Our Late Night Hunt for Food

Tonight's plan started off easy enough: my friend mentioned he was hungry; I agreed; he mentioned there was a Vietnamese place open late; and with that, we were off on our quest for pho. However, the night had other plans for us.

As we drove to the pho that awaited us, it occurred to us that although this restaurant might be open late, it was already 2 AM, and we doubted it would be open that late. Sure enough, the place closes at midnight, so we were out of luck. Lucky, we remember a Mexican taqueria that a friend introduced us to just the week before that is open 24 hours. Unfortunately, we couldn't remember exactly where it was, so we circled around a few block until we found it.

Soon enough, we were at our destination. We took our spots at the end of the considerable line - perhaps we were not the only ones that had been denied pho? - and focused on the cold night as we slowly made our way to the front. Once we place our orders, we proceeded to wait for what seemed like an hour for our order to arrive; a wait which was only exacerbated by the aforementioned cold night.

However, once our food did arrive, it certainly satisfied. Was it the food itself, or the fact that our long wait only increased our hungry? The world may never know, but who cares. The important thing is that the food hit the spot. We devoured our food and were soon on our way home.

Looking to make even the trip home something special was Mother Nature, who decided to lay down a thick blanket of fog as we were on the freeway. It wasn't too bad at first, but after a few minutes it thickened to the point where we could barely see the car in front of us... which happened to be a police cruiser. We slowed down and made sure we stayed behind him, as to not provoke his wrath, when the cruiser started performing an odd lights show. He didn't flash his red & blues, but instead flashed white light, as if he was trying to signal a car in front of him (when there was none), and flashed a roof-mounted light on the right side, as if he was signaling that was merging in front of us (which he didn't). My friend and I had no idea what he was doing, so we continued like normal, turning onto our exit, along with the officer. Suddenly, we saw a car stopped in the middle of the off-ramp with its hazard lights on. We slowed to a stop, and let the police on our left go investigate.

This is where my internal alarm went off. Why was this car stopped diagonally across the middle of two lanes? Why did the air smell like burnt rubber? We were less than a car length's away from the stopped vehicle, which we could still barely see because of the thick fog, so if anything were to go down, we would be right in the middle of it. Luckily, once the officer got out and checked, he signaled for us to drive around, and effectively ended the last of the night's excitement.

All that simply because we were hungry. Next time, I'm making a sandwich. Unless, of course, a friend says they know a great place that's open late...