Day 17: So this is where the players play.

As I'm writing this, we're sitting in Atlanta, eating pumpkin seeds and cashews as we wait out our layover to Jacksonville. As it turns out, airports aren’t nearly as vegan friendly as I thought they’d be. Unless you’re amped about eating fruit cups and original Lays, you’d better be ready for full-on Hunger Games.

Unrelated note: how awesome would it be to drive one of those courtesy shuttles at an airport? Sure, it would be frustrating navigating around people, knowing that you’d be insta-sued if you so much as grazed a pedestrian’s pant leg, but it’s safe to say that driving any sort of vehicle indoors is worth whatever potential lawsuit that may result. Growing up, you weren't even allowed to dribble a basketball in the house and now your job is to fly down hallways in an oversized golf cart, honking at anyone who gets in your way. Livin’ the dream!

Oh yeah, the food. We walked past a pizza place. Not so surprisingly, they didn’t have any cheeseless, pesto pizza. We didn’t bother checking the Quiznos menu and blew right past Five Guys Burgers.  We had hope for the Miller Time Brew Pub. We could get the taco salad! Just without the cheese. Or sour cream. Or chipotle mayo drizzle. Or the actual chili that goes on top. If you’re keeping score at home, that would leave us with a plate of mixed greens topped with onions. Mmmm!

Always read the fine print.

I knew there was a Chili's outside of our gate and figured we could get chips and salsa, if nothing else. Their menu was outrageously carnivorous, even by my normal standards. Even the appetizers hinged on meat or cheese, and it’s basically a guarantee that everything on an airport Chili's menu is microwaved in the plastic bag it arrived in. Demanding that your egg rolls arrive without chicken in them would almost certainly result in an already-unhappy waitress performing an autopsy on your pre-cooked meal, spooning out anything that looks meat-like, and scotch-taping it back together. But alas, the fine print saved the day. Written in size .05 font at the bottom of the menu was “Black bean burgers can be substituted for any burger on the menu.” We were saved! Did their burger end up looking like a beige hockey puck? Sure. Did it taste like absence and disappointment? You bet. But we beat the system!

[[...Time to board...]]

It’s approximately 15 minutes later and we’re a mile above Atlanta. Fun story: we may or may not have spent our entire layover giggling at the people shamelessly sprinting between terminals, dragging their screaming toddlers and tripping over their over-sized bags. Then we realized our plane should have started boarding by now. Then we wondered why our gate was so empty. (You see what’s happening here.) Our gate had changed and we had gone from being the first ones “there” to the absolute last. Speed-walking (how could we run after all the hell we gave those poor people?) the 15-gate haul to where our plane actually was. It’s never a good sign when there’s an employee standing in the middle of the concourse yelling “Yoder & Christman?” while you’re still 3 gates away. The up side: we didn’t have to bother with those pesky boarding lines! Beatin’ the system, once again. 

In conclusion, I'm still pretty bummed that Jermaine Dupri didn't personally welcome us to Atlanta, but to be fair, he sounds like a very busy man.