Spokane holds a special place in my heart - not only because I had such a fine time during my two visits to the city, but also because it comes at the expense of very trying times at Farichild AFB. Despite those latter times, I was plum tickled to return to eastern Washington, and even though my second trip was considerably shorter than my first, I was set to make it equally, if not more noteworthy, than the first.
The reason for the visit was water survival. The aircrew that have parachutes on board have to go to Pensacola, FL, while the remainder have to go to Fairchild. The oil spill in the Gulf put a hiatus to the Pensacola classes and sent them all to Fairchild for intermediate training, to hold off on completion until Pensacola opens again. However, while higher ups unaware of my airframe's lack of a parachute initially decided I needed to go to Florida, the subsequent cancellation allowed me to get reassigned to the Fairchild one - the one I should have attended all along. Got it? Good.
I don't care for water. I'm not afraid of it, per se, but I'm not a big fan of it, either. "Brad, you want to go swimming?," you would say, and I would reply with a solid "no," for I do not care for it. However, I think I would be able to survive in the ocean should my plane have to crash into it, as was the premise for this water survival class. The focus of the class is on use of the equipment provided on the plane and procedures for using it, so I didn't have too much problem. You know those life preservers that they demonstrate on civilian flights? Well, we got them too, and we know how to use them, amongst other things.
An entire situation was developed, and a simulation took place with the help of a 20-man life raft, a gym pool not exceeding 10 feet in depth, the darkness, and men with hoses. While it doesn't seem like you could create a realistic simulation with only those components, they did quite a good job, and we practiced procedures for surviving on a raft in the middle of the ocean. It was only two days of training, but they really do manage to pack quite a bit of content into there.
I think my dislike of water activities stems from my nearly drowning at the age of four. I remember being mouth-to-mouth resuscitated by a public pool lifeguard, and my toenail never being the same. Scarred for life though I may have been, I've realized that basic competence in the water is a necessity, so I work to overcome my fear. Two swimming classes and a survival course later and I'm still not a great swimmer, but I believe I could last on the high seas if need be. Provided there's no waves, at least.
I was glad to be done with my water survival class in only two days, because it also signaled the end of my dealings with Survival School altogether. Yes, the three weeks I spent learning how to survive in the northern Washington woodscape, combined with the vague references I can make about learning how to deal in a prisoner of war scenario were very challenging things for me - perhaps ranking in the all-time most challenging. But those earlier weeks were also punctuated by some great eats, and I wished to continue that during my return trip. I only had basically two days out on the town, though, and while I had some great places lined up, it all changed the day after I arrived.
I was sitting in my hotel room at the end of my first of the four nights I had when I saw a reputable
website that claimed that Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives was up filming locations in Spokane and Coure d'Alene, their sister city in Idaho. The way the filming works, the production crew sets up approximately seven restaurants in the city, a film crew goes and shoots some crowd scenes, and a week or two later Guy Fieri drives out and does the one on one shoots. These rumors were pretty fresh - somewhere between the crowd filming and the Guy visits. Not only was the prime information for stupid groupies like me who try to visit as many of these places as possible (because I can visit before all of the crowds start to show up after the episode airs), but I was also not likely to be visiting the city again for quite a while. On top of that, my water survival class meant that I was only likely to have one day to visit as many as possible. On top of
that, the trusty though not very timely shuttle service that most people in Fairchild use only really goes downtown, so I couldn't use it to get to most of these places - I would have to rent a car. The more I thought about it, the harder it would be to make this happen, and that's exactly why I had to do it.
The following three paragraphs are almost completely tangential to the rest of my trip. Unless you want to hear my introspections about Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, you can skip ahead to the designated spot.
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This isn't my first time doing a DDD binge, - I accomplished a seven restaurant DDD tour of
Houston last year, and did five stops in Dallas earlier this year. Having a couple of these binges under my slowly expanding belt, I've gained some wisdom from them. First, this isn't me going around and eating a full meal at each restaurant - this is a strategically-planned amassing of food, largely in takeout containers. If you can get it to go - which is often the case for cheaper fare like burgers and pizza - you can save yourself a lot of pain, as you can get your impression of the restaurant as you wait, and you can sample the food in your car (and maybe take the rest home for leftovers). The
first three places I visited were burger, pizza, burger, respectively, so I was doing good, only taking a bit or two from each and calling it good. I made a mistake at the next
restaurant with a large dinner salad, eating it all. If only I had realized that they offered some takeout, too, but as a positive I was able to overhear a conversation a worker was having about the DDD filming. The trouble continued with another sit-down
restaurant, though I ate lightly, and I was near capacity when I finished my last
restaurant, even though I took half of that meal home in a doggy bag. I purposefully placed a
barI as the last stop of the night, and it worked out as well as it could, with me resigning myself to ordering a cup of soup and a beer and calling it good.
How did it come to these 8-hour eating binges? I started visiting DDD locations when I took my 3-week tour around the central United States after I graduated - they served as well-publicized places that were guaranteed to be pretty good. Plus, it was cool to sit there watching the show with someone, and when a restaurant comes up, and they say "hey, that looks pretty good," you get that little bit of satisfaction from saying you can vouch for that yourself. But what began as good restaurants to look for if I was visiting the area, turned into me going out of my way to visit these places, and that turned into my traveling specifically to visit these places, and that brought me to where I am today - doing everything I can to visit as many locations as possible. It's no longer about the show - my restaurant tour helped propel me into my epicurean pursuits, and my writing about them on Yelp - but it's just now for the bragging rights. I don't even have cable television anymore, so I can't see new episodes anyway, but that doesn't mean that I don't stay abreast of the list. I already know off the top of my head that there's around 8 places to visit in Kansas City, 6 in Oklahoma City, and maybe even the several in Omaha if I ever make it up there, and I intend to visit them all. So no, I don't like having to order the product of someone's livlihood - something they are oftentimes very proud of, and ultimately discarding half of it simply for the bragging rights. It's a waste of food, a waste of money, and I'm probably never going to return - so they're not getting any new customers, either.
If there is one thing I can provide, it's a positive review. Perhaps me writing and telling the story about some of these places will inspire others to visit, and maybe they'll do the same. My Yelp reviews have been as much about supporting local businesses as they are scratching my writing bug (even if no all of my reviews can be stellar - I've certainly hammed in my fair share [though to be fair, how many different ways can you write about a burger?]), so in that respect, I can do some good. And after going back and forth about it, I don't have any problems writing a review based upon two bites of a meal, either. I think, so long as you've come to terms with your impressions of the flavors and textures, of the meal, finishing the dish is simply a matter of satiation.
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In the end, my efforts to knock out the Spokane DDD locations were unsuccessful, as a few other restaurants hit the rumor mill a few days after I returned. Some of the ones I visited might not have even been filmed, but we won't know for sure until they air.
Spokane was a pretty cool town - the downtown area was littered with some great restaurants and culture, and Riverfront Park was very nice. Fairchild, on the other hand, was amongst the harder things I've had to do in my life, whether through physical strength, force of will, or simply sacking up and not freaking out when being sprayed with a garden hose while in a gym pool in pitch black while fighting for a liferaft. It was clear during my second trip that nostalgia was creeping in from the experiences and relationships formed during the first trip, but no matter if or when I return to Spokane, I'll never forget the Suction Goat.
Back when I had my old Audiovox PPC4100 I always wondered why there was no way to interface between my computer and my phone when I had the thing docked and connected to my PC. It was especially an issue when I was wearing headphones and I would miss a text or incoming call because I couldn't hear the thing. They were both running Windows (at the time) and yet I was lucky to have my email and contacts synced without issues. Turns out (spoiler alert!) Windows mobile was a horrible OS, and it took six years and several phones to find a fairly elegant solution.
