There’s only one thing I hate about road trips. One thing — breakfast.
Everything else I can handle. Even enjoy. Endless miles. Rest stops. Bad coffee. Seeing new parts of the country. Meeting new people. That guy at the rest stop who mumbles, “Wanna’ see what I got here in my pocket?”
We went out to Missouri to collect my master’s diploma. Over to Louisville to visit with family. Down to the Smokies to plunk river stones the size of European cars into a stream. We covered more than 2,000 miles, burned through nine tanks of gas, and used a lifetime supply of wet wipes. My stomach is still trying to repair the damage from a cup of tar masquerading as coffee.
But it was an amazing trip, and a thrill for my 3-year-old daughter who had never seen mountains before or spent so much time motoring from one place to the next. And I would do it again tomorrow — hop right back in the car and go … if not for those dang breakfasts.
It’s not the eating, but the finding them that gets me. I couldn’t find a breakfast — a good breakfast, a healthy breakfast — to save my life. (I hate my arteries clogging before lunch.) On those roads — those long interstates that look like someone stretched a piece of taffy across the land — I’m hopeless come morning time.
I’m picky and won’t settle for fast food until we start gnawing off each others’ ankles. But I’m always convinced there’s something worth stopping for — a bagel shop, a mom-and-pop coffee stand, a bakery with homemade muffins and pastry — right over the next hill.
But it never seems to work out for me. If I pull off at one exit, rest assured that after I’ve settled for rat-meat sausages and cardboard pancakes, the very next exit will have something I want.
And if I skip an exit because it looks barren and hopeless, no doubt I’ll glimpse in the rearview mirror the perfect place hiding in the trees.
“Damn you road trip breakfast curse!” I scream. My wife and child — nervous and wide-eyed — start to pray.
I’ll turn right at an exit when all the food is left. I’ll spend 30 minutes searching and have nothing to show for it but wasted fuel and spent patience.
I remember thinking an exit in Lexington, Kentucky, might hold a Starbucks because of the university nearby. I was horribly wrong, and we ate lousy donuts from a wretched grocery store that I think had fleas. What did the next two exits offer after our long and frustrating search? Of course — each a Starbucks.
One morning in Asheville I figured I could break the curse with some prior planning. I got on the Internet, searched for Starbucks and found one along the interstate on the way out of town.
“Stupid curse, I outsmarted you this time,” I said with a devilish grin as I jotted down an exit number and explicit directions.
And they worked out great. Too bad it was inside a Target and didn’t open until 8 a.m.
The universe laughed.
At that point, deep in the trip, tired, road weary and desperate for caffeine — the frustration stained my shirt and dripped from my forehead — I told my family, “Keep a sharp eye out, else we’re pulling over for tree bark and wild berry tea.”
Driving through that little town on the outskirts of the city, I grew so enraged that I nearly — no kidding — ran over a Franciscan monk (in frock) who was crossing the street. “Breakfast rage” is what they would have called it in court.
Desperate and defeated, I did settle for fast food that last morning — nothing better than a lard-soaked biscuit with a scrambled egg that looked like a mis-folded sock.
As my arteries seized up and I passed the next exit, I looked over to spy a sign for a pastry shop. Damn curse!