First off, allow me to apologize for not posting more this past week.  Unfortunately, I seem to have incurred the fiery and diminutive wrath of the bandwidth gnomes, and as a result, Comcast has been a magical world of high-speed wonkiness all week.  Please be assured that at some future date my merciless armies of doom will deliver a mighty whomping to these craven offenders, thereby setting all the world aright once more.  So, the story which I am about to relate unto you is true.  It is also one which children, those with heart conditions, and people who go to bed at 10:00 every night like my grandmother should ever try to reenact.

            ‘Twas ten o’clock, this Tuesday past, and I was at the fabled and oft-visited Waffle House of Chester, delighting in the company and conversation of Amy, whom I, to my boundless chagrin, have yet to come up with a suitably legendary epic name for.  The evening started off in an altogether normal and reasonable fashion, the coffee (billed as the best in America, though whether that includes South and Central America remains to be seen) was good, the jukebox, having gone rogue just the day before and, in a fit of pique, devoured any number of quarters without rendering its usual service in exchange.  Indeed, we passed some two hours in such an amenable that even the silences which inevitably occur when two persons of an introverted nature congregate seemed not the least bit troublesome.  Talk turned to all the universalities of human existence, assuming that Star Trek, contra dancing, and Andre the Giant count as universalities.  At length, however, we both remarked upon how regrettable it was that there were not more places open on a late Tuesday night.  Truly, the only choices available are Walmart, Walgreens, and, of course, Waffle House.

            It was then that we hatched the Idea.  The wonderful, terrible, not the least bit thought out Idea which was to rule the night.  That idea, of course, was to set forth on an epic voyage about Richmond hitting every Waffle House beknownst to us.  As I mentioned before, it was already well past midnight at this point, and we both had work upon the morrow, but since the best ideas in life rarely take such trifles as good sense to mind, the die was cast, and we soon set out along our way.  By the time we left, the denizens of the Chester Waffle House bid us a tearful adieu, and off we went, in Amy’s Civic, listening to some of the finer modern works of Turkish pop music.

            First stop was the Dubious Waffle House of Hull Street, where their jukebox has waaay more songs, the cops usually hang out (though not on Tuesday, it would seem), they have a well-stocked larder of chocolate chip waffles, and where the kindly wafflemeisters found our mad quest both silly and endearing.

            From thence we struck out towards the Other Waffle House of Hull Street; the new one, where all the cool kids hang out and where there’s usually way too many people to properly rawk out.  Happily, that night there were but a few lost souls dining there, lonely and disconsolate creatures who must surely have incurred the wrath of the waffle gods and thus been condemned to an eternity of restless waffle wandering and wastrelry.  On the bright side, their pecan pie was quite good.  Now, by this point, we were both, as a result of sleep deprivation and considerable coffee imbibery, getting a tad bit punchy, with any breaks in the conversation being quickly taken up with giggling.

            Next on our journey was the far away and exotic Waffle House of Brook Road, which they built after some guy got shout outside the old one in that part of town.  It was totally far, and when all we ordered was a round of coffee the waiter looked at us like his puppy had just died.  He did complement me on my shoes though, and after yet another long voyage upon the untrodden roads of early morning we returned once more to Chester, from whence we parted ways and tried to get a few hours of sleep lest we conk out at our respective jobs the next day.

            It was, in short, a most fantastic expedition, and one which many worthy explorers shall most certainly seek to attempt for themselves in search of similar renown.