season's done-- tour de french fry

yes, i realize it perhaps might be slightly ironic that i decide to resume my blog after i missed writing about half my season... ya know:

-the glories of the american velodrome challenge (slash, i crashed)

-fun times at the alpenrose velodrome challenge (slash my niece who did the kiddie kilo was faster than me)

-my stella

r performance at the FSA grand prix mis

s 'n out (slash, the real highlight of that week was how i attend a bbq with jennie reed)

-getting my ass kicked at the ADT qualifi

er race (slash, how i stayed in a REALITY TV SHOW HOUSE!)

-getting heat stroke at state's (slas

h, that sucks)

-and perhaps some other hellyer fun times (slash, nope, no fun to be had at hellyer)

wow, i really missed out on some good blog posts. but i can't look back too much. last week was nationals. i guess it went pretty well. blah blah blah. i am kind of bored with talking about it. but, in case anyone is curious, i measured cristin walker's quads and she clocks in

at 61.75cm. whoa mama.....

billington and i had talked about our drive home from LA extensively over the week: we were going to do a taste test of fast food establishment french fries. a "tour de french f

ries" if you will. don't judge us. it was glorious.

*stop 1* -- carl's j

r.

we were excited about the tour, but perhaps went off the gate a little fast. we ordered two types of fries at carl's jr. cause, well, they had two kinds on the menu. and we had to figure out which was the best. first we had the crisscross cut fries. we thought these would be good, but we a bit disappointed. they were a bit on the cold side. and not so crispy. overall flavor and salt was okay, but the tempature and mushy factor did not bode so well. i mean, we picked up some cream

y ranch sauce, which of course made it slide down okay, but they weren't like the chick fillet waffle fries or anything.

next, we had the regular cut fries. now people, carl's jr regular cut fries pretty much rock! they had the skins on, the salt level was perfect, they were a bit on the thick side (in a good way) and the crisp to potato ratio was right on. i was pretty happy with this french fry and wanted to order so

me more, but billington luckily stopped me.

thanks pete.

about 5 minutes later in the car, we both felt pretty ill. fuck, that was a lot of grease. i wasn't used to it. i got a bit delirious, but thankfully had my awesome CD case on me, so i popped in "best of en vogue" (...and by "best of" i mean, the album should have only been 5 so

ngs not 15...) and i forgot about my heart burn.

about 20 minutes later we saw a sign for a burger king. now, we both wanted to stop, cause we needed to continue the tour. and burger king establishments are hard to come by. however, we couldn't do it. so we continued on. 'no, you're never gonna get it....' except about an hour later we stopped again. 'time for a break down.'

*stop 2* -- in 'n out

of course we knew we'd like these. i mean, it's in 'n out! we got one fry and they were yummy. crispy, hot, thin cut. salt level was pretty good. however, it just wasn't what we thought it'd be. we were both shocked to say it, but we liked carl's jr better. regular cut, not the criss

cross.

at this point, we didn't feel so good. well, i felt better than pete cause he was dumb enough to get a milk shake. WTF!?!!?! we passed another sign for burger king, but kept driving. it wasn't going to happen. pete perhaps wasn't so much feeling the AC/DC at this moment, so i took him back to his washington youth and popped in the pearl job. then he told me a probably fake story about eddie vedder in a allyway.

at this point, i thought 3 was good enough for a tour. like a mini weekend stage race. i didn't really care to do any more than that. but, a few hours passed, i got hungry, and pete called me weak sauce, i was getting all sentimental rocking out to power ballads, so we pu

lled over for gas and got some more fries. we saw a wendy's but both concurred that wendy's fries suck and we didn't care to include them in tour, because we already knew we hated them. every rose does has it's thorn. (and that would wendy's.)

*stop 3* -- jack 'n the box

when i normally go to jack 'n the box...which is every tuesday and thursday and friday for lunch...i get the curly fries. but we didn't think curly fries were an appropriate barometer for measuring french fry taste testing. so we got the regular cut. and blech. they were nasty. they looked yummy. with the potato skin on, thicker cut. they almost looked like carl's jr fries. but they didn't taste like it. they just tasted like grease. soggy grease. i was quite disappointed i didn't get the jalapeno poppers instead.

*stop 5* -- mccdonald's

we immediately left jack 'n the box and drove straight to the mccdonald's drive threw. i mean, we felt like shit at this point, but we couldn't do a french fry tour without mccdonalds...cause they are kind of like the gold standard of french fries.

they were so-so. i'd say better than jack 'n the box, worse than carl's jr criss cross. they were also greasy and poorly salted, like jack 'n the box. but they were crispier and hot enough. just the overall flavor was bad. they would have been fine with ketchup, but a good fry needs to be good independent of dipping sauces.

and so, we didn't see a burger king, and popped in joshua tree and rocked out to with or without you, veering onto the 580 west. next time bk, next time.