Ramen c/o Ren's Ramen and Old Stomping Grounds

On the Friday after Thanksgiving I didn't have a lot of plans. Earlier in the week I had reached out to G. to see if he might like to meet up. G. and I grew up together. His mother watched me when I was little, and we lived about a 1 minute walk from one another and spent our entire elementary school and middle school years waiting at the same bus stop. We were buds back in the day, I'd say. But it's been a while since we've hung out and with time on my hands I thought 'why not,' especially when I saw a write-up for Ren's Ramen in Wheaton. Braving the Black Friday traffic, I wended my way over, parked, exchanged a dollar for four quarters, paid for my parking, and finally sat down. G. and I both liked the option of ordering pork belly into the mix, but he went a spicier route than me. I thought I'd be able to find their menu online and tell you exactly which dish I ended up ordering, but that seems to be a wash. In any case, it was porkful and I added a seasoned hard boiled egg to the mix of pork, seaweed, springy noodles, tofu thingies and scallions.
The broth wasn't quite as complex or creamy as my first true ramen experience in NYC, but it was still a marked improvement over the Top Ramen type of sodium laced water that often is what we think of when we think ramen. Tasty. Wheaton is not the most appealing of suburban cities. It's chock full of congested traffic, strip malls and real malls, and copious numbers of boring brick apartment buildings that eventually taper off into rather forgettable neighborhoods. I think the the regrettable thing about Wheaton is that it has no secret magic spaces of the outdoor variety. It's all concrete and brick with very few parks, and even those parks (I actually can't think of one) are sad. That said, Wheaton has also been a veritable cornucopia for adventurous eaters. It was to Wheaton that we would go to get dim sum on Sunday mornings, or Vietnamese on an odd week night. I believe Wheaton is also where I tasted my first pho and enjoyed teriyaki beef for the first time. Indonesian? Check. Salvadoran? Yep. And there used to be this really neat Viennese bakery, but that, unfortunately, is long gone. Anyways. G. and I both enjoyed reminiscing and catching up; pulling out names of past classmates to reflect over, often with no idea of what has become of them. As well as a few of our shared experiences. After lunch it was decided that we'd get coffee closer to where we grew up.
But once at the establishment that once was the Country Store, we found that it was closed and would not give us the glory of espresso. So, coffee-less, we traipsed through the woods, perhaps trespassed a little on the new construction, made a big loop and ended up on the train tracks, which truly did form some central part of both our childhoods I think. While the trains no longer honk their horns (horns?) as they barrel down in the tracks like they did in my youth, they are still an ever present part of the neighborhood and landscape. After scrambling up a relatively steep incline just feet away from my old house, we were up.
Took some photos.

Saw some deer parts.

It was nice to see G. I think we hadn't seen each other in the flesh for about 10 years or so, which certainly meant there were a lot of life experiences to share and catch up on.