Song Of My Stomach

The Walt Whitman Service Area is located on the west side of the New Jersey Turnpike, two or three long exits before the Delaware border. I assume I am near Camden but, then again, the turnpike did name a service area after Howard Stern a while back with no regard for birthplaces or geography. It is six in the morning, but K and I have been up for two hours already and I'm eager to see how Whitmanesque this particular service area will be. Perhaps a small family home, a statue maybe? At least a placard to commemorate Uncle Walt's long history of accommodating weary travelers with buttermilk, legumes, and Mountain Dew.

In the end Walt fails us. His is like every other Service Area: a Travel Mart, TCBY, Roy Rogers, Starbucks, and Cinnabon. There is no Burger King, either, which is the Dealbreaker. We drive past without stopping.

Burger King is rolling out a brand-new breakfast sandwich, the aptly-named Enormous Omelet Sandwich, or EOS for short (my abbreviation). K's girlfriend says it is rumored to contain 750 calories, but one look at the enormous Enormous Omelet Sandwich poster makes me think it probably has twice as many. Working from the bottom up, one encounters a hoagie roll that immediately gives the sandwich a much larger, elongated surface area. A large rectangle of egg sits atop the roll, followed by a glistening sausage ellipse and a nice family of bacon strips. At this point the sandwich is already much larger than the 590-calorie Double Crossanwich with sausage, but the Creatives at BK are not to be deterred. So they add another egg brick to the stack and a layer of drippy cheese food, before closing the door on the thing with another hoagie roll on top.

K and I call it The Heartstopper and we've been looking forward to getting one since we entered the Holland Tunnel 90 minutes ago. Walt's inferior rest stop cannot provide, however, so we must go elsewhere. To the next Service Area!

Mercifully, the BK we go to doesn't have the EOS yet. We have to settle for the Double Crossanwich, which packs such a greasy wallop that neither of us can finish then. K is now calling the EOS The Angioplasty. I call it The Day Ruiner. Like Morgan Spurlock in "Super Size Me," there is a strange pressure in my chest. It is approaching pain, but not truly painful just yet. Only uncomfortable and disconcerting at this point. The threat of pain looms. We have got off easy this time. We respect Walt's posthumous decision to steer clear of The Day Ruiner.

Yet, the great thing about the EOS is that not only does it make you want to change your life, it actually propels you to do so. How many of us remain in hateable, soul-grinding, life-ruining occupations year after year, unable to do anything about it? The EOS, though, is Efficiency in Action. One EOS and you're already on the road to a lifetime of better eating habits.

And that's something even Walt can get behind.