Between the wasteland that lies between Barstow and Bakersfield is the small town of Boron, in which we did not stop for fear of a "the hills have eyes" scenario, and a nice rest area with both a "gourmet" coffee and a robotic ice cream vending machine. From the non-highway side of the rest area you can see factory where they make Borax. In fact, the road to the factory is called 20 mule team road. We made the decision (on what I'll call) the other day to stop eating fast food on the road. This involved a trip to the grocery store to stock up on fibrous provisions.
The first store was a Safeway in Sacramento for which I have a shoppers card thanks to a nice couple who were in front of me in line in a Safeway in Hawaii, who had signed up for card to get provisions for the flight back to the mainland. The clerk, who knew that was the case, told them to be sure and destroy it instead of leaving it somewhere, to which the nice guy in front of me responded by handing it to me. Using the card spared me the opportunity to try the account associated with the local version of Jenny's number: 867-5309 (which I read on Lifehacker is a ubiquitous shopper card fake phone number). I recall nothing of that store other than the fact that we bought humus, carrots, some sort of "wheat" cracker that looked much better on the box than it actually was, and some ingredients for "grown-up" lunchables (the deli meat/cheese/cracker packages that I lusted after when I was eight-years-old, though they always included the odd combination of a peculiar grey-colored mustard dispensed from a plastic box resembling one of those mouth-like coin purses and a single Andes mint. The second store was called "Food-4-Less," which immediately gave me pause as I generally distrust companies that abbreviate the word "for" with the number 4, as though it is anywhere near appropriate. If anything, the number 4 is only a suitable stand-in for the word "four." I feel the same way about the word "lite." Anyway, we went there because of the proximity to Highway 5 and because a single positive review in Yelp will convince me to go just about anywhere, including the "Hawaiian Style Cafe," where I was served a breakfast of a plate of white rice adorned with four pieces of brown-gravy-smothered fried spam and a single, crowning, over-medium fried egg. Food-4-Less turned out to be very nice, though the foodstuffs where piled to no less than 30 feet high throughout the entire store which made for a rather claustrophobic hike through the meandering edible canyons. The food was remarkably geared towards a Mexican consumer base, which was great because I saw products there I've never seen before including parts of the pig you'd never find for sale in a gringo supermarket and a line of tropical fruit flavored yogurt drinks adorned with a mustached man's countenance.
Sarah was blazing our path through this foreign territory with the cart as her guide and she encountered a purveyor of free samples near the dairy case.
"Would you like to try some queso fresco?" the woman asked. Sarah must have shot her a look of exhaustion which could equally be conceived as bewilderment, and Sarah said, "no thanks." The woman quietly explained, "it's just Mexican cheese," as though the spanish name made it seem more like pickled face meat or joint compound than a lightly processed dairy product. "oh, I know, I just don't want to try some cheese." I, on the other hand, gladly took a sample unaware of the previous exchange and was impressed by the saleswoman's ability to spear the lofty cheese, not with toothpicks as would seem appropriate, but with an arsenal of small plastic spoons.
Our checkout was impeded by the poor choice of a lane occupied by one of those oversized electric wheelchair carts, the occupant of which was unwilling to actually drive the thing (or at least that's what made it through the translation by the checker), relying instead on her companion to inch it forward by pulling on the basket mounted to the front.
The switch from fast food proved to be worthwhile as I did not suffer once from the general road trip malaise I usually fall prey to.
One of those nights we ate at a mountain-themed restaurant in the middle of farmland filled middle California (a not so wise decision in hindsight, but the promise of speedy seating and service trumped he idea of a good meal). They had only Coors Light (or is that Lite) on tap as some beverage serving genius had frozen all the other lines solid. We all know the serving demands of light beer require near freezing temperature to ensure all flavor whatsoever is masked, but serving below freezing is clearly not possible as they showed us in Fresno, but I imagine if they started serving beer at a more acceptable 45deg F they'd either get a lot of complaints or requests for brews on ice.
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