Hotel Lobby Fresh Baked Cookies

The human olfactory sensory system is hard wired to the primordial reptilian brain, deep, deep, down inside, from millions of millennium ago (or 6000 years ago to quick creationists). Remember the fabric softener or laundry detergent used in your house where you grew up? I've got pungent memories of the East Chicago sewage treatment plant odor that surrounded my paternal grand mother's home, my uncle Tom's pipe tobacco (he died of throat cancer), and Tester's cyanoacrylate glue and olive drab model paint... embedded in my brain.

Well Hampton Inns (and Double Trees, Hilton Garden Inns, and others) bake chocolate chip cookies for their guests, and put out a free plate of them at reception. The macadamia nut, chocolate chip, and peanut butter cookie fragrances, are so tempting... and my last business trip, last August, when I was still eating high doses of carbs daily, I indulged in said cookies nightly, in the 2s and 3s, one of each flavor. MMMmmm. Enticing.

But this trip, wherein I needed to drill a 3rd hole in my belt to keep my pants from falling down last Saturday, and people who have not seen me in 6 months have said things like "you're 1/2 the size you used to be" and "you look good, are you feeling well?" ...on this trip, I think about the high fructose corn syrup that is likely laden in the pre-packaged / non-homemade cookie dough the hotel reception workers are baking, and the greasy paper towel cookie outlines that used to soak up on past trips to carry them to my room... and I resist grabbing a free cookie or two or three as I pass through the lobby. I've taken to using the non-lobby stairway exits (taking the stairs instead of the lethargic elevator? plow on Sunday!).

...and the Lindt 85% cocoa chocolate bar (much tastier than the 90% variety in my perspective) I've got stashed in my luggage is pretty yummy too, followed by a few ounces of Bas Armagnac from my Coleman flask I packed along this trip. Alot fewer carbs, and much better for me.

My Wallet Votes For Costco and Trader Joe's, Not Whole Foods

Last week, the day before Whole Foods (or as Dr Desert Flower and I call it, "Whole Paycheck") CEO Right Winger John Mackey told Americans that health care reform is not needed, they just need to 'shop at Whole Foods', I went to Costco, and got my favorite Medjool dates, clementine oranges, Mexican mangoes, organic spinach, macadamia nuts, peanuts, cashews, Ketel One Vodka, etc. The smiling, enthusiastic, helpful workers at Costco are consistently friendly and customer centric - I've asked the cashiers upon checkout on several occasions what they think of working at Costco, and universally, they've had very positive responses. It's almost like a cult, but in a good way.

The next day, I get an email from my buddy Matt about Mackey's public statements and previous machinations and then I hear of the fall out from Whole Food's loyal customers, a large percentage of whom are very disillusioned with such anti-progressive, self-serving, CEO comments. Mackey's statements are par for the course, as he tries to prop up his sagging stock, sells off a million dollars of it, and then pisses off his activist customer base. It'll be interesting to see if the activist boycott degrades Whole Foods sales revenue in August & September, or if it's alot of noise without any substance. My money is on Costco and Trader Joe's - where employees are happy and the merchandise is desirable and healthy - and Farmer's Markets. Sprouts is also a good buy, but it's a 8 mile drive for us to get there =\.

States Closing Interstate Rest Stops Trending

As I drove nearly 2500 miles across the United States on February 11th, 12th, and 13th, I found a disturbing trend in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina: closed interstate rest stops.  It got to the point that after the sun rose on the 11th, that I gave up hoping to find an open rest stop at which I could empty my bladder, and instead drank less water so that I could time my bath room breaks around gasoline refills, every 300 to 400 miles.  Yes, at 80 mph (most of those states the speed limit was 75 mph) that's every 3 and a half to 4 hours of uncomfortable, dehydrated, kidney stressing driving.

Taken, after the third time I found a rest stop closed along my journey across Southern Umerikah

Why does it matter if an interstate rest stop is closed?  Well, drivers like me, who were headed across country, don't get a chance to look around at the beautiful state for a moment.  There's no chance to stretch your legs, avoid deep vein thrombosis, or chuckle at a sign that warns people that rattlesnakes might be near, and to watch where they walk their dogs.  Seeing a closed interstate rest stops also sends several messages to the driver:
1) this state doesn't care about visitors, doesn't welcome them, and is not hospitable
2) this state doesn't care about infrastructure, and if they can't afford to maintain a simple rest stop, how bad of shape do you think their bridges and roads are in?
3) the legislatures of this state incorrectly believe that everything is better provided by the private sector, including things like imaginary free rest rooms, which typically don't exist, since most merchants want you to buy something from their store if you're going to use their rest room facilities (and me, see... I brought my own water, almonds, grass fed beef jerky, and macadamia nuts, so there was no need to stop and purchase snacks along the way; the focus was on maximizing driven miles efficiency, and not lolly gagging around to turn a 3 day cross country trip into a 4 day trip)

Now I guess, it is possible, that some states may have thought that they had "too many" interstate rest stops, and so they were reducing the number of them and trying to improve the remaining ones, to better serve the traveling public.  Possible, but unlikely, since in Arizona along I-8 and I-10, I found exactly 2 rest stops open. New Mexico, one at the border with 2 others closed.  Texas, along I-10, for 12 hours of driving, only 1 open rest stop.  Louisiana, only 1 (but I was driving late at night through the commonwealth, and wasn't going to stop anyways).  Mississippi and Alabama I did not stay long enough in to warrant any stops.  Florida had 10X more state troopers looking for speeders than it had open rest stops.  And my former home state of South Carolina, where I had lived for 16 years all-together since getting out of college, had been closing rest stops on I-85 and I-26 for more than the last decade, dedicating the funds that used to go to maintaining rest stops towards tax cuts for the upper 1% of the population.

Ironically, before I headed out on my cross country journey, I had thought (as I was falling asleep the night before) "maybe I should download an ap to show me where each of the interstate rest stops would be, to plan rest room breaks proactively?"  I am glad I didn't waste my time or data to do so, since such an ap would have been utterly useless, or grossly misleading.

Thanks Republican Legislatures, all (link here).  It's fantastic how you're looking out for the little guy, the retired travelers (oh, I saw & passed my fair share of people Much Older than me along I-8, 10, and 95 on my way to Charleston), and visitors to your states.  Awesome "first impressions" you're making.  Very progressive tax policies and how you apply those funds to up-keep your states.

I doubt Umerikah will ever wake up...  just a string of anecdotes, shouted out into the void, amounting to candidates like Trump, Cruz, Carson, and Rubio... gerrymandered into local districts paid for by Koch Industries super pac funding & analysis...  sad.

Don't Put Sugar On My Nuts!

As I mentioned last Fall, I found some delicious and inexpensive macadamia nuts at Costco. And though I've heard wonderful things about almonds raising your "good" cholesterol - the High Density ones - I've never really enjoyed the dark brown husked, fiberous outer layer. Not the texture, the taste, or the way they'd invariably get stuck between my teeth, so almonds have been one of my last choices in nuts. But the protein continued to beckon me, so I tried a can of Spanish Marcona Almonds from Costco last month. Delicioso!! WOW!

The carbon foot print of Spanish Marconas bothered me a lil bit, living in the Mountain / Pacific time zones and not on the Iberian peninsula. So last week when I was shopping in Costco, I looked for local almond options. Diamond brand had some almonds selling there listing "corn" as an ingredient. What part of the almond is the "corn" part? Epic failure, Diamond brand. There was a Costco (Kirkland) brand of almonds that claimed to be Californian, but stated they were coated in malto dextrin... maltodextrin... ¿Por qué? And they were brown husked, just like the Diamond brand, so none of my dollars went to that supplier.

The Marconas have very simple ingredients: blanched marcona almonds, sunflower oil, sea salt. mmmmm. So I bought 4 more cans, Just In Case Costco decides to stop carrying them.

I should be chock-full-o-nuts for the next 2 or 3 months - or in my buddy Matt's words: "The guy's nuts, grab-em!" LOL!