Driving across the country, even with two months scheduled for the trip, does not leave much time for exercise beyond reaching into the back seat for the map of the next state, or a quick dash to the bathroom when we stop for gas. In the beginning we made a pact not to keep snacks (aka junk food) in the car. Until just a few days ago, we’d managed to keep that vow with the exception of multiple packs of aqua Tic Tacs and some tins of cinnamon Altoids. Then we drove through Bishop, California and at the suggestion of our daughter-in-law Mary Ann, we stopped at Erick Schat’s Bakery. Of course we had to buy ‘a little something’ for the road. The problem was choosing one thing…cookies or the famous Sheepherder bread?

Next thing you know, the back seat is awash with choices of things to snack on, creating an endless and dangerous buffet of foodstuffs we would rarely eat at home.

I knew that giving up my daily regime of a brisk 5-6 mile walk would make for an expanding waistline and an increasingly soft posterior. Kiss any hard earned muscle tone goodbye. When the three meals we somehow always have time to consume are what breaks up the day for us, they take on an importance second only to finding a hotel room far away from the elevators and ice machines. Our loyal friend Howard Shulman who, ever concerned about our states of mind and body, sent us this email early on in the trip as we headed west from Chicago:

I want a list of all the vegetables you are able to find on restaurant menus over the next few days. Corn and potatoes do not count.

Also, I would avoid the chicken-fried steak.

Howard

When we stay in the occasional chain hotel we are treated to a ‘free’ breakfast. Just like there’s no free lunch, I know this breakfast isn’t free. It’s just hidden there in the room charge. It's also loaded with not-so-hidden and tragically uninteresting calories. There’s little will power to keep me from choosing the ‘healthy’ miniscule box of cornflakes instead of the sad sticky bun washed down with equally sad coffee. It’s the non-dairy creamer option to lighten the cup that has me turn to David and suggest we go somewhere - anywhere - else for breakfast. And that’s how the trouble starts. We are regaled daily with menus featuring items that you simply cannot turn down - after all, when's the next time we will have the chance to eat world-class biscuits and gravy, piled high atop of mound of corned beef hash?

Or finally be served with perfectly cooked bacon (albeit enough to feed several dozen hungry post-game hockey players)?

Even a healthy lunch becomes a mine field when a Himalayan Range of tuna salad is served up with a front end loader.

Every once in a great while, we do find something Howard might consider 'healthy,' but then it's wrecked by the addition of a forest of broccoli, my least favorite vegetable.