If you ever have the misfortune to eat at the Home Turf Sports Grill at the Cleveland Airport, do not, under any circumstances, order the Roasted Turkey Sandwich.

I'm serious.

If there is a gun cutting grooves into the skin of your temple, take your chances with the bullet. Your skull may very well deflect it. If the safety of loved ones hangs in the balance, make what final peace with them as you can.

The Roasted Turkey Sandwich is not at all Roasted, barely Turkey, and hardly a Sandwich. I am under no illusions that the porthole behind the Sports Grill houses a gourmet deli the sole responsibility of which is to manufacture monuments in sandwich form. These aren't artisans, these are the people who couldn't pass the grueling TSA exams but were not about to waist a trip to the airport and figured they could be bothered to spell their name and check a box next to "Not currently on drugs" on one more form. Minimum Wage does little to stoke the fires of their enthusiasm for sandwiching and it shows.

I know that these men are just taking slices out of a Sara Lee pack purchased across the street. I know what I'm paying for a portion of that pack will cover twice the cost of the whole. All I ask is for the mere illusion of effort to disguise these facts from me. Place the slices on the bread individually. Introduce that minor variation of position to cloak the meat's prepackaged origin. Give me that illusion of freshly sliced meat cut lovingly by third generation deli men.

The sandwich, I'm saying, was something of a let down. But at least it was accompanied by a pile of hot fries. Fries that were, unfortunately, made without flavor. But that's fine, because there's ketchup. But, no, somehow that served to bring out what can only be described as an anti-flavor -- an experience mathematically identical to ordinary flavor moving backward through time.

But, at least, there would be one final refuge -- a glass of Coke to obliterate all evidence of the culinary disaster. Coke is effectively industrial cleaner with a pound of sugar mixed in, so it was more than up to the task. This place had already proven beyond all doubt how incredibly cheap and half-assed it was. There's no way they actually have their own fountains. No, Home Turf just pours you half a can and charges you quadruple the price of the whole thing. Coke in this form is as fundamental a particle as one may find even within the codified strata of franchise dining. A Coke on the moon is a Coke in Florida is a Coke in Cleveland. One need merely to pour it and gravity does this part for you.

There is, in short, no way to ruin a Coke.

Unless you pour a Diet Coke.

The tale does not end there, dear reader -- how I wish it did! Upon paying for what I must technically admit was a kind of food, I asked if the waitress had any idea where I could buy a pen and something on which to write. She told me that she didn't think the airport had any such store. Having frequented airports all over America in recent years, I knew there had to be a newsstand and those sometimes have pen and paper. So I asked where to find one. She, again, said it was unlikely that the airport had such a store.

I found a newsstand that did, in fact, sell pens and paper. It took me about eight seconds to find this place. It was a short search because it was directly next to the Home Turf Sports Grill. They shared a wall.

So that was Cleveland.