I Never Look Classy: A Florida Travelogue in 33 Parts: Part 2: Cross-Fire

"What are four twenty five year old guys doing going to Florida for a month? Don't you guys have jobs?" said the disgruntled border agent.

Hardly older than we in the car, the border official glared at us with such contempt; it was as if we had offended his sensibilities by daring to go to a fun place for a while for fun.

And make no mistake, he was AGAINST fun of and kind, in any form and especially not in HIS country.

Though he was originally clean-shaven, in my mind he begins to take on the aspects of a 40-year old man with a handle-bar moustache. The lore attributed to this caricature of a mean guard lives in a former coal town and drives an ugly old beater, has a small white-ish gray house with dirty aluminum siding. As Adam, one of my fellow travelers put it, "That is a man who only gets one day off every three weeks, and on that day his wife has him do 'errands.'"

We four were asked to stop off at the border crossing office and then, after a short conversation with an officer who had an amateur interest in linguistics, we were on our way!

Needless to say the rest of the 12 hour drive was punctuated with rehashings of the first border guards cartoonish monologue. As we told it again and again it morphed from being spoked by the guard to having the voice of Joe Pesci and, after a while, the voice of Matt Damon talking in a Bawstan accent.

We arrived at our destination, an express hotel on the damp outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina. We dropped our bags in the rooms and headed to a local eatery, not ten steps from le grande foyer of the hotel. The eatery was well known to the man behind the counter, our chill innkeeper.

Ichiban.

Ichiban. That name will live on in the hearts of we four. Live on in our minds. Live in our minds and hearts and taunt us from the dark corners of our psyche.

This was a chinese buffetorium, a combination of a prison cafeteria and a low-class buffet.

While time and progress may have marched on for the rest of the world, Ichiban remained unchanged in the dark, dark depths of the early 90's renovation that formed it's armour, the red faux pleather seats slick with years of sweat and beer spills.

One of the "dishes" served by Ichiban was called "wheast." "Wheast." The little placard above it did not describe it's origin, and I did not ask for fear of the answer. It looked of a yorkshire pudding crossed with an apple fritter, and under the heat lamp it glowed. Or sweated. Near it was Italian style chicken. Onion rings. Pudding.

For $10 after a 12 hour drive, it was certainly something that hit a spot. Maybe not the spot, but for something to relieve our cravings it certainly took care of that with only a minimum impact to the total life span of the four gentle sirs who partook that night.

Good times were had by all. This blog post will likely be going up when we arrive in Florida to our house, if only because we don't have internet at the hotel. More will follow!!