Starbucks and Sizzler

Los Osos, California - Sitting in a Starbucks, updating my blog. I've become one of those people. To complete the stereotype, I should be writing a screenplay while listening to my ipod and reading something by Kerouac. Unfortunately, I left the Kerouac in the the van.

The van, Trudel, is at what can basically be described as a day spa for VW campers. Los Osos is home to Go Westy, Nirvana for the camper van crowd. If you live within driving range, and by driving range I mean Canada, you have been or will be here at some point. Trudel is being massaged and probed and checked to make sure she's ready for what I'm about to put her through. There are a few minor things that need a fixin', but they're mostly electrical and cosmetic; the heart and soul of the beast should be in fine shape and ready to rock.

Last night was spent at Morro Bay State Park, a comfy campground about 12 miles west of San Louis Obispo. The bathrooms were clean, the campers were kind, and there was nary a drop of mud to be seen. Big Sur two nights previous was a mudfest rivaled only by the most recent Woodstock, and with the amount of rain northern and central California has received in the past two months, I was worried water-mud cohabitation were going to become a reality I'd have to accept. As it turns out, I didn't spend much time in camp anyway.

I'll preface this paragraph with an admission: Yes, I ate dinner at Sizzler last night. I'm a little ashamed, like a guy who just slept with a disgusting crack whore and is embarrassed to tell his friends. But since I'm all about honesty here (at least for comedic purposes), I won't hold back. How it came to be is this - yesterday afternoon I decided to spend the evening seeing a movie. I would have some time to kill and my previous work schedule didn't allow for week night cinema, so a Tuesday night movie seemed like a rare treat. I got to camp around 5pm, and by the time I found where the movie listings were in the paper, it was close to 6. There was a 7pm showing of Thank You For Smoking in SLO, and a 7:30 in Arroyo Grande (which is about 15 min. South of SLO). I opted for the 7:30 because the AG theater was stadium seating, which I prefer, and the extra half hour would give me time to grab a bite to eat and not feel rushed. When I arrived at the sprawling concrete shopping complex which housed the theater, I surveyed my dinner options, was none-to impressed, and then my eyes fell upon Sizzler. Now, haven't officially made a pact with myself about this yet, but I've kicked it around in my mind that when the trip starts, I want to eschew fast food and chain restaurants, opting to support local establishments when possible. And certainly here in this suburb of Pismo Beach, I was surrounded by quality dining choices of a local variety that would provide me with a far more unique and colorful experience than could be had at a sub-par chain surf-and-turf craphole. But two words entered my head at a volume that could not be denied and my brain would not be satisfied until those two words were consumed: Cheese Toast. It's been probably 12 or 13 years since I had been to a Sizzler, but for some reason their cheese toast was on instant recall, and I buckled. Plus, I rationalized, an all-you-can-eat salad bar is pretty tempting to a vegetarian. So I caved. And it was pretty awful. I don't know if lettuce can be depressed, but I'm pretty sure this lettuce was. In it's little lettuce head, it was probably thinking "I spent all that time growing in the sun and the rain, only to be picked by an illegal alien and sent to wilt behind a sneeze guard at Sizzler? Sigh." The garbanzo beans were mealy, the croutons tasteless, and the onions limp. But the cheese toast. The cheese toast was as good as I remember. Simultaneously soft and crunchy, with a grease factor that would make an Italian mobster proud - the cheese toast was almost worth it. Almost. Too bad the movie was more like the salad than the cheese toast.

Hopefully the car will be ready today and I'll be back in LA tonight. However, if anything really needs fixing, I could be stuck here for a couple of days, and in that case, I'm not sure what I'd do because essentially that would mean my house is in the shop. One guy I talked to said he was stuck here for a while, so they'd work on his car during the day and he'd sleep in it in the shop at night. Is it weird that part of me is actually intrigued by this?

Expect multiple updates today, but no pics - the camera battery is dead and of course I brought the charger, but not the plug for the charger.

Fact of the day: "Garbanzo" isn't recognized by spell-check.