Random Salute to Pork

I've been thinking about pork alot the last few days. I went to the state championship barbeque cookoff this last weekend here in town with the same feeling I used to have going to a Cubs game as a kid. Once I got there, though, the poorly organized, but worthwhile benefit, that consisted of excruciatingly long lines for minuscule tastes left me feeling like the game had been rained out while anxiously awaiting a Dave Kingman at bat. I eventually ended up at the Hy-Vee tent, so hungry from the toothpick tease that I only made it through 7 or 8 of the 30 competitor tables. Hy-Vee, a major grocery store chain around here, had pork and brisket, corn, beans, chips and Pepsi. The pork was fine, the corn crunched and tasted like it was from thousands of miles away and the beans were drowning in ketchup. I ate every last bite out of hope and desperation and headed home disappointed.

First Impressions of Italy

The twenty minute taxi race from Vespucci Airport to Hotel Ariston on Via Fiesolana should have taken ten minutes more. No one died. Ample street width not apparently a priority here-the same can be said for side view mirrors. I should have taken another Xanax while we were waiting for our luggage.

sidenote…
The place we’d stayed on the 2007 trip to NYC featured a bathroom down the hall we shared with a few junkies and a few other Travelocity suckers from Europe. If the check in process at a hotel involves the clerk (or the guy who just killed the clerk and shoved his body into a trash compactor) handing you a roll of toilet paper in addition to the greasy key, just know that turn down service might possibly involve a weapon.

This hotel was quite lovely in comparison, running water in the room, not an obvious felon in sight. We dropped off our bags and headed off to a café that specialized in ignoring people before serving them mediocre food. Loud American students staggered about the piazzas as we headed back to retire for the night.

A latte and simple pastry started off Monday morning at a corner shop near the hotel. The occasional tourist in tube socks and sandals strolled by as we headed to a nearby market. The scene was staggering. Whole rabbits with eyes still appearing to look about, giant hams and mortadella, pig’s feet and tomatoes, cheeses, wine, slabs of beef and unlucky chickens that still kept their heads. A million melons and squash, a hundred things I didn’t recognize; it went on and on. I’d been warned not to touch. Fortunately, I’d learned the importance of respecting this rule when Bruce the soundman got us bounced from a Wichita Falls gentleman’s club in 1991. I wanted to touch the succulent Italian produce…that sounds a bit creepy, but you should have seen those melons. We departed the market and headed for the train station.