The Lady and the Mcdonalds

Our path from Palm Springs to Vegas took us through Barstow, which after visiting, I now understand why Hunter S. Thompson had to have his drugs take hold here. ;)

The chief attraction is this McDonald's they have set up as a train station, surrounded by all the things you might never expect McDonald's to sit still for: "Thrifty Ice Cream Store", fortune telling machines, gas station, Panda Express (!). Somebody in charge of brand control for them probably has a heart attack every time they see pictures of the place -- definitely grandfathered in from an earlier era. Best part, you eat your meal in the train cars, which have been set up with normal McDonalds booths.

More disturbingly, the cellular network cut out about 30 miles south of Barstow. I figured it was just being out in the desert, but it wasn't working anywhere in town either. Curious, we stopped to get gas -- and found that the credit card machines weren't working. Went to this McDonald's station, and the card readers were out there too. When I asked the girl at the counter, she said, "Oh, it's because the cells are all down. It's because of the sonic booms."

What?

We went outside, trying to figure out if the girl was just pulling our leg, or some sort of sonic boom had knocked an antenna loose. Right as we were discussing it, boom -- sonic, that is! We both jumped about a foot in the air as we worried it was an earthquake.

Cell network was still off, too -- and it stayed off until we crossed the Nevada border.

Why would sonic booms be disrupting the cell network? All sorts of bad X-files episode plots ran through my head, and I was almost ready to Believe the military was doing some sort of testing out in the desert. Well, that or a fiber cut. But I like the idea of an experimental EMP test better, since that made the internet withdrawal easier to take.