a fantastic, and probably the best Labor Day in my life! Jim & Emmy……quit fattening this girl up with 4-star dining and cookouts!
Slept like a total rock last night, having gobbled down 2 subs, 2 burgers, a shake and……….7 or 8 brews. Whoa! So today is our self proclaimed off day. Now I know that some of you who could be kind of disappointed that there’s really no drama in an off day. So I’ll do my best to spice it up with nonsense. An off day for us has turned into a true “Veg Fest” where we do nothing but eat, and watch television and cable……and now we get to watch the Tour. So let’s start with the eating, because that crazy little gremlin in the tummy is even worse on an off day than an on day. Don’t know why, but that’s been the case on every off day we’ve had thus far.
So after catching up on email and Skyping this morning we hit the motel diner. And it was a homerun to be sure. This place was the Queen of awesome breakfast greasy spoons, the mother of butter and cholesterol laden foods, and the belly buster of my dreams. I ordered the three eggs with hashbrowns, butterfly sausages, and toast. Ryan got the Omelet. Now this meal was just fabulous, and when I was done I look at Ryan and say, “dude, I’m actually am thinking of getting another.” He laughs and says he was thinking the same thing. So we sit there kicking it around, and finally decide that we’ll get on our bikes and just do an easy noodle around town and look for a bakery/coffee shop and eat some more.
So we get on the bikes and ride west on Cumberland Ave. to the west end of Thunder Bay. No luck. I flagged down a local on a bike and asked him about our little “dream” bakery/coffee house, and he kind of laughed. No such luck he said, as there’s nothing in the city like that other than a Starbucks at a plaza. Nope. It’s been fun eating at local places, and a franchise is just not what we were hoping for with bakery and coffee. So we head back to the east side of town again. Now we checked the local casino to see if they had a buffet, but again, no luck. I even checked a Chinese and Indian place for buffets. No luck. Our food mission was quickly going nowhere and Ryan starts to complain about being “bitch hungry”, only about an hour after breakfast.
So we get more serious with the hunt. Finally I find a place called Chachi’s. It was local, and sounded kind of intriguing what with the coney dogs, burgers, shakes and stuff. It was a local version of an A & W, so we stop. But the owner is running the thing alone, and it’s slow service with a couple who had ordered in front of us. We hadn’t even ordered but had already waited 10 min. So Ryan has to feed the gremlin and ends up going to Subway – I know, not very local. I hang at Chachi’s and finally get to order two coney dogs with the works and a sauerkraut kielbasa sandwich with the works. He brings me back 3 works of food art. The buns were soft and wonderful. The dogs and kielbasa was out of this world. I was in junk food heaven. I almost ordered his home made milk shake, but I know that dinner was just 3 hours away. So I blasted back to the motel and veged on some TV, and to dream of what I would have at the On Deck local sports pub – famous for their burgers.
There is a jazz festival going on right behind our motel, but it’s 35 bucks to get in, and then the venders are selling food and beer on top of that. It’s just a bit too expensive, plus it feels good to just do nothing. Our legs are pretty thrashed, and pretty sore when you get up from a chair or bed, so it felt good to noodle on the bike for an hour and then just rest. So we watch a bit of TV and contemplate our next eating binge. Some of you are probably sickened by the fact that we’re gluttonous pigs who cannot do anything but eat. Let me tell you, I’m not proud of the fact that I’m a bottomless pit right now, and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. But fact is that we’re hungry ALL of the time. Period! I think of food on the hour, every hour. I talk about food, I visualize food, I fantasize about food, I have sexy dreams about food…….PBJ”s, Subway’s, burgers, ice cream, doughnuts, Danish, cake, pie. Gosh, I could go on and on.
This is the byproduct of riding every day, for hours each day. I dread the day when I get back to leading a normal life where I have to think long and hard about how much and of what quality is the food that I consume. But for the time being, I’m a total wreck of a human who is a food addict right now. Want to get the willies? Right now we’re watching TV, and we’re sitting here with 2 dozen doughnuts, both boxes open on the bed table that separates our beds.
Just watched the weather channel for Thunder Bay, and the weather looks very good for the next 4 days. Back to eating……So we went to the On Deck pub, and ordered this big plate of nachos, slathered in melted cheddar cheese, with hot peppers, bacon, onions, sour cream, salsa. Yum. Then we get the On Deck burger. Crazy. And as I leave I said to Ryan, ok I’ll get dinner if you go to Robin’s doughnuts and get a dozen doughnuts with chocolate inside. He’s on it like a pro. We go back to the motel and he jumps on his bike and headed off to the doughnut place. He comes back with 2 dozen doughnuts. “Dude,” he says, “after 7 pm they give you 2 to 1 on the doughnuts, so I got 2 dozen.” And we high five one another. We ate some in the lobby and even got the receptionist, Shane, in on the doughnut debacle by giving him a doughnut to eat in the lobby. We later saw him sweeping up icing off of the floor where we were all slamming down doughnuts. The remainder we brought into the room to eat as we’re watching TV.
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