The ever-elusive Chick-fil-A

elusive adj 1: difficult to describe; "a haunting elusive odor" 2: skillful at eluding capture; "a cabal of conspirators, each more elusive than the arch terrorist"- David Kline [syn: evasive] 3: be difficult to detect or grasp by the mind; "his whole attitude had undergone a subtle change"; "a subtle difference"; "that elusive thing the soul"
definition 4: Chick-fil-A

I'm starting in the middle of the story, but it is arguably the most important part, so I'll fill in the rest at a later time.
First I need to say if it weren't for recognizing this propaganda and having an actual piece of signage sitting in my garage from the restaurant that was supposedly once upon a time in Portland, I would be tempted to accuse Ryan, Josh, Corey, Brandon, Alicia and Missy all of telling some outlandish tales of employment at a non-existant fast food franchise.

They talk about this place as if no better place on earth exists.
They rave about the food if ever conversation is brought anywhere near the subject of chicken, and drool over each other if by chance one of them was so blessed to be traveling out of state and in the vicinity of a Chick-fil-A. (there have been no Chick-fil-A's in the entire NW since we were in high school. there were never any where I lived on the west side of Portland, only on the east side where Ryan is from. so I have never had the apparently undescribeable pleasure of experiencing this phenomena)

This group of former employees even go so far as to bring sandwiches, nuggets and such, home through carry-on luggage and airports to share with one another what they can no longer have at home.

When we moved out here, Ryan had high hopes that we would find one close by. None so close. When we made a trip up to Holland in July, he thought there was one nearby in Grand Rapids. Luckily we found out before making the trip all the way into the city, that he was mis-informed. He was so dissapointed. You see, Ryan is very disturbed by the fact that I myself have never seen, been in, or tried any part of Chick-fil-A and cannot share in this passion of his. So he was very excited to introduce me to a whole new world of chicken sandwhiches.

Today, once again, we were on a roadtrip and part of the plan was to hit a Chick-fil-A only slightly (in who's opinion??) out of the way. He checked the website and we were headed to Auburn Hills to find our chicken. So we finally get there (it was pretty out of the way) and we're driving around, (of course he had not written down the address) and we ask a couple of people and no one seems to really know where it is or if it even exists. One lady said she thought it sounded familiar and she thought it was on the university campus. So we wind around campus for awhile with the kids whining in the backseat because it's gotten to be a very late lunchtime for them. I finally say let's just go to McDonalds across the street and ask, because you'd think they would know where the other fast food places in town are. They said they didn't think there was one. Then Ryan tells me when he had gone in a store to ask the first lady, he looked it up in the phone book and it wasn't listed... "But the website said." (I did look it up when we got home and according the their own website, it is supposed to be there.) So we drove I don't even want to know how many miles or minutes out of the way to eat at good ol' McDonalds. We were not happy. Sorry you were disappointed again, Ryan. It's looking like it's not meant to be.