3/22/10

The folks at the Fenian Godfather Culinary Institute were able to perform a significant experiment today.  They had long sought the perfect opportunity to test the hypothesis that the Subway Italian BMT with double meat is superior to a similarly constructed sandwich including the same ingredients.  That opportunity arrived this morning.  The little Exxon station where I spent last night is owned by some very friendly Hindu folks.  Inside the station, there is a sub shop that was once a SubWay.  A highly trained observer would be forced to conclude that, rather than continue to operate the SubWay, the owners chose to forsake the franchise fees and run it as an independent operation.  In true bargain basement fashion, they retained the SubWay menu boards and simply covered the SubWay branded portions with homemade signs.

The owners, however, did not change the names of the sandwiches.  Right there, in all its glory, I saw "Italian BMT."  Bring it on, Ravi, and give me double meat while you're at it.  Back out in the lab (or the truck, in less formal parlance), the study began.  The white bread was nearly identical to that found in any SubWay location.  The meats were similar but not identical.  The cheese was exactly the same.  Net result of Phase One - pretty tasty sandwich.

The trip down US-59 wasn't too bad for the most part.  I got to Houston before the afternoon traffic got totally out of hand, but an accident on the south side of town did slow things down for a little while.  I made my traditional dinner stop at the T/A in Ganado, where Phase Two of the experiment was to take place.  Eschewing my normal Italian herb & cheese bread in order to preserve the integrity of the study, I ordered my sandwich on plain white bread.  Net result of Phase Two - the Subway version is vastly superior.  The individual components don't seem any better than those that you could buy at your local deli, so I can only conclude that the sandwich artist makes all the difference.

Satisfied with my contribution to the collective body of scientific knowledge, I headed back out and finished the run into Laredo.  Once my trailer inspection was complete, the lad in the inspection bay handed back my paperwork and said that the broker was a 24/7 outfit.  Beauty.  No need to fight the morning traffic if I can deliver tonight.  I headed down the street and pulled into the driveway.  The security guard took a look at my paperwork and then told me that the broker opened at 7am.  Dammit.  I was definitely told that it was a 24/7 location.

He said that I could stay parked in the driveway and I would be the first one checked in tomorrow morning.  Good enough then.  About all I had planned to do back at the terminal was take a shower and cut my hair anyway.  That could wait until tomorrow.  So I kicked back and relaxed for a while.  Out of curiosity, I grabbed my computer and pulled up an aerial shot of the broker to see what kind of drop lot I would encounter in the morning.  Er, wait a second.  The aerial shot that came up when I typed in the broker's address was one of the next building over.  I backed out into the street, drove into the next driveway, and tried again.  Yep, that was the one.  24/7 drops and all that good stuff.  Beauty.  Now I get to put myself on the board with a whopping 1.5 hours available for tomorrow. 

Probably not a whole lot of freight delivering within 70 miles of here, meaning that there's a pretty good chance that tomorrow will be a day off.  I do need to get a birthday present for my little brother pretty quickly, so I guess I should have a chance to drive into town and shop around for a while.  As long as I can get my truck into a local post office and send a package to Michigan, I suppose that will work out pretty well.  Otherwise he'll just have to take whatever I can get shipped quickly from the internet.  Speaking of which, I do see that Sprint finally got some high-speed mobile internet access installed down here.  That's pretty nice.