Satisflying

Yesterday morning, I woke up and came downstairs to find this in the kitchen:


In case you weren't aware, that's the universal sign for "Your mother is making chocolate chip cookies today." And since cookies are the preferred send-off snack in my family, this also means that the start of the XXX-Country Tour is nigh.

My friend and Week 1 co-traveler, Ryan (pictured below on a margarita-laden Sunday afternoon as we developed a business plan for the Next Big Thing), emailed a few days ago to report that he also picked up some road trip snacks.


Ryan wrote:

I happened to be at Harris Teeter with road trip snacks on my mind. I picked up Goldfish, baked tortilla chips, pretzels, rice cakes, new Planters nut bars, and bottled water. Not a bad start, I believe.

Not a bad start, indeed, if a bit salty. The thing I'm most curious about though is not the start, but the end: do I end up gaining 5 pounds, 10 pounds, or 15 pounds after this road trip? Eeek. More importantly, which of these road snacks will continue to delight me as I take that final exit home off the PA Turnpike on Week 5? Chocolate chip cookies, I suspect.

One final thought (for now) on the matter of road food...


This is from one of my favorite ad campaigns running for the last couple of years. In case you haven't already seen or figured it out, it's for Snickers. As AdFreak describes, "What’s so ingenious about it is that people associate it with Snickers just by the logo style and a goofy, hunger-related word." It also apparently has spawned quite a few parodies. My favorites include "LDLATION" "MANBOOBASTHMA" and of course,


The Snickers campaign evolved in the the last couple of months to use new, more location-aware and medical-free words -- a definite improvement. (The NYTimes describes the new campaign's vocabulary as "lightly sweetened.") So now you end up with sights like this:


And yesterday, I drove up I-95 past the Philadelphia International Airport and saw a billboard that read "Satisflying." Very cute.

Now I just have to figure out a road trip version of a Snickers word to plaster on the back of my car, like a Just Married sign, to tell the world of my long, hungry drive. Any suggestions? Thankfully, I have 8500 miles to figure it out.