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It's rough eating pancakes for 24 hours. Or at least, it's been rough eating pancakes for however many hours we've been eating at this point. As I write this, it's nearly 4 a.m. on Wednesday on the West Coast and I've been sitting at Denny's eating pancakes (or trying to) since 1 p.m. on Tuesday.
They keep playing the "Top 10 Countdown" -- which is five-second snippets of the top songs in the country -- on a loop. When we started, the loop repeated every 17 minutes. Now it seems to occur every three to five minutes or so. It is repeating faster and faster like an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Soon this Denny's top 10 countdown will run us down. It will be our ruin.
I'm 18 pancakes in. This seems really silly considering that we felt we were going to conquer the world after our first plate. But I'm not kidding you when I tell you that the pancakes have gotten bigger and thicker and fluffier with each refill. I think the cook may be trolling us. Pancake No. 18 was the thickest pancake I've ever been served. Ever. I ate it with neither syrup nor butter, fashioning it first into a death mask:
Before tearing it with my hands and consuming it in hunks.
My body is extremely unhappy and likely very confused. But we will continue to press on and do all we can. For you. And for charity.
What have we learned in our journey? We have learned that pancakes are filling:
We have learned that Scrabble is a good way to pass the time when you are attempting to eat as many pancakes as you can while you body is screaming WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT STOP THIS AT ONCE:
We have learned that the necessity is the mother of invention:
I just ate two pancakes with a spoon. This is what I have become.
— Bill Hanstock (@sundownmotel) June 12, 2013
We have learned that it is basically impossible to win a stuffed "Star Trek" Khan from a 50-cent Big Choice machine:
We have learned that sometimes the butter will come in a ramekin, but sometimes it will come right on top of the pancakes, creating a butter-divot and soaking right through to the one underneath it. The only way to prevent this possibility is to ask for no butter whatsoever.
We have learned that trying to eat a cold pancake is like trying to eat a piece of rubber lead.
We have learned to stop trying to make sense after 4 a.m. PT.
We are still at it. We are still plugging away. Please forgive us for not doing better. And if you love great causes, please click here to donate and help our wonderful cause.