College eating tour--revisited

I've eaten at a lot of college campuses over the past year and a half. I guess it comes with the territory of my line of work. This week, as I traveled with a group of 38 high school students and several co-workers, I added five more college visits to my list, eating at three of them (as well as at some other places that I'm not too proud of).

Monday
We had an early morning, leaving San Francisco at 7AM to be in San Luis Obispo to visit the California State University there at 11AM. We all had an Odwalla juice along with an Odwalla bar for breakfast, courtesy of the parent of one of our students who works for the company. Billy offered all the staff vitamin C and echinacea tablets, which we all gladly accepted.

Our drive along the 101 brought us through green fields and rolling hills, with the Pacific Ocean along our right-hand side. It also brought us to our first rest-stop, with a McDoald's, Starbucks, donut shop, and all the other requisite rest-stop eateries. I was hungry already and knew that there was no way that juice and breakfast bar would last me until one o'clock, when we had lunch scheduled. So, I dashed off to the Starbucks to use their restroom and ordered a latte. Allison, Billy, and I then walked across the parking lot to McDonald's, where I ordered a Sausage Egg McMuffin.

I can't remember the last time I'd eaten a breakfast sandwich from McDonald's, although I thoroughly recall the last time I ate at McDonald's and was disgusted by the taste of their oil coating my tongue and mouth, being sure to never eat at McDonald's again (something that I do very, very rarely to begin with). But, I was hungry, lunch was hours and hours away, and I wanted something salty. McDonald's was my only choice. And, Billy urged me on to order the sandwich. So, with all that pressure and an empty stomach, I ordered my sandwich. Two seconds later, it appeared on the counter. I ate that sucker on the bus, and it wasn't too bad. Sure, grease coated the paper wrapper and, sure, I knew how bad that so-called food would be for me, but it was salty, warm, and hit the right spot in my stomach. I followed that with a handful of pretzel and cheese Combos from Billy, and a small stack of sour cream and onion Pringles from one of the students. What was I doing?

We made it to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo safely. And, after a tour and a presentation by the an outreach staff there, it was time for lunch on campus. I followed a group over to the Chick-Fil-A and ordered a chicken club sandwich and some fries. The sandwich was okay, although a little salty and the chicken had a strangely too-soft texture, and the fries could have been more crispy. I was not impressed. Although, after hearing what everyone else had and reading the evaluations, I may have chosen the best food option that Cal Poly SLO had to offer. So, overall for SLO, the campus was nice, the food wasn't.

We got back on the bus to make the final leg of the journey down to El Segundo, where we would be staying for the next several nights. I was exhausted, as was everyone else, but I had volunteered to go pick up our dinner at the El Pollo Loco. That was an adventure. David, our very kind bus driver, had offered to drive Martha and me to pick up our food, so that we would save on cab fare. The three of us go into that 56-passenger bus and made our way through the streets of El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, trying to find the El Pollo Loco that had our food. The first El Pollo Loco, the one which the hotel staff had directed us to, was not the one. The second one, up the street and a 45-minute drive with confusing directions from an El Pollo Loco staff away, was. We made a couple very large U-turns, pulled into a McDonald's to ask for directions, made a few phone calls asking the whereabouts of this Crazy Chicken, and got a little tour of El Segundo, which had developed into quite a city of strip malls since the last time I had been there, only one year ago.

David asked us if the chicken was really that good to warrant the hour-long journey it took us to get the food. It wasn't, but I was hungry and tired and would have eaten anything. The hotel staff was nice enough to bake cookies (although probably from frozen cookie batter) for us for dessert. That was nice.

Day One done.