November 30, 2020:
We usually have a couple of dollars for lunch.
I suppose we could take something with us, but it's hot in summer and sandwiches would melt. Besides, we've previously scouted the great, cheap places for refreshing calories. We love the hotdog stand across from the Museum of Man in Balboa Park, where opposite the fence is the Children's Zoo. A couple bucks gets you two hotdogs, fries and a coke. Or stellar Mister Frostie at Garnet and Haines, where a mere quarter buys the world's most humongous soft-serve in a cone so big I can barely hold it. Awesome.
Of course, while exploring new neighborhoods there's always McDonald's, or our then-still-local favorite Jack-in-the-Box. All we ever get there is fries and chocolate shakes. Carbs, fat, salt, sugar: all the necessary food groups for successful long-distance urban bike rides. Why no burgers, ever? Probably because they cost too much.
I dunno, maybe we just don't like them. Always when empty pockets collide with hunger we ride home to Clairemont Bowl, where Craig's stepmom Muriel is a waitress in the diner. I imagine she could slip us whatever we like, but it's only ever fries and chocolate shakes. Granted, much better fries and shakes than the downmarket fast food places we randomly acquire. These are the real deal. Maybe it's as simple as that.
We're too early for Rubio's. By about fifteen years. It wouldn't have mattered because we never eat Mexican food, not even once. Neither of our families do. I first experience Mexican food in Redlands, at university, ten years later. Along with Chinese, pizza, and many others. In San Diego in 1970 ish we eat American standards: burgers, fries, shakes, spaghetti-o's, vegetables from a can. Apparently it's still the 1950s in San Diego in 1970 ish. It would have been moot anyway, on these rides, because we hadn't the bucks for anything more interesting.