Monday on the road, in gastric distress.

I don't want to blame it on Sheetz, but that was the last thing I ate that felt normal yesterday.

I had a Meltz with sausage, egg, American cheese, ketchup an black pepper. I describe it with such exacting ordered detail because that's how I ordered it. If you've never ordered from the Sheetz MTO touchscreen menus, you're missing out on the opportunity to order a hot dog with cheddar cheese, chili, baked beans, onions, mustard, sauerkraut, pickles, banana peppers and bacon without ever having to face the looks of horror, disgust and envy that placing such orders out loud tends to elicit from cashiers and passers by. In such dire moments of swill abuse no one will know your shame besides yourself and the shlave in the back who will wrap your colon's worst night mare in an nondescript opaque wrapper and hand it to the cashier to scan and never question.

It being 8am, not 3am, and me being about to drive across four states with my girlfriend, not about to make a very poor decision under the influence of the drunk hungries, I avoided my usual Sheetz fare in favor of something a little more like breakfast.

That brings us to Meltz, which should be called Shmeltz, in keeping with Schmuffinz, Schmagelz, Shmiscuitz and the Shmonster. Unfortunately, Sheetz appears to have some standards of self-respect, albeit piteously low standards that only seem to make earlier corn-ball marketing schemes seem that much more desperate.

And while you may have some vague inkling what a Schmuffin is, just from the name, what, pray tell, is a (Sh)Melt? It's a sandwich on a fat pretzel that is twisted in such a way as to create a bun without any holes, think kaiser roll, but made from pretzel dough. This is actually a pretty good idea, and if the pretzel buns were toasted instead of microwaved they might actually verge on great. As is, they become very chewy as they cool, forcing you to eat too fast or risk ejecting the sausage and ketchup out the back of the sandwich as you try to grind through it's tough, shiny hide. Add to this a hash brown so greasy that it dripped grease through the little hash brown baggie into the well below the emergency brake and you've got yourself quite a wholesome little breakfast for the road.

At the time of eating, there was no indication that I was ill. About three and a half hours and a bottle of Energy VitaminWater later, though I found myself having a hard time getting down a pepperoni roll. By rights it should have been lunch time, but my stomach just felt so off. After I finished the pepperoni roll, I couldn't eat anything else and I kept burping what tasted like cheerios soaking in milk left out in the sun for a few hours.

If you were wondering, this was not pleasant and it persisted for hours. My hunger didn't return till after 9pm, and even then all I had was one piece of 3-cheese texas toast. I brought so much great food back with me from my hometown and all I could manage to eat was a toasted piece of freezer-swill.

I hope my next entry proves more substantial or I'll have to start planning a book tour with Jared of Subway commercial fame. "I had a Shmagel and I never ate again!"