Saturday, April 28, 2007

Pink's Hotdogs Stop 0.1

Delicious delicious chili cheese hot dogs. Do I really need to say more? While not exactly on my road trip, I'll consider this Stop 0.1 on my RoadTripEatingAdventure. There's going to be a bunch of Stop 0.* cause there just won't be enough time to hit all the great places in California.

So anyways, about Pink's. Allison and I headed to Pink's in Hollywood on a crowded Friday night. The line was huge, but well worth the wait. Pink's is this little hotdog shack on the corner of Melrose Ave and La Brea Ave that looks like it hasn't been renovated in decades. We waited in line for about 40 minutes, which was good because we kept changing our minds on what we wanted to try. We eventually decided that we would each get the classic 10" chili cheese hotdog, I would get an additional Polish chili cheese bacon burrito, Allison finally decided on a Swiss Mushroom dog with grilled onions and we would split an order of chili cheese fries and onion rings. Luckily the guy that took our order was really good and got it all right. They even had soda in old timey glass bottles. Total price was only $25 too. A definite good deal for delicious foods. Allison actually manage to eat both of her hotdogs without exploding. I was very impressed. I'll get pics up eventually.

Ratings:
Location: 3/5 - A little bit of a challenge to find parking in downtown Hollywood, but they did have their own free parking lot. Too bad I didn't see it until we got there and after I sketchely parked on the street.
Price: 4/5 - Cheap, though it could have been cheaper.
Taste: 5/5 - Deliciousness. The hotdogs even had "snap" which was a completely new experience to me.
Atmosphere - 4/5 - Wasn't much to look at, but that was probably by design. It definitely was an old timey place. They did decorate it with pictures of a whole bunch of celebraties who supposidely enjoys Pinks. Since I didn't see any celebreties there when I went, I can't verify these claims.

Total: 16/20 - Definitely a place I would like to go to again, but seeing how its 45 mins away with a 40 minute line, its not a place thats worth the gas to go to very often.

Apparantly a lot of famous people like to go here. And they like to leave their autographed pictures on the walls. I should have done that too. Although I'm not quite famous... yet.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Road Trip Path

So here's my current road trip path. I start from Tracy, head down to Mexico so I can finally cross the border. Next, I start heading east, but not without stopping at the Cabazan Dinosaurs, cause they're cool. Then off to Pheonix, and then to Roswell!. I had completely forgotten about Roswell, I was thinking of stopping at Albuquerque, but Roswell will be a lot cooler. Then off to Dallas to start off my BBQ round. I'll veer a bit north for Memphis, then back down to Atlanta, then I'll drive through SC to Charlotte, then through Kentucky (picking up some Fried Chicken) to Chicago for some Chicago pizza and hotdogs. Then to Detroit, Cleveland and then to Pittsburg. I'll jump North to Toronto so I can cross the Canadian border and visit Niagara Falls, then back down to the states, through upstate New York and then finally down to New York City and finally end in Bridgeport.

Total Mileage: 5300 Miles
Total Driving Time: 86 Hours
Avg 8 hours of driving a day ~ about 11 days
A little less than 18 full tanks of gas, each tank of gas about $40 = $720 for gas
$50 room for 11 nights = $550
and then about $1000 for food, tolls, and souvenirs
Total Estimated Cost = $2270
Total Estimated Coolness = infinitely awesome

Getting set up

I've got some time (16ish weeks) before I leave for grad school, but I figure I might as well start getting things set up. Although really, I should determine which grad school I'm going to. But setting up my travel blog is useful too. Eventually I'll try to figure out a way to make a firefox extension that will update with my current location. I'm hoping I can figure out a way for the plug-in to read my current location from my profile and display it, which would require me to get this blog up and running first. If that doesn't work, I'll figure something out. I do have 16ish weeks.

In case you were wondering, my current choices for grad school are:
Bridgeport, CT
Dayton, OH
Newark, NJ

I'm leaning towards Bridgeport right now, but I need to find out how much money I'm going to get and housing options before I make my final decision.