Wristband to Waistband

Trapper's Smokehouse

Our family just finished vacationing in Williamsburg, Virginia where we enjoyed a weeklong bounce ticket at Busch Gardens, Water Country USA and Colonial Williamsburg. Forget about the sweltering heat, the staple of any vacation is the bread I break. A notorious overeater, I often consume food by bulk using discriminating taste. To my doctor’s chagrin, I do not eat for sustenance as much as for pastime.

With that being said, I highly recommend the food pass at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA. A few restrictions to the food plan exist but it basically permits eating entrees and drinking from a bottomless cup during normal park operation. On this particular day, the all-you-can-eat setup offered me more amusement than its rides. My idea of an amusement park ride is boarding the tram car from the parking lot anyway so it was no great sacrifice to donate a day’s vacation to the gusto of overeating.

This particular amusement park features native food from six different countries. The long park hours are convenient for an all-you-can eat setup. It’s like a long buffet lineup that requires walking to your next meal. Staring at the penned sheep in the park somewhere between Ireland and France, this type of eating reminded me of grazing. With a map in hand, my food quest began by circling participating vendors and charting a course. I ate and drank for five straight hours in seven different locations in each of its countries:

A delightful Mediterranean Salad of fresh fruit and chesses from Squire’s Grille in England

A well-tended beef stew in an Irish soda bread bowl from Grogan’s Grill in Ireland

Grilled sausage links covered in sauerkraut from Germany’s Das Festhaus

Two tasty corndogs from Kilts in a Blanket in Scotland

Pepperoni Pizza and French Fries from Das Festhaus in Germany

Eggplant parmagian with a side of gravied spaghetti at Italy’s Ristorante Della Piazza.

A savory ½ rack of barbecue spare ribs with sides from Trappers Smokehouse in France

Trapper's Smokehouse is where the walking buffet came to a screeching halt. Alas, after eating my way acrooss Europe, checkpoint eight turned out to be a wayside bathroom south of France. I had consumed so much rich food that I paid for in the end. Even though my black wristband screamed of priviledge, I couldn’t eat another morsel for the next seven hours.

I'm not McGrubbing it!

My writing style was recently compared to the stern objectivism of author Ayn Rand by co-workers. I question whether that is a good thing but she is a helluva writer. As my friend Pax Romano preaches from his one-hand clapping choir, there is no such thing as bad pubilicity.

There are enough reminders and bad publicity about American society being obese. After a few months of inactivity on my part, I am getting almost as guilty as the fat man in the circus. I believe that home cooked meals are too often replaced with fast food takeout in this culture. After a few billion people served at Mcdonalds alone, the biggie supersize craze was introduced as a convenient way to ordering larger quantities of unhealthy food.

Since we got that all behind us literally and figuratively. What's my beef pattie now? Well, something is wrong with the way we do business when we can now buy something so consumeable as McDonald's fast food using credit cards with double digit compounding interest. That's right with a wave of a plastic credit card you can eat now and pay later. Ten years from now, these consumers will still be burping up the sorry remants of $23.00 greasy burgers. No thank you. I'll pay cash. I'm not McGrubbing it on credit! Thanks for listening to another Ayn Rand rant.