Back on the road!

Whoops I let a good amount of time go by there without posting anything in this space. Hope that didn't bother anyone other than Patrick. In my last post I dropped a big load of text from Maine. Since then I returned to RI for a few day before heading down to Pete's bachelor party in Washington DC. We had an awesome weekend, going rafting on the Potomac, eating big steaks, drinking good beer and going to a Nationals game. It was a damn good time and I think Pete enjoyed it quite a bit.

After the BP I rolled back up to RI and attended a kick-ass beer tasting at Track 84, RI's best Beer Bar. The highlights were Portsmouth Kate The Great, Founder's Breakfast Stout, Noggonne Dark Horizon and by far the best a 6 year old home brewed Barleywine. I brought some decent stuff myself and it was much appreciated by those who attended, but maybe not quite as much as those I mentioned.

Since then I have hung around the house not doing all that much. Trying to figure out what to do and where to go when I leave. I got to watch a lot of playoff basketball, which was awesome, especially in HD. IN the last couple days I went back up to ME with a truckload of stuff for Sarah. It was mostly stuff she and Brett wanted but Mom decided to fill it up with a lot of Sarah's stuff that Mom wanted out of her house now that Sarah had a house of her own.

This trip of course allowed Sarah and I to stop by The Portsmouth Brewery. This stop over was particularly awesome b/c I was able to get a couple pints of the cask ale that Tyler had warned me to look out for a couple weeks previously. It was a scotch
ale that they had oaked in Lagavulin casks. Ooo my, that was delicious.

And now I am in RI getting packed up and ready to head west again. So, until I go to some interesting places and take some interesting picture here are a couple tid bits to get everyone back on the blog train.

Miles from SF to RI: 3910
Miles since (ME and DC): 852
Total miles since March 1st: 12751

And now some pictures of Lilly, my sister's cute but goofy-looking dog.

How did that happen?

Almost a week without posting and suddenly I am in a new city. I am going to have to keep better tabs on myself. Ah well I didn't do anything too interesting in the past week. Let me check the last post and see where I left off... Whoops. I was still in Bishop. Damn. I've got some summarizing to do.

So I left Bishop on Saturday after an interesting night around the campfire in the Pit. I realized from talking to the folks there that I am merely a Junior dirtbag at this point. There are much more intense than me in terms of staying put and living out of tents and stuff. I am moving around too much, staying with friends too much and certainly showering too much to be a real dirtbag. I'll have to work on that.

I grabbed some stuff at the bakeries in Bishop and jetted down to LA in a mere 3.5 hours. Very good time considering the fact that I wasn't even really speeding it's just that there was almost no traffic (relative to the areas). I pulled in to Josh and Meghan's place and took a shower before we headed over to a bar called Lucky Baldwin's for their Barleywine/High Alcohol/Belgian Beer Fest. Oddly strange name for a Fest and not much of a festival either. They did have some interesting brews on tap though, and I was able to have another glass of Pliny the Younger from Russian River. Josh tried some Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine from 2000, and despite being 8 years old it was still too hoppy for his tastes. Meghan enjoyed the Collaboration not Litigation and Watson generally caused havoc to napkins everywhere.

That evening Josh and I had an Allagash night opening up bottles of Odyssey and Curieux both barrel aged belgian beers. The Odyssey impressed and the Curieux did not, but was passable nonetheless.

The next day we had planned to go rock climbing, but it was too damn hot in LA, like mid 90's. So we ended up taking my suggestion and heading up into the mountains north of LA for a hike with Watson. We went to a place near Horse Flats and hiked down to a couple waterfalls. It was up over 6000 feet where we parked the car and so there was not only cooler air to be found (like almost 25 degrees cooler), but there was also some snow still on the ground in shady places.





On Monday I hung out and did my state taxes, and in the evening went to get some pretty decent buffalo wings in Westwood with Jen. After dinner I went over to Josh's place, where, along with Josh's buddy Jon, we sampled some of the beers that I had brought across the country from the Portsmouth Brewery in NH. We tried the Imperial Pilsner, the Imperial IPA and the Baltic Porter. They were all quite good, although the IPA was not of the type that Josh prefers. I think the Baltic Porter may have been an exceptional porter, but since I am not really in to porters I don't think I can really comment from an informed standpoint.

Tuesday I hung out with Watson when packing up the car with some beers for trade at Dark Lord Day, and trying to fit a good portion of the homebrew in there too. Later I got this song stuck in my head.

Yesterday, I said my goodbyes and hit the road, heading north to the Bay Area, and failing to convince my silly friends to ditch their silly jobs for an afternoon, I headed right through SF and rolled up to Santa Rosa to visit the Russian River Brewpub by myself. I was psyched to get up there right away because they are releasing their barrel aged and spontaneously fermented beer now. These beers only come out once every two years in somewhat limited quantities (not a limited as the ones I picked up at Alesmith) Beeradvocate.com lists these brews as being some of the best in the world, with several of them making the Top 100 list.

I was able to try the Compunction which was not bottled so it was the first thing I asked for. I also tried the Supplication which I had been told was amazing. They were both fantastic in my opinion, very interesting complex sour beers with the sour being part of the character of the beer rather than a dominating force. I look forward to trying some more of it when the bottles that Josh ordered online are cracked open sometime this summer.

I also got a couple growlers filled up with some of my favorite beer from RR. Pliny the Elder and Salvation. I brought the growlers back down to Redwood City for Patrick and that is where I am now. Yesterday evening Pat and I cracked open the Salvation and drank quite a bit of it. (Note to self: do not allow Patrick to take charge of refilling your glass.) And brilliantly we also decided to go for a run while Bridgette watched American Idol. It was a long run and Pat runs quite a bit faster than some of the folks I have been running with recently. It was okay though, I was able to keep up, but I was reminded that Pat is a much better athlete than me and even when he is out of shape he is very strong.

Today I have been very lazy, catching up with my NBA playoff coverage, and just generally unwilling to get back in the car after driving so much yesterday. I used Pat and Bridgette's scale to see if I have lost weight, since I think that I have lost a bit. I came in at 171 pounds on their scale, which is about a 4 pound loss from my normal 175. I am not sure why I lost weight other than my diet not being so replete with the fatty fried foods I crave normally. Their scale also has a body fat measuring feature, and I came in at 41.1% fat. I am not sure that the scale is too accurate though. (wink) In fact I would be willing to debate whether or not you could possibly have a live person who was 5'10 171 pounds and 41% fat. I mean the bones and essential organs have to weight more than 59 percent of your body right? With a frame of 5'10 and a weight of 171, I don't think 41% fat could work.

Barrel Roll...

Yesterday, I managed to get my hands on a couple of the rarest(recent production) beers around (obviously there are plenty of homebrews made in lower quantities). About a month ago Josh got wind of a special beer release down at Alesmith Brewing in San Diego. The beers being released were barrel aged versions of their Imperial Stout (Speedway), Barleywine (Old Numbskull), and Scottish Ale (Wee Heavy). These beers were brewed in 2006 and aged in oak barrels until just before their release yesterday. Since Josh works and I was around and not doing too much from day to day, I decided to drive down solo and pick up some of these beers. The official release time was 1pm, but if you showed up earlier you got a ticket with your position in line written on it so that you didn't have to stand in place for several hours. I left a bit later than I planned to get down there, but I made very good time down 405 and 5 to get to San Diego around 11:40. This garnered me a ticket with number 59 on it.

There was a number of guys hanging out in the parking lot drinking some beers (there were even a few women there too). I had brought some beers down to trade, but there wasn't much of that going on so I just chilled out, read a book and ate some lunch while waiting for 1pm to roll around. Once the time came, people began to gather and get their beer in a pretty orderly way. While standing in line I heard tell that they were only releasing 180 bottles of the Speedway Stout. Which put me solidly in the good position since there was a two bottle per person limit. I waited my turn an got my bottles. Sweet!! I checked the hand-numbered bottles and discovered that the were only 235 bottles of Stout produced and 208 bottles of Barleywine. I knew that they might only be releasing 180 of them but I had no idea that that was the end of them. I am not sure what I was thinking, but man, seeing those low numbers really brought it home that these were some rare beers I had just bought. I mean when I picked up the sexual chocolate in NC I was psyched b/c it was one of 500 but I was now holding several beers that were each one of less than half of that total.

After acquiring these rare brews, I headed around to a couple of the other local craft breweries (Stone and Port/Lost Abbey) which are also some of the best in the world. I picked up a couple of their seasonal beers at each place. The Russian Imperial Stout from Stone, the Serpent Stout from Lost Abbey, and the Moonlit Sessions Lager from Port. These breweries are not separated by too much distance and it was easy to swing by both of them on the way back up to Josh's place in LA. Stone looks very cool; they have a big restaurant attached to the brewery and quite a lot of cool gear available in their shop. I guess the logo helps.