Over the past few weeks of not having email and going through the grueling days of training on the driving range and seeing San Antonio and staying at our motel, which could only be equated to staying in a third world hostel, and travelling via Greyhound both ways, I kept thinking of million things I needed to blog about and now, as per usual, I can't.
Our motel was a Days Inn that was in the middle of nowhere. I don't know why this hotel is in this location. There's Splashtown across the street and even though it was 100+ degrees, that still didn't attract much of a crowd there, so I know that's not the reason. There's one closed out hotel down the road but aside from that, there's like five others. What the fuck was going through their minds? There's another Days Inn right down the road from the school that was near restaurants and (gulp) a Wal-Mart.
Our first night there, we check in and, being completely dehydrated and famished, I asked if there's a grocery store or convenient store around, since I didn't notice any on the way in. He says, "Yeah, there's one right down the street." Awesome. "Down the street" translated into a mile down the road. Everything there is so spread out. Even the closest grocery store to the motel was a 20 minute drive and it's right near the school, again, prompting the query as to why we stay at that other one.
So being low on cash and living out of a motel and not having any income coming in, Wal-Mart turned out to be an oasis of extraordinary magnitude, which was hard for me to deal with as an adamant hater of Wal-Mart on many levels. One of the things was that I was stupid not to think of it ahead of time, but I should've brought along multi-vitamins. I was even tempted to by Centrum, but resisted. But here in San Antonio, Wal-Mart was the only place that I could get my nutrition.
I like to buy my produce fresh and, if possible, organic. Well, I could toss out the organic thing, because here in San Antonio there's no such knowledge of that. None of their grocery stores have an organic section or a health food store. So I wasn't buying produce the entire time in San Antonio. So going to Wal-Mart, I could at least get a Green Machine or Superfood or Green Goodness.
Also, having the little money we had, we were reduced to eating cheap canned food and bad meat. I really missed working at the Co-op and having good food and juices and all that jazz.
One other thing was that I didn't bring my running shoes. I wanted to go running badly, and the motel, not surprisingly, didn't have a workout room or anything and their tiny pool was empty for the first week. So I had to just do basic workouts in the room. Luckily, I brought workout bands so I could get a better upper-body workout. I had to do my back exercises and little yoga stuff on the dirty motel room carpet. It was so bad that if you walked barefoot, it'd be all black in a few minutes.
Most towns, too, you get pizza from the local mom & pops because they're far better in comparison to the chain ones. Not in San Antonio. And it wasn't like we tried one. We tried three. Rami's, which the name alone should've deterred us, but they had cheap chicken wings and after ordering them, I think we got overcharged. Another was Fat-Boys or something. The best one was called Chicago Style or something with Chicago in it. You would think with a name like that, you'd be getting a bomb ass pizza, overloaded with toppings and not look like microwave pizza. You would think that. No dice. Canadian Bacon was sliced ham, like those Oscar Meyer ones and they only used one slice and broke it into little tiny pieces and sprinkled it on it. You'd be lucky to have a slice with toppings on it. Their slices weren't even either. Like they just wacked it with a knife haphazardly. It was all thin and oily as well. Nothing Chicago about it at all, unless they thought Chicago meant "fucking oily and skimpy."
There's more I'm starting to remember as I blog, but I won't get into it now. If I'm up to it, I'll do it later. I won't even start on Greyhound because I don't want to spend the next eight hours blogging.
I'm out to get more coffee. Headley's picking me up tonight to go to the Homey Inn. Champagne on tap. I don't think I blogged it but the last stop in Omaha before San Antonio was awesome. The second day I stopped by the new Ted & Wally's in Dundee and hung out with Robert. I called Strachota and Headley. Then Mario called and he and Steve wanted to go out for lunch. So they picked me up at Joe's placed and we all met at this Indian place out west. "Indian food at Chinese prices." I couldn't stop laughing at that. Then Head, Strochota, and I went to a bar near Jeanne's mom's place where Nate's sister bartends at. Kathleen met up there as well. It was a great homecoming and send off.
