Bad Takeout: Chick-Fil-A

Welcome, hungry reader, as this week we've been filling in the gaps on the Bad Takeout scoresheet, with visits to Chick-Fil-A and Mountain Mike's Pizza.

Now, this one gets filed under "it pays to do your research". We'd previously been warned by some friends of ours that Chick-Fil-A was perhaps the shadiest of all fast food joints in existence. We assumed that this meant a lack of cleanliness, rudeness of staff... you know, the usual stuff. But in fact it meant that it's run by some Southern Baptists, who are perhaps not as tolerant of all people and opinions as you might like. In fact, if I'd read the Wikipedia article before the visit, I wouldn't have gone, but you live and learn.

Just getting to Chick-Fil-A was an adventure: it involved getting on the Caltrain, then changing to the VTA Light Rail and staying on there for quite some distance. The Light Rail famously doesn't really go anywhere useful, but it has a quaintness about it which means I use it whenever I can (including to get to the office).

Putting their beliefs to one side, Chick-Fil-A was disappointingly reasonable: the food was hot and reasonably fresh, and turned up quickly, and the place was clean and nicely decorated. It's almost a shame that I won't be going back (but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves).

Just a couple of days later, we sampled the delights of a takeout from Mountain Mike's Pizza, and again I'm sorry to say that Mountain Mike's Pizza was actually pretty good too.

The other thing that has been remarkable about this week is that it has rained in a fairly sustained manner over a period of several days, putting water into the normally-dry local creek. In fact the creek's probably as high as I've ever seen it, and I'm fairly sure I don't remember it raining for this many days consecutively since we've lived here. As I've said before, this creates chaos locally, with drainage unable to cope with relatively modest rainfall, and drivers unable to understand that applying water to the road surface actually makes it exhibit lower levels of grip.

Finally, we also had our 5th COVID vaccination this week, this time with a bivalent booster that's supposed to protect against the Omicron variant as well as the original COVID strain. Having had COVID a couple of months ago, I think that means we're pretty well protected, but best not to risk it.

And I think that's about it for 2022. It's been another odd year; I'm still fairly sure the pandemic isn't over, although that appears to be a minority opinion at this point. We travelled quite a bit within the US this year, and saw several more states first hand, as well as having some visitors to show around the place. 2023 is certainly going to see some change for us, and we're very excited to see what that brings. Onwards!