[pct-l] All you can eat

[Carl Siechert" <carl@pct77.org (Carl Siechert)]

In 1977, we hiked about 21 miles (one of our longer days) to get to
Callahans Restaurant, which was reputed to be the best restaurant along the
entire tristate PCT--in part because they offered "all you can eat soup,
salad, and spaghetti" with each entree. Turns out they were closed on
Mondays--the day we arrived--so we camped on their front porch and waited
until Tuesday to have dinner there. (After all, we hadn't had a layover day
since Mammoth.) And by Tuesday night, Gary Sottiaux and Michigan Bob were
there too.

We held back a little bit on the early courses, having only two bowls of
soup and three or four salads each. With our entrees, we had five platters
of spaghetti among the five of us (I think each platter was supposed to
serve a table of four) and they cut us off! We were bummed. Some people at
the next table gave us their leftover spaghetti. After dinner, at the bar,
we spoke with Don Callahan and his son Randy, who was then the bartender. We
had no room to complain, and Randy was giving us every other Blitz beer for
free, but complain we did. They agreed to start dishing up some more
spaghetti for us, but then the waitress insisted that it was closing time
and shooed us outside. The Callahans let us sleep on the lawn behind the
restaurant instead of on the front porch.

I think "all you can eat" has an implicit exception clause for thruhikers.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Mertes" <jmertes@verizon.net>
To: <Montedodge@aol.com>; <pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net>
Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 3:29 PM
Subject: Re: [pct-l] I'm Back


> Hmmm, sounds like an unfair complaint to me.  If he says "all you can eat"
then
> the hikers are legitimately
> eating all they can eat even if it is ten times as much of something as
"normal
> guests".  If he wants to limit comsumption
> of fruit then he needs to add that to his advertising.