Becoming a "Temporary Regular"

When I travel, I'm usually at a given location for no more that 5 days. Aside from work, one of my primary occupations is trying to find something decent to eat. This situation does not afford me much time, nor margin of error in choosing a place to dine. I've used various techniques to try to narrow down my options, but the results that I have had, as you can imagine, are hit and miss.

If I should happen to find an establishment that is excellent, I become fiercely loyal and take as many of my remaining meals there as is practical. Unfortunately, it isn't often that I get to become a "temporary regular" even though I'd like nothing better. It's basically a numbers problem with the numbers stacked against me. There are so many mediocre restaurants out there that the odds of me finding one on the first couple of days of a trip is pretty slim.

Today I'd like to tell you about my recent stint as a temporary regular in Akron, Ohio. On my second to last day in town, the group I was with went to The Lockview. The place was full and the service was on the slow side, but something told me this was a special place. Maybe it was the multitude of grilled cheese sandwiches on the menu, or maybe it was the chalkboard menu above the bar featuring around 145 different beers. OK, it was mostly the variety of beers that did it for me, but at any rate, I knew that I'd be back.

That night I returned and took a seat at the bar. There, I met Webber, the bartender, who told me all kinds of interesting tidbits about The Lockview. For instance, the service can be a bit slow at lunch time because they make a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches with one grill that measures only three feet wide.

Since The Lockview is, at it's heart, a bar, I shall start there. The list of beers is impressive, they even have 8 different beers (three on tap) from Rogue Breweries way out in Oregon. It is true that the majority of the beer that The Lockview offers is in bottles, but this does not deter from the beer drinking experience as the beer cooler glows with a wonderful radiance that only large quantities of bottled beer can produce.

While it isn't on the menu, you can still order a Bud Light if you really want one. The thinking behind this is that The Lockview is a friendly place and they don't want to turn someone away just because they happen to favor this ubiquitous beer. I did witness one patron order a Bud Light while I was there and while he didn't receive any grief from the staff, he did get gently heckled by some of the other patrons.

The expected array of spirits are available at the Lockview, but most people come here for the beer. One thing should be perfectly clear- The Lockview is not a sports bar! They only have 2 TVs (one bigscreen and one small one) and unless there's a local game on or a special request, they are tuned to the Food Network. I have to say that it was refreshing to go someplace where I didn't have to see 3 different sporting events concurrently in any direction that I looked.

On my second night at The Lockview, Webber greeted by name and with a firm handshake. That the effort was made to learn my name even though it was clear that I couldn't become a regular was very touching. The rest of the staff including server Brandi and cook Pete were equally warm and inviting. I even got to go back into the kitchen to see just how cramped things were back there.
The food here is understandably greasy for a menu that revolves around grilled cheese sandwiches and anything that can easily be deep fried. Thankfully, there are some lighter options, like salads, to balance out the greasy indulgences, like deep fried pepperoni.

It is places like The Lockview that keep me exploring my destinations for interesting food while I travel. For that I am eternally thankful to Webber, Pete, Brandi and everyone else at The Lockview.

The next time you find someplace excellent while traveling, don't let the lure of something better prevent you from becoming a temporary regular because while you might do better, you are more likely to do much worse.

If you've enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

A Spork by Any Other Name

Photographs by Nicole Holt

A Review of the GSI Telescoping Foon

Long time readers of Graham's Travel Blog will remember that I am a big fan of sporks. For a little background here, please see Spork and Chopsticks. I recently acquired a new spork for my collection and I'm excited to share the details with you today.

Before I get into the details about this tool, I'd like to get one thing straight. I am not at all pleased that GSI used the term foon to describe this product. When I saw the display of these hanging in the travel section of Powell's City Of Books I was immediately drawn to it, but it took me hours in deciding whether or not I could in good conscience purchase and own a foon. Upon inspection of the tool, I discovered that it was actually a spork that had been incorrectly labeled a foon by some misguided marketing person.

I decided that I couldn't hold the name of a product against the engineering folks at GSI, so I purchased the lowly fun. My guess is that since there are several sporks on the market and the name foon was used in an attempt to make this product stand out. I'll admit that the name does stand out, but naming your product a foon in a world of spork lovers is just asking for trouble. From here on in, I'm calling it what it is; a spork.

So, what makes this spork different? Firstly, it's light weight. At 8 grams, it's half the weight of my Snow Peak Titanium spork. This might not sound like a big deal, but if you are an ultra light backpacker then reducing the weight of anything by half is an impressive feat.

The second distinctive feature of this spark is its size. Since this is a collapsible utensil, it measures just 3 7/8 inches long when closed, yet it is a comfortable 6 inches when extended. This is nearly half and inch shorter than the Snow Peak, but when the GSI spork was in use I did not miss this length.

Sadly, this is all this spark has going for it. In light use it performed well enough, but I do have some concerns about durability. Most foods that I put to the GSI Telescoping Foon were no match, but I did notice a fair amount of flex in this utensil in the area where the handle meets the bowl. Ironically, this problem is inherent to the design of the major feature that attracted me to this spark in the first place. Sadly, this flaw is also its greatest weakness.

When you expand the spork, you must be sure to move the tines away from the handle before proceeding as there is a small ledge that keeps the spork from opening unintentionally. This ledge does its job almost too well. When you do want open the spork, you you can irreparably bend the tines if you are not careful. I saw at least one spork at the store with such a bent tine. On the subject of tine strength and durability, I've used this spork for less than a month and I've already seen signs of stress on some of the tines.

What GSI has done is to take a simple and reliable tool and made it complicated and, quite likely, unreliable for real world use. A piece of backpacking equipment needs to work consistently. On a given trip, I will put my travel spork through very little, however I wouldn't want to be dependent on this product for all of my spork related needs for fear of it breaking.

While it is true that this utensil is compact and lightweight, its drawbacks imposed by an unnecessary gimmick far outnumber the benefits. For my pack, I'm sticking to my Snow Peak Titanium model until something better comes along.

If you've enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

Four Nights in a Grain Silo

I never had any aspirations to sleep in a grain silo before, but when I learned that this is exactly what I'd be doing in Akron, Ohio, I began to get excited by the prospect.

It could be that I spend too much time in what seems to be an endless chain of hotels that, more or less, all feel the same that caused the novelty of a novelty hotel to be such a draw. I will admit that I'm also drawn to any sort of historical building, so the thought of staying in one is intrinsically attractive.

This sort of excitement was similar to that which I experianced in anticipation of my vist at the Treehouse Hotel in Oregon so, knowing how well that turned out (see: Road Trip to the Treehouse Hotel) I held back too much excitement untilI arrived. Fortunately, my caution was misplaced this time.

The Quaker Square Inn is situated within the old grain silos and associated factory buildings of the Quaker Oats company. After this architectural icon of industry was retired from its original use, it was repurposed as a hotel and student housing for the nearby University of Akron. Today the first three floors make up the hotel while the remaining floors are student housing.

Normally a hotel that also has student housing doesn't work, but it works well here for two reasons: respectful students and thick walls. These silos were built to last, and they are nearly 8 inches thick. That gives you 16 inches of solid material between you and the next room which assures that sounds of nocturnal activities remain within the rooms from which they originate.

The only weak points from an acoustical standpoint are the windows and doors. In my 4 night visit, I was only disturbed once by a drunk college student which is pretty good considering the situation.

To answer the two questions that you are most likely wondering about: yes, the rooms are round and no, the beds are not round. The rooms are however slightly quirky. For example, the toilet paper holder was just slightly out of reach for someone with average length arms who is sitting upon the toilet. This is due to the fact that the room is round, but fortunately there was a box of tissues within easy reach.

Another quirk had to do with the floor layout. Since a collection of round rooms is not conducive to a sensible floor layout, it is no surprise that finding your room can be a challenge. This is one time in which a room near the elevator is an asset rather than a liability.

These quirks add up to an interesting hotel experience. The morning breakfast includes the expected Quaker Oats, which ties into the theme that continues through the use of ample Quaker Oats memorabilia which is placed in the lobby and breakfast area.

If my travels take me back to this area, I wouldn't think twice about staying here again.

If you've enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

What To Do When You Lose Your Power Adapter

Being a modern business traveler, I carry with me more than my fare share of electronic gadgets. I've got a computer, two cell phones, two digital cameras and occasionally a second computer. Any way you look at it, I carry too many gadgets. Consequentially the more gadgets I have, the more power cords and cables I have to carry and possibly lose along the way.

It would be an inconvenience if I lost my phone adapter, but nearly disastrous if I lost my laptop power adapter. Fortunately I haven't lost any power adapters while traveling, but it could happen.

Since being prepared is often the deciding factor between being able to deal with a crisis elegantly and ripping your hair out, I have decided strike first and prepare for the inevitable. It feels good to have a plan and it took less effort than you might think. I'd like to share my plan with you.

My plan is not as involved as carrying a universal back up power adapter or knowing the addresses of the appropriate adapter venders at each of my destinations. My plan is much simpler: depend on someone more careless than myself.

Every day people leave power adapters behind at hotels. Most hotels collect these in box that acts as a sort of lost and found for power adapters. The odds of someone coming back and claiming one of these is fairly low so the collection slowly grows. Should I find myself in a power adapter situation, I'll head to the front desk and ask to see their box of power adapters. With any luck, I'll be able to borrow the correct adapter and be on my way.

I'll admit that this plan has a major flaw as it relies on someone having my device and losing their adapter at the particular hotel that I'm staying at. While it isn't perfect, it still feels good to have a plan.

If you've enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

Regional Cookie Highlight: Mallomars

Photograph by Nicole Holt

Marshmallow, Graham Cracker and chocolate is no doubt a popular combination. It can be found next to campfires in Smores, in the South in Moon Pies and for a brief window of time in the North East it can be found in one of the most perfect combinations of these three ingredients ever created. I am, of course, referring to Mallomars.

For many reading this, you may have never heard of Mallomars, and if you have then it may likely have been in a fleeting scene in When Harry Met Sally in which Billy Crystal proclaims that Mallomars are, "the greatest cookie of all time."

So what exactly is a Mallomar? It's a round Graham Cracker topped with marshmallow and coated in dark chocolate. This may sound unexciting, but two elements set this cookie apart: high quality and limited availability.

You may have seen generic versions of Mallomars on your grocer's shelves, but the quality of these imitators are nowhere near what you will find in Mallomars. I picked up a bag of generic Mallomar-like cookies in preparation for this article and found them to fall short on all accounts.

The Graham cracker should be crisp, the marshmallow pleasant with out being cloyingly sweet and the chocolate dark, delicious and of high quality.

Due to the fact that real chocolate is being used and that good quality chocolate is prone to melting, Mallomars are only available in the Fall and Winter.

That these prized cookies are only rarely available, my wife and I have taken to stockpiling them in the hope that they will last until Mallomar season rolls around again. This year it's already April and we are down to our last box; we'll need to plan better next year.

In addition to temporal scarcity, Mallomars are also limited geographically with over 70% of them being sold in the metropolitan New York area. If you live outside of this area, you may have trouble finding Mallomars, but they are well worth the effort that it takes to track them down.

Every now and then a shipment has been known to make its way to the West Coast, but these are rare. I'm guessing that it's market testing, but I've never seen this coupled with advertisements so the efforts are doomed to failure. I'd love too see this cookie to be more widely distributed so if it sounds like the Mallomar is for you and you see them, please pick up a box. I'm sure you'll be back for more.


If you've enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.