Reunion

At the end of April, I want back to Pomona for my 5 year reunion. Even though I encountered a few setbacks (losing my license, almost losing the passport that Abby overnighted to me, and losing the keys to the car that Andrew and I rented) I had a great time. A wine tasting was one of the first official alumni weekend events, and it gave everyone a chance to liquor up, loosen up, and get reacquainted. The wine was pretty decent too. Most of the wineries featured were run by Pomona alumni. Here's Eric, Andrew Gordon, and Andre (my now three time roommate) at the wine tasting.
Andrew Jennings and I had been longing to hit up our favorite eateries from college, and spent quite some time devising our plan of attack. So, after the wine tasting and a quick detour through the Wash (a once great Friday afternoon event that is slowly dying as the Pomona student population becomes more straight laced and the campus alcohol policies become more strict) we began our "best of college" food tour and went to Happy Family, an amazing vegetarian place. Unfortunately, we were the only one's in our group that were so obsessed with food that we were designing the entire reunion weekend around our meals, and, so, it was just the two of us that made the trek out to Diamond Bar. We ordered fried eggplant, a chicken dish (which was actually deep fried and battered mushrooms), minced squab sans the squab, and fake shrimp with cashews. This probably would have fee five people, but we wanted variety, so we left the restaurant with a ton of leftovers that we never ate.
While Happy Family was nice, the big event happened the next day. Patty's! If heaven as a burrito place, it's probably serving Patty's burritos.
Once, during my first year after college, Andrew went back to Claremont to visit a friend, and he stopped by Patty's and picked up a carne asada burrito for me before he got on the plane back east. When he got back to the east coast, he stopped in DC on his way back to Baltimore and we dug into our burritos, reliving an experience from college that we held in an almost religious reverence. What a great gift. Even after traveling all those miles and being reheated in the oven, they were better than any other burrito you could ever lay your hands on. They are that good. Words cannot describe, so, here's another picture, a close up of a glorious chile relleno burrito with a thick, floury tortilla still warm from the griddle that it had been freshly cooked on just minutes earlier.
We had planned to get at least three Patty's meals that day, but we spent the bulk of the afternoon chasing after my passport, which the people at the hotel somehow refused when the mailman tried to deliver it, and looking for the lost keys to our rental car. While I'm on the topic, NEVER stay at the Howard Johnson in Claremont. They are disorganized, careless, and incompetent. Its a wonder they are able to run a business. Anyway, by the time everything was sorted out, Patty's was closed, so we went to the reunion dinner with somewhat empty stomachs.

Our class reunion dinner was located in the gym. They did their best to make it look nice with strings of lights, carpet, and some lattice dividing walls, but they couldn't hide the fact that we were in a gym. In spite of that, and the fact that the air conditioner wasn't working, I think everyone enjoyed themselves. When dining, company always trumps ambiance. Here are some pics.


Just about everyone at our two tables lived in the west side of Lyon hall freshman year, and we went back to visit our old dorms after dinner. I'm proud to say that the two Lyon sponsor groups had by far the best representation at the reunion. After that, we all went to another class social event, and the party continued early into the morning at our hotel. Of course, Andrew and I had one more stop on our food tour before the night was up. Alberto's
It's no Patty's but it's a damn good burrito, and you can get it at 1 in the morning if you need to. Alberto's satiated a number of late night cravings, but ordering from the night shift was always a crap shoot. On many occasions, Andrew, a vegetarian, would order a bean and rice burrito and, when we got back home, bite into a burrito made of tortilla, carne asasada, and a little hot sauce. We went back to Alberto's the following morning for breakfast since Patty's was closed.