Live. Travel. Play.

Our first sunny day in a week. Finally. It had to be in California, of course. While working this morning in the van, we discovered that our mobile Wi-Fi device (Verizon’s MiFi 4150L) doesn’t allow voice-over-IP (VOIP) calls. This means that we can’t make low-cost phone calls using our computers. Very aggravating, since we need to be able to communicate with clients by phone, and getting a US phone plan is just not a cost-effective solution.

We drove to the nearest Verizon dealer in Redding to see if they could help us out. In the end there was not much we could do about the VOIP thing, leaving Gregor our IT hero rather defeated. So we decided to cheer ourselves up with some “food”.

A friend of ours once told us that one of the best burgers in California is from “In-N-Out Burger”. Always happy to take culinary advice from a friend, we figured “Hey, why not?”. I was under the impression that the “In-N-Out” in the food chain’s name referred to the speed of service. Not so.

We waited 15 minutes for two cheeseburger combos, which is, like, a millenium in the fast-food world. When we opened our greasy take-out bag and pulled out the limp, anemic-looking fries, it occurred to Gregor that “In-N-Out” could be code for “gastrointestinal shock”. The meat patty in the burger was about 3 mm thick, buried in wilted vegetables, processed cheese, and something resembling Thousand Island dressing. You can imagine what it tasted like. While disappointing to eat, it was highly entertaining, and definitely cheered us up.

We’re posting this from Sacramento tonight.