The Rest of Monday (Getting Caught Up)

We left Boise early Sunday morning to begin a two week vacation – getting away for a “rest” by taking our tandem bicycle with us to get in a lot of riding whenever possible. We stopped in Reno for a little while and invested in the local slot machines; I had decided that I’d donate $20 to the Nevada economy, but they apparently would have none of that and insisted that I leave with $60 in my pocket instead. Who am I to argue?

Taking Interstate 80 over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we found that most of northern California had also been in Reno and were heading back at the same time we were on the road. Add to that some very rough patches in the road, narrow lanes where construction was going on and accordion stop and go driving and it made for a longer than necessary drive.

Arriving at our hotel in Rancho Cordova (east of Sacramento) at about 6:00 in the evening, we rushed to get our luggage in the room and the bike off the car so we could take a quick ride before dinner. We must have been in a business area because there was no traffic to speak of on the roads near the hotel, and in the industrial area where Ventana was located was pretty quiet too. Not so this morning!

We got 11 miles in, found a place to eat close by and hit the sack. This morning, we got up, went and met the folks at Ventana and then made the drive to our motel in Pleasanton (southeast of Oakland). We normally like to stay in San Francisco, but the hotel rates were more than we cared to deal with (unlike in March or April when we usually visit the Bay Area) – so we picked this area because of its close proximity to the BART line and Crank 2 Performance Tandem Bicycles.

We started riding at wound up at the Nordstrom’s as I mentioned in the previous post, rode to the bike store (where we spent a good amount of time and money) and then back to the motel. It was a little over 21 miles, again not as much as we’d like to get in but there’s always tomorrow.

It was too late to really think about riding the BART over to San Francisco, so we decided to eat locally at a restaurant that we enjoy called Sweet Tomatoes (also known as Souplantion, at least from what we’ve seen in southern California). And this is what this whole post is leading up to: the worst parenting we’ve witnessed in a restaurant in several years.

A man and a woman across from us had a baby in a high chair who was at the stage where she could start learning to feed herself, but was in no way skilled enough to do so with any kind of good result. Her end of the table was coated in smeared food; the floor was so thick with food that she had pushed off the table that the carpet was hidden from view in a few spots. The parents weren’t making any effort to do anything other than offer the child more food to shove on the floor.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and if you’re little angel isn’t up to speed on whether to eat the food or use it as finger paint on the table, then either take the time to feed the little darling yourself… or stay the hell at home and let Satan’s spawn destroy YOUR dining room!

I wasn’t thinking clearly when these folks got up, cleaned the kid off, made a feeble attempt to clean up her mess (they failed miserably) and left without leaving any kind of tip for the poor slob who was going to get to clean up after them. I should have taken a picture and posted it here… but the guy came over and surveyed the area before starting to clean it up and all I could do was look at him and shrug my shoulders and shake my head in disbelief.

Our previous worst dining experience ruined by bad parenting? It was visiting my mother and going out for pizza at a place called Streets of New York. The was a woman there who had one little kid with her coated in snot (the kid was really sick, with a miserable cold and had no business being anywhere but at home) and another who seemed to think it was great fun in climbing up on the table and running from one side to the other.

The mother got really offended when someone made a comment to the effect that if that was the kind of behavior her kid had, and lack of any kind of parenting whatsoever that they should have stayed home. “People forget that they were once little kids too” she said. No… people don’t forget they were once little, but most of us remember that we had parents that wouldn’t put up with that kind of crap at all.

I only wish I could remember what it was I said that got her so offended! (So I could say it again…)