Tornado Tag

I had interesting last few days despite mostly driving around and standing in line. After leaving Boulder I drove along I-76 to I-80 into Nebraska. It was very windy and raining, which made the driving less than relaxing. On top of that the prospect of camping out in the storm was becoming less attractive by the mile. I headed into a rest stop/state recreation area around 12:30am MDT, unfortunately I had passed into CDT sometime in the previous couple hours. This meant that I was losing a hour of sleep. I had found the camping spot on-line the previous day and although it turned out to be largely what I expected, I did not expect them to charge for camping since they provide no real amenities there. Well, it was already late at night and I had nowhere else to go so I just camped there and said to myself that I was sure no one would check while I was there and I refuse to pay 6 bucks for a piece of dirt to sleep on and a locked bathroom.

Well I was right; no one checked and after a few short hours of sleep I got up and hit the road again. I would have slept longer, but I tend to wake up with the sun when I am camping, and given the windy weather and bit of rain I could not go back to sleep. The weather continued to be unsettled, and I heard new reports of a tornado touching down somewhere in Nebraska that night. I have to admit that I still have not checked to see how close that tornado was to where I spent the night.

My goal for the day was to get to a brewery in rural southern Wisconsin. The New Glarus Brewery has two beers that make the top 100 list on Beer Advocate. My plan was to get there in time for the tasting which was available until 4pm. I entered Iowa fairlyearly in the morning and I was lured off of the highway to an Iowa visitor's center by a sign that mentioned wireless internet. I needed to figure out exactly where in New Glarus the brewery was located. So I drove off the highway down a very strange one lane road past a few athletic fields and arrived at a very out of the way visitor's center. I then waste twenty minutes trying to get on their internet. I signed up for some free password, giving away way more information that I should have to, and despite telling me that my new user id would work every time I entered the id it just reloaded the same home page and took me nowhere near the internet.

This made me very mad at Iowa and I drove back on to the highway cursing Iowa. Fortunately for this mid-western state I gave it one more chance on the free wireless thing. 100 or so miles down the road I stopped at another rest area to try the wireless, but this one was right on the interstate like a normal rest stop. And there were fewer silly hoops to jump through for wireless. I think I just had to look at a couple ads for 15 seconds. I located the brewery and hopped back on the freeway, singing a different tune about Iowa and their free roadside wireless internet.

I skirted around Cedar Rapids and on through a very soggy northeastern Iowa. Most of the rivers around there are at or near their flood stage and it was crazy to see some of the flooding as I went through. Lots of trees and fields half under water. There were also tornado warnings in the area as a storm cell north of Cedar Rapids followed me as I headed to the northeast on route 151. I made it up into Wisconsin and headed off of the highway towards New Glarus. I wound my way though the quite pretty (in the quaint rural way) countryside and arrived at the brewery around 3:45.

The nice woman at the gift shop desk told me that I could do a tour and a tasting and that I had plenty of time for both. The tour is an audio deal where you get a hand set and punch in the number on the wall in various places to hear a sounds bite that accompanies it. The woman failed to mention that the tour takes over two and a half hours if you punch every number and listen to the whole sound bite. I felt guilty skipping around the numbers until I heard that. My tour did not take very long as I honed in on the parts that were specific to the brewery, such as the founding of the brewery and their awesome copper brewing kettles that were salvaged from an old brewery in Germany.

After the tour I got to do a tasting of three of their beers. I got a three ounce taste of each and got to keep the glass all for only $3.50. The most interesting to me was their best seller (they sell only in the state of Wisconsin) a beer called Spotted Cow, which is a farmhouse ale aka saison. Farmhouse ales have a distinctly funky aroma and taste. Not sour but definitely funky. Not what I would expect to become the best seller for any brewery that does not specialize in saisons. I enjoyed my tastes and asked the gift shop woman's advice as to where I could buy their highly rated beers for cheap. You see I had read on their website that their prices are higher than local retailers because they can not undercut their distributor. I guess that is bad business or something. In any case, I went a block down the street to a local market and saved a dollar per bottle on the two fruit beers.

After getting my beer I headed south into Illinois aim to get to Rockford and camp in a local state park. At this point the weather turned awful, driving was really slow as the wind and rain were very intense. The storm abated a little as I got down into Rockford, where I went to the local Library hoping for more internet access. I did indeed get online where I found that this was only a lull in the storm. As such, I chose to locate a cafe where I could wait out the storm in warmth and wireless access. I did indeed find such a cafe just as the storm was ramping back up, and I waited it out in relative comfort, talking to Josh on the phone so he could inform me about the beer trades he had set up for us at Dark Lord Day.

Later, after the storm had passed I went over the park to camp and had a fine night despite the wind. I got a good amount of sleep and compared to the previous day I felt much better as got into the car to drive down to DLD in Munster, IN. Unfortunately before leaving the park I was pulled over for running a stop sign. Really I did a rolling stop while turning right at a stop sign. The speed limit in the park is 10 mph, I think I was going 15 and slowed down to about 2 at the sign. This is of course something that over 90% of people must do at that stop sign. I think the cop understood this b/c he just gave me a warning. I am pretty sure this is the first time I have been puled over in 8 years. I am glad to have gotten away without a ticket, since I can;t really afford to have to pay money for silly stuff like that.

After that I motored down to DLD and got there and parked and in line around 10:45. Now I am happy with how things went for me yesterday, but I know enough now to greatly increase my enjoyment if I should happen to attend this event again. I waited in line for about 5 hours to get my 6 bottles of Dark Lord Stout. I have no complaints about that, there were fun people around me in line and I shared some beer with them and they shared some beer with me. Through them I got to taste the current year's DL, DL aged in oak barrels, Kentucky Breakfast Stout and several other Three Floyds Brews. All in all it was a good day, I got my trades done, got 9 bottles of Dark Lord and found a secret port-a-potty where I did not have to wait in line. Sometime during the day I realized that the line I was in was only for the Dark Lord bottles and the other line were all up near the brewery. I could have walked up at any time to go get food (sausage boiled in Dark Lord, mmmm!), some of the guest beers and other variations on Dark Lord. Ah well, next time I will go armed with friends and get there early so that one of us can stand in line while the others go to get the goodies.

After getting my beer, I enjoyed a delicious sausage and hit the road down to visit Ben in Bloomington, IN. That is where I am now, and for once I am going to hang out for more than 12 hours. Ben said that this is the most beautiful time of the year in Bloomington so we are going for a hike sometime this afternoon.

I think I'll have to bring the camera on the hike so that I won't be so texty next post.