QOTD: Needing Your Fix
Picture this: You're driving on a road trip. You're making good time, rocking some good tunes, enjoying the drive ... then you get sleepy. Or hungry. Or you need to take care of nature or fill the gas tank and you figure you might as well snag some sustenance or caffeine while you're stopped.
So, what's your go-to? For food, coffee, bottled water, whatever. If it's coffee time, are you seeking out a Starbucks, or a Peet's, or is a gas station fine? Do you try to find a local joint near the highway?
Same goes for food. Or whatever else you may need.
Sound off below.
[Image: JeniFoto/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Just to provoke Tassos, I'll mention that I often get an Earl Grey tea from Starbucks. It's absolutely true that they're charging me $3.69 plus tax for 50 cents' worth of tea bags, but (1) the tea tastes surprisingly decent and (2) they actually give you two bags for a 16 oz cup, meaning the tea is strong enough to have an effect.
It's also true that if you have $5 million tax-deferred and it's all in a 401(k), you're probably leaving quite a bit of money on the table. Few 401(k)s have low-load investment options available.
I've always hated the taste of coffee. If I didn't start drinking coffee during the period of my life when I was reporting to work at 4 a.m. five days a week, I'll never start it.
Traveling with kids, we will stop anywhere with an indoor playground. You can buy a couple hours of peaceful driving with half an hour of crazy running and climbing. My oldest is starting to age out of them, but he still enjoys them and he's probably got a couple more years before people start looking at him funny.
Usually for me it's been Arby's for pretty much forever, except when the one near my house dosed me with food poisoning twice in about a year. Both times were horrible, but the second time was just so terrible it's up near the top of my medical horror stories, and I have a few of those. Obviously, I never went to that one again. I'm still pissed at Arby's for dropping Potato Cakes, and Culver's is truly better anyway. It will be Arby's fish for my "cheat day", when I eat what I want. No tartar sauce and no lettuce on mine, please. And if I get a fish and a French Dip & Swiss? Keep the Swiss, and the dip, too salty. Just the meat and the bread for me, thanks. The odds are about 25% that they will screw one or both of them up and I will have to drive through again to get replacement sandwiches. Culver's seems to get my order right many times in a row, but if I hurry and don't check my order, that's when it's screwed up and garbage to me. My best friend lives on Starbucks coffee. I don't understand coffee's appeal at all. Both my sister and I hate anything it's in. It's like green peppers, they ruin everything they touch.
About the only things I hate more than coffee are most condiments, ranked from most hated to..who cares..
Any variant of “pizza” flavored combos. I only eat these on car trips and they are just my special gut wrenching treat.
I'd try to smash a can of tuna and some crackers with some fruit to avoid the sugar, cholesterol, refined starch and other crap in fast and packaged foods. Otherwise, Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich without mayo is good.