7 years later, I get my lunch...

Greetings world of cyber space and welcome to Chiliburgers. This blog will start with a 7-year old story that finally reached resolution this week with an email from my loving brother-in-law.

For those of you not in my immediate family the photo at the left is of the snack bar menu at Mt. St. Helens in Washington state. Why, pray tell would I show you a snack bar photo? Here's the scoop.

Seven years ago, just before Jennifer and I were married, we decided to take a vacation to visit her brother Jeff in Vancouver, Washington. I was there the day before Jennifer arrived from a work road-trip, so Jeff, his step-son Ryan and I went on a sightseeing trip to the National Park at Mt. St. Helens.

Exciting park and story of the volcano eruption in 1980. However, the eruption is not the point here. At some point, the three of us decided we needed food, growing boys as we were.

Now, many of you don't know this, however considering my blog is named after a chili burger, I like to eat, and typically it is bad for me. So this particular beautiful day I decided that I would like a nice chili burger.

It wasn't on the menu, but I pride myself on the Burger King "Get it Your Way" theory of food and well, they had the Lava Dog which included chili and cheese and Hamburgers...couldn't be that hard right?

Well, this is a reasonable facsimile of the conversation that has become my brother-in-laws favorite story.

Hungry Bryan: I would like a Hamburger with chili on it.

Fearful Attendant: We don't have hamburgers with Chili on them.

Hungry Bryan: But you have Chili Dogs, right?

Fearful attendant: Yes.

Hungry Bryan: And you have hamburgers, right?

Fearful attendant: Yes.

Hungry Bryan: But you can't put the chili from a chili dog on a hamburger?

Fearful attendant: Nope.

Now I'm sure there are 1 million reasons why that attendant couldn't make a chili burger including possibly not noing how to ring it up or having the food pre made, so the chili wasn't by itself to be scooped, but actually on all the hot dogs they had, but I wasn't hearing it...I continued to ask...

Hungry Bryan: Well what would stop me from buying a chili dog and a hamburger, and spooning the chili onto the hamburger?

Fearful attendant: Well nothing I suppose.

But at this point I was too irritated to spend the extra money and well, Jeff had enough ammunition for the coming seven years. It is the perfect number, correct, seven. Well, seven years later, my father-in-law and new wife are visiting Jeff and they take an expedition to Mt. St. Helens.

The next day I get the following emal:

-----Original Message-----

From: Jeff

Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 12:09 PM

To: Bryan

Subject: We Did IT!
Bryan:

We got them to change the menu.You're not going to believe this, but we went to the snack bar at Mt. St. Helens and lo and behold...They Now have a chili cheeseburger! They call it a Blast Burger. I guess that's because it makes hot lava run down your leg as your are trying to get home. I didn't have the nerve to try it for that very fear. However, I did get you a picture of the menu.. Just in case you question my integrity, I have witnesses that will testify that we really were at the Mount St. Helens Snack Bar. And yes I did make a spectacle of myself when I saw it.I guess that the word got around because I told the story so often. In any event, you should get this one framed.

So there it is, seven years later some retail genius at the Mt. St. Helens snack bar has done what I wanted to do, scrape the chili from the hot dog onto the Hamburger and then charge $6.95 for it...a full $2.20 more than just your average Cheeseburger...err. Truman Burger.

So now, as I join the world of blog-o-mania, there is a story that provides my blog name. The future of this blog will be all over the place. Who know's where it will land...God only knows as my brain goes in a few directions.

But as we move along, please feel free to comment, provide topics, ask questions or any of the above. Viva la chiliburger.