It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman who’s been rollerblading two days in a row and walked six miles besides must be in want of a bacon cheeseburger.

No, what are you talking about? It totally is.

And so it was.

Alas, today happened to be Victoria Day which I’ve always wonder why we celebrate or maybe we’re just thankful she’s dead. Or is it really Posh Spice Day?

That must be it.

Yes, I have returned to my greatest, truest love; we’ve spent hours together over the holiday weekend getting physical, with the result that I am now sore from the ears on down and can hardly walk in a straight line, although I do a very good impression of a drunk Marilyn Monroe. I think I’ve burned about eight billion calories over the past two days and gotten out of my house at long last. Yes, it’s quite fun, outside my house.

There are, as I may have mentioned, many, many half-naked men on the Seawall, and it’s very difficult to meet them and entice them into my apartment unless I go out there in the first place and catch one. So the rollerblades will help with that, as well as that nice yoga-butt side effect, but at the moment it’s more a matter of staying upright and trying not to spray the tourists with sweat when I make those tight corners.

My face probably looks like a tomato with a pony tail on top, but soon my cardio fitness will return to me as the sunlight and Seawall have and I shall have the blissful knowledge that when the tourists take pictures of me it is not so they can send them in to Fugly.net, but rather that they may stick them on their refrigerators and aspire thereto.

But…a cumulative three and one half hours of rollerblading and eight miles of walking over two days does tend to give one an appetite, and so today I went off in search of a bacon cheeseburger. Yes, of course it’s on my diet: I’m on the bacon cheeseburger diet! Duh! So there I was, figuring on trotting a grand total of two blocks over to the Ovaltine and spending five bucks on the House Burger which, it must be admitted by those in the know, is certainly one of the finest diner-style burgers anywhere, not to mention the fries of which we have blogged at length elsewhere.

Have I mentioned it was Posh Spice Day? It was. It was, therefore, a day on which the Ovaltine was closed.

That’s when it all started.

Now, I don’t know about you. I don’t. How could I? It’s a blog, not a CAT scanner. But when I get a specific craving by golly I get a craving for, like, that one specific thing and no other. So don’t talk to me about your sandwiches, your hot dogs, your salads or your pasta. When it’s a bacon cheeseburger I want, a bacon cheeseburger I must have or there will be Heck to pay.

Heck! I say!

And so I began to strategize. Thusly:

• It’s Posh Spice Day, so most places will be closed
• I started walking West, as most restaurants are in that direction
• There’s always the Carnegie, I think they have burgers and they’re very cheap
• I have nine dollars in cash and eight in the bank, so strategy has to include this complication
• There are three ambulances, a cop car and a firetruck pulled up in front of the Carnegie, and someone on a stretcher right across the doorway
• So, the Carnegie is out. I walk South to Pender.
• Save On Meats has a great diner in the back but A) their burgers are a POUND of meat and B) it’s probably closed on a holiday.
• I turn West on Pender
• There’s McDonald’s in Tinseltown…but it’s McDonald’s
• I walk past Tinseltown
• There is Fatburger, and the service is good but their burgers are fat, expensive, and not particularly good.
• I figure the Smile Cafe, the one that was in Fantastic Four where the Thing had that deep, meaningful conversation with…somebody…I’ve blocked most of that movie out…will have cheap burgers (well, to be clear, I only want one. But it may offer several, you never know) but might be closed.
• It is closed.
• I turn South on Richards, thinking I’ll swing by Tim Hortons and A&W, although a fast food burger is not, it must be admitted, a diner bacon cheeseburger, nor is a bagel with veggies and cream cheese.
• I read the book covers at Albion Books, and am intrigued and very glad they are closed, for I would spend my money on books and not healthful bacon cheeseburgers
• A skanky van pulls up with a screech and parks right beside me, although there is no lack of parking and my spidey sense tells me to walk ahead of it quickly, hugging the wall and I do.
• A couple of tourists come out of the B&B and the van takes off.
• I turn West on Dunsmuir and walk past the A&W and Tim Hortons without desire, except the continuing desire for a diner bacon cheeseburger.
• I think of White Spot. White Spot has good bacon cheeseburgers, but it’s pricier than either my cash or my bank account, although I could afford it if I put the two together. I ponder this.
• I think of Denny’s. Denny’s is a diner, right? Denny’s is cheap.
• There is a Denny’s on Burrard, right near Robson, but it’s awful. I resolve to go by there to look at the prices, then go up to the good Denny’s on Davie Street.
• That Denny’s is good because it’s thronged by gay clubgoers both before and after the clubs, and the queens like things done RIGHT, BITCH!
• I dodge a completely unrealistic number of beggars getting to Burrard. Don’t these people know there are no tourists on Dunsmuir Street, only jaded locals? I turn South on Burrard, noting the cavernous Cactus Club is also closed, although the Keg is not.
• My cousin likes the Cactus Club, although I do not. I would never patronize a place whose staff made me look blobby in comparison
• I know a girl who was fired by the CC for lifting up her shirt and showing everyone on staff her nipple ring. She won in court because the judge ruled that this was entirely appropriate at the Cactus Club and what can you expect? By the way, she was represented in court by her father. Joe Simpson is an archetype, not an individual, I’m telling you. “So, Bob, what are you doing next week?” “Well, Steve, I’ll be defending my daughter’s right to flash her piercings in the back room of the Cactus Club. And you?”
• When I get to the Denny’s on Burrard the menu posted outside is thronged by a large number of very unattractive-looking tourists who, honest to god, are wearing polyester slacks with topstitched seams. I walk on by, pretending not to see the eye-ripping scarves in their perms. They look like a bowling team of drag queens dressed as “Middle-Aged Amy Winehouse”
• as if she’s going to make it that far
• I continue to dodge many, many beggars on the way up to Davie Street, although I also dodge a fellow outside the 7-11 who, it turns out, is just waiting for his friends who are getting slurpees inside. It’s so hard to tell hipsters from homeless.
• I get to Davie and I turn West
• I pass Vera’s Burgers, and it must be admitted that, as you could guess from all the awards in the window, Vera’s really does have some awesome burgers, if you like them big and sloppy.
• Which I do and you may take that any way you like.
• But Vera’s has the price for beer on their sandwich board and not the price for burgers, but from the price of beer it looks not to be in my price range either, although it is fast food after all, jeez.
• So I keep walking to the end of the block, whereupon I reach Denny’s and go in.
• to be continued…