Debbie's Birthday Weekend - Windy and No Riding

This was Debbie's Birthday Weekend - age not to be announced in a public forum but she does not look as old as she is in spite of putting up with me for 32 plus years. That Shaklee skin care is amazing.

The day started with a beautiful sunrise as we looked off the back deck. Hard to believe that downtown Gainesville is a short 3.5 mile drive.


She spent Thursday with a good friend from high school eating and shopping in Dahlongega, the Dawsonville Outlet Mall, and locally here in Gainesville. On Friday night, we went to Zanzo's in Clarkesville. This is one of our favorite places to eat and once again, we had a great meal.



There was no bicycle riding this weekend. It was wet, it was cold, it was windy. So I did the sensible thing! I went with Debbie while she got a massage and I got my feet worked on. The reflexology seemed to help so I am willing to do that some more.

On Sunday afternoon just before sunset, I was able to get a picture that will impress some of my friends and cause others to wonder why I would take such a picture. Then, I got really interested in the history of this fine establishment which has provided the Loveless family several emergency meals on our trips to Florida during Christmas holidays or to Texas when it was late at night, we were in Vicksburg, MS and nothing else was open for starving children to find sustenance.


Thanks to Atlanta Magazine for the bit of info below.
W - Waffle House is as Atlanta as Coca-Cola, CNN, and Delta, only more demure.
A - Avondale Estates, the English-inspired planned city founded in 1924 just east of Decatur, is where it all started.
F - From urban strips like Buford Highway to interstate outposts, Waffle House beams right up there with the rest of commercialized America -- with the Exxons and Burger Kings and KFCs -- but with such a stripped-down unpretentiousness as to be almost invisible.
F - Forget about the drinks, though. Let's talk about money. Yours and theirs. You can still eat to the popping point for less than ten bucks.
L - Listen to how they do it. "All our food is cooked up front and right in sight," Tom Forkner said the other day.
E - Employees learn how to flip the burgers and scatter the hash browns, but more than anything else, Waffle Housers learn about customer service.

H - How does a Waffle House get born? How do they decide where to put it? Well, it's got little to do with elaborate studies and talk of paradigm shifts.
O - Other chains remake themselves - modernize. Waffle House recently added biscuits to the menu, and butterscotch waffles, and deli turkey.
U - Ultimately, Waffle House might end up in all fifty states, but for now most of its locations are in the South, and more than 200 of those are in metropolitan Atlanta.
S - Search the Internet and you won't get very far without coming across an international outpouring of Waffle House love.
E - Eggs lead the category of most-served menu items. Since 1955, Waffle House has dished out more than 1.5 billion of them - more than hash browns, more than waffles.

"You never lose a customer who is satisfied!" Don't we wish some of the WaHo competitors understood that.
This is the link for the entire Atlanta Magazine article - http://www.atlantamagazine.com/article.aspx?id=17916

This is a history link from the Waffle House website:
http://www.wafflehouse.com/whhistory.asp