monday, oct 20

oh man, another end-of-tour hangover. uuugh. i slept pretty badly and woke up not feeling so hot. i am dumb.

we got on the road and again drove thru rural wilderness until we hit a dunkin donuts for a quick snack. we didn't want to have too much because today there was a very special destination: bomber burrito bar in albany!

a little back-story: many years ago in boston, there was an awesome place called big burrito. it was staffed by a bunch of punk rokk boys and was sort of our neighborhood burrito place. many meetings of the archenemy record company were spent eating their burritos. then a second one opened up nearby, called burrito max. we heard that the owners were selling the first one, and were puzzled and dismayed by this since the business seemed to be going quite well, but we weren't heartbroken or anything, since we still had the second one around. then, some folks franchised it in albany, setting up bomber burrito. our friend who worked at burrito max went out there to help them get it up and running, and brought us by once when we were all taking a road trip to go visit gordon merrick back when he lived in buffalo.

anyway, one terrible fateful day, burrito max just up and closed. no advance warning (i don't even know if the employees knew about it ahead of time), no reason, nothing. the owners were just kinda sick of it i guess, and posted some letter on the door saying they were moving on to "other projects" or something like that. we were dismayed!! of course there are other burrito places in boston, and very good ones too, but they are all kind of "authentic" and this one was more of a tex-mex menu with lots of tattooed boys, so it was really its own thing. and i sometimes wondered if the place in albany was still open, and if they still used the same recipes. so when i figured out we'd be passing through albany on the way home, i did a little "Internet Research" and found that yes, they were still open and yes, still had the same items on their menu. it seemed promising.

so, we rolled in around 4-ish and i was pretty excited. the staff was a little on the attitudey side, which i must admit is somewhat less charming when it's not your friends working there. i ordered my old standbys: a tofu bbq burrito and chili cheese fries. the burrito came and it was pretty much exactly like the good old days. this pleased me greatly. we received a large plate of chili nachos, and when i went to go investigate the fries the girl was like "oh you ordered nachos" which i totally didn't, like i am sorry you are high and all but it's not my fault you can't get our order right. geez. but whatever, she just made us some new chili cheese fries, and that's where the big disappointment happened. back in the day, they used to have these wonderfully seasoned and crispy fries, but these were just plain and soggy and slug-like. i mean the chili and cheese were good and all, but the dish totally did not measure up to the original. oh well. at least we still have the burritos. i even got some to go.

after that, it was pretty much a straight shot on i-90 home. i mean, a long time still, but easy and nice to not be perpetually confused about directions. and after an excruciating last-minute traffic jam, we made it home. soooo excited. and simon was very happy to see us. and as a special bonus, miss lunarkitty happened to be in boston, so we met up with her and went out for a celebratory "yay-we're-home" / "awww, goodbye crème brûlée" drink.

all in all, this tour was somewhat lacking in wacky hijinks, mostly i think because we were sitting in a van pretty much all day every day, and you really can't get up to much of anything too interesting in that sort of situation. but whatever, we still had a good time overall. the other noteworthy thing about this tour is that i finally got used to crème brûlée's beard.

the end.