Lightning Strikes Val TWICE!

We left Norman about an hour later than usual. No free breakfast at THIS free hotel. Hick said we'd stop up the road a bit, and have a Sausage Egg McMuffin. Let the record show that it's our standard breakfast on the way TO Oklahoma, about 90 minutes into our trip. So I was fine with such a meal to start the drive home, to be eaten in the car to save time.

Hick has tried forever to get the special McMuffin deal, as seen advertised on billboards along the way. However, until this very trip, he kept coming up with the regular charges, paying around $7 for two McMuffins. Uh huh. The TRICK, he discovered, is to say, "I'd like the McMuffin deal, the two-for-whatever." As he says, it's funny how you can get a McMuffin with SAUSAGE, egg, and cheese for half the price of a McMuffin with Canadian Bacon, egg, and cheese. I told him that McDonald's is probably getting a kickback for using sausage that farmers are paid by the government not to raise.

Anyhoo...I was feeling a bit under-the-weather, a pounding headache going on its 7th hour, with nausea, probably due to the headache. We tooled along Hick's new path for 30 minutes until we hit the main highway, passing McDonald's after McDonald's on this business route. By the time we got to Hick's designated McDonald's, it was 10:20 a.m.

"I guess they'll still be serving breakfast?"

"Yeah. I think  McDonald's serves breakfast all day now."

We parked and scurried inside at the truck stop we use as our last bathroom break on the way out to visit The Pony, and the first one on the way home. Hick got in line at the McDonald's inside. I started out, but a close-parker had rendered my door to A-Cad virtually useless. So I went back in to wait for Hick. Of course there was a problem, and our on-the-go breakfast took 25 minutes to procure.

"They gave me a free soda!" said Hick. Not that he offered me a drink. And also said the wait was for eggs. Seriously? Were they waiting for the chicks to hatch, grow up, and then LAY the eggs? Because I'm pretty sure a truck stop McDonald's should be sure to have eggs ready during the regular breakfast hours.

Anyhoo...we got back on the highway, seven-and-a-half hours still to go, and I unwrapped Hick's long-awaited Sausage Egg McMuffin. While he was chowing down, I unwrapped my own. Huh. It was burnt to a crisp! I do mean crisp. I don't know how you can make an English muffin both charred and crunchy, yet too tough to bite. It defied basic physics.

Biting into that Sausage Egg McMuffin was like trying to bite through a double layer of a butcher's leather apron. You'd think you had a bite, but then the egg and sausage would skitter out the back side, and you'd be left with your teeth unable to penetrate the muffin. It would have been easier for a toothless old cowboy to tear off a hunk of a saddlebag flap. AND, I could have started up a barbecue grill with my crusty black muffin, it having more charcoal in it than a bag of Kingsford Charcoal Briquettes.

By now we were 20 miles up the road, and Hick had finished his own breakfast. He DID say he was sorry, even though he didn't cook it. Going back to hold them accountable was out of the question. And I could either eat it or go hungry. "Oh. Sorry. Mine was burnt, too." I took it apart and showed him. "But nowhere near THAT burnt!" I guess they had left the muffins on the grill top while waiting for the eggs to be laid, hatched, matured, and laid again.

At least I was going to have one of my favorite Grilled Chicken sandwiches for lunch, at Downstream Casino, near Joplin. And Hick had a $10 food credit! By the time we rolled in, it was around 3:00. We ordered and sat down to wait (for what seemed like an extra 10-15 minutes over the usual time) for our little beeper thingy to go off. Hick went to get the food, and you'll never guess what I found.

Sadly, it was not a penny. It was the bun of my chicken sandwich, charred as black at my Sausage Egg McMuffin!!! What are the odds of THAT? Even a camouflage of mayonnaise couldn't obscure the fact that my buns were black! Of course Hick was already halfway done with his. He offered to go get me another one, but I didn't want to waste valuable gambling time. Besides, would YOU want to eat another sandwich, made by the person you'd just complained to and asked for another sandwich? Not this ol' Val.

Hick said he'd just take the bun back, and ask for a new bun, to be handed to him, not to be toasted. Nope. I chowed down on my charred chicken. So disappointing to go all that way and get this. Funny how there was NO SURVEY handed out like the last time we were there.

Also funny how only VAL'S food was burned, and not Hick's, at both restaurants. He couldn't even shenaniganize the serving of the sandwiches, since I was the one who handed out the McMuffins, and Hick didn't have fries with his own chicken sandwich.

It's like lightning struck Val twice. Or at least her food.