Road trip p... Ooo! A Hungry Howie's!

After saying goodbye to Aaron and Ruth, I headed out at about 9. My next planned destination was St. Louis that night, but wanderlust and my tummy got the better of me. There's no interstate that runs from Mobile to St. Louis; probably the easiest would be taking I-65 north to I-64. That didn't take me through anything new or terribly interesting, though. I decided to go west to I-55, and take that all the way up to St. Louis.

Heading that way kept me on I-10, and I-10 passes Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi. I stopped in Biloxi first out of sheer curiosity: I saw the devastation left after a hurricane a few years ago (pretty sure it was Ivan), and wondered how much progress they'd made. They've recovered admirably, but there's still a lot of repair work on US 90. I also decided to closely inspect the repair work done on the Beau Rivage's $1/$2 no-limit Texas Hold 'em tables. You know. Just to be sure.

One hour and $10 later, I hadn't caught any remarkable hands. I cashed out my remaining $90 and headed out. I stayed on US90 west, planning to take US49 up to I-10. There just happens to be a Hungry Howie's in Gulfport off US49. I may or may not have deliberately planned my route to bring me to a pizza place.

Hungry Howie's makes decent pizza, or at least they did the one time I tried one, about twelve years ago. Their main attraction is the pizza sandwiches. Sort of close to a calzone, but ever so much tastier, Hungry Howie's pizza sandwiches are another food Mom and Heather and I aim for every time we visit Alabama. In fact, I've been to the same one in Montgomery three times, stopping each time I've made the trip from Athens to Mobile over the past five years.

I was disappointed to find that this Hungry Howie's in particular was take-out only; half the fun for me is spending half an hour reading a book or doing the crossword while waiting for the sammich to cool. So I ordered my baked ham and cheese pizza sub, tossed it in the passenger's seat, and pressed on.

I'm a weirdo: I like pizza and pizza-related foods much more when they're lukewarm rather than piping hot. Maybe it's because it reminds me of getting delivery pizza when we were kids, then munching on the leftovers for breakfast and lunch the next day. So I drove for about half an hour, battling with my willpower amid the aroma of the sub, before deciding it'd cooled enough. I ate my Hungry Howie's going 75mph on I-10.