Beer and Loathing in Boca Raton

The lady by the door of the Funky Buddha is gorgeous. A patron, but I was willing to be patronized. Alone and reading a book, she seems tormented despite her rose tinted glasses. A writer perhaps. Another day with another crowd, and I'd have given her my card.

We are served by a young lady who was hostess, bartender, waitress, and cook. The beer and food were both outstanding. I get a T-shirt as a gift from someone in my party, it being the Christmas season, and I treasure this shirt for months to come, and further months to go. I have the Maple Bacon Coffee Porter (fulfilling a life dream), So This is Christmas Mint Chocolate Stout, Bonita Applebum Apple Pie Brown, Red Dawn Ale, Missionary Lager, and Piiti Porter. All are outstanding. Everyone remarks that the Bonita smells and tastes exactly like apple pie. I like the MBCP and Mint Chocolate better still, but these are polarizing flavors (as is my lapsang souchong tea).

I switch gears from being apologetic (this trip is evidently an inconvenience to my convoy) to thankful that everyone has humored me. The experience has been better than I could've hoped for.

Portland, OR Part 2

I awake, if that's the word for it, thinking that if I have in fact killed myself with beer, I hope to be eulogized as a man who died as he lived. My recollections of last night remain clear however, particularly the man in the pink gorilla suit whom we encountered on the street. The pink ape-man followed us into the doughnut store, got behind a register, and sold us some donuts, communicating only in a series of grunts. My partner in crime couldn't deal with this, but it seemed like my kind of town.

We hit the festival after a hearty brunch consisting of mostly poached eggs. The Hair of the Dog offering had come and gone already, but we tried Golden Valley Santa's Smokin' Bock (which was up to par with any German rauchbock), Viking Braggot Winter Squash Porter which had delicious spice backed up with a full squash body an sweetness, Crux Oud Freakcake which was a quality Oud Bruin, then swung by VIP to taste a very old Goose Island Bourbon County and North Coast Old Stock, the vintages of which escape me. The Bourbon County turned into delicious beer candy. We tried John Barleycorn Mele Kalikimaka which didn't really taste like coconut or bourbon barrels, and Stone Spiced Unicorn Milk which was a total spice bomb (nutmeg, cardamom, allspice). The flavors were running together, so we ran with them, out of the tent, and onto the street

I bought some film for my camera and we beat feet across the river while I made phone calls to phone trees which hung up on me repeatedly—far more efficiently than any human could've. At Hair of the Dog, we try Cherry Michael (the 'from the wood' variety on draft at the time) which is delicious (cherry is hard to do well, an argument we later have in depth), Blue Dot, the best IPA I've ever had, then we hit the bottle list: Adam from the Wood has the rich leather, fig, and date it ought to plus soy, chocolate, and sweet bourbon. Matt is similar: licorice and a bit of apple from its barrels. Bourbon Fred tastes like candy cigarettes, which suits me fine. We meet a nice couple sitting next to us on a beers by bicycle tour, fitting for Portland. We meet them again at Cascade, where I hope we provided ample entertainment.

We sprinted back across the bridge, or rather a different bridge, as this one appears to be missing a sidewalk. It puts us in a convenient location to encounter the ape man from Paragraph One. We stumble back to the hotel, and wander into a restaurant, about to close, evidently a repurposed bank building. I order the boar, but they are out, so I think I get macaroni. I wake up at 2AM, perhaps the most hung over I have ever been, wondering if I have in fact killed myself with beer, and wondering how I got back to Paragraph One. I'll ask the ape man if I find him.

Beer and Loathing in Portland, Oregon

Touching down at PDX feels like coming home. There's a girl handing out samples of whiskey, and she remarks upon seeing my ID that we are almost exactly the same age. She's quirky and cool; I like her style. And her whiskey.

We call for a free airport shuttle for the airport hotel and get there just before the kitchen at the off-track betting bar next door closes. Which it evidently did at 10:45. I get a French Dip which seems to be made on garlic bread with cheddar. Together with my Lagavulin, my coconspirator's onion rings, and my side salad, it fills my favorite taste groups: beef, salt, cheese, and whisky, while the green leafy bits soothe me with the illusion of health.

We check into the hotel, and check out of consciousness.

Saucony Creek Captain Pumpkin's Maple Mistress

No lie, a beer with packaging like this does not inspire confidence, per se, but the disproportionate blue-haired cartoon pirate wench is not altogether uninspiring, if that's not too much entendre for this particular blog.

Hazy amber-brown with some floaters. A fine white head that dissipates in relative haste.

It smells of rich brown sugar with a hint of the promised butternut squash and a bit of maple and spice. Real maple, not 'breakfast syrup', so it's restrained as to not be too intense.

Tastes like rich maple, butternut squash, and some pie-spice/pumpkin. Funny that they get the 'pumpkin
 vibe with a different gourd, but whatever works. Definitely on the sweet side, but spicy enough not to be syrupy. This flavor portends its higher ABV, but makes it dangerously drinkable.

Thick (and there's some serious sediment, so not for the faint of heart) feeling and rich, appropriate for this style as far as I'm concerned. You'll want a glass of water though, as it lingers a bit and can be overwhelming especially if you are thirsty or dehydrated to begin with, as I am.

I bought this on a whim for novelty value because it wasn't too expensive. I found it so good that it's one of the few pumpkin beers I liked so much, I'd buy again (not that I dislike pumpkin beers, but I've had so many that they hardly ever stand out).

Dogfish Head Immort Ale

Drunk fresh, this beer tastes like a shopping list. The ingredients on the label can be picked out and isolated. Laid down for a year (I'm drinking a 2012), the flavors meld into a smoky fusion, not unlike a Scotch whisky with maple syrup. Not that I condone doing that; you should drink this instead.

I'm not sure what it is I smell, but I think it's some kind of wood. I want to say juniper, but that would be kind of asinine to claim. Actually some of it is peat. To taste, there's more peat for sure, along with oak and vanilla. It drinks like a tawny barleywine (which I'm pretty sure it is).

It is with deep regret that I admit to having buried one of these along with a bottle of Olde School per the instructions on that bottle, in the backyard of my parents' house. I have never found it. My Mom, wonderful person that she is, spent hours searching long after I gave up, hoping to produce it as a gift for me for some holiday occasion. Either squirrels have absconded with it, or one day, when the plastic bag, glass bottle, and metal cap fail, forth shall spring a delicious, delicious tree.

Though I shall be dead and gone, yet this gives me some comfort.

Colorado - Part 15

Classism on Airlines

In light of line-skipping payola schemes and executive clubs, luxury in airports, the greatest equalizer of humanity since Samuel Colt's, fascinates me.

Ideas for value-added premium airline experiences:

Superimpose your millimeter-wave-scanned face onto the body of a more attractive naked person for security review.

Pay toilets, to add a European flair.

Seat upgrade option to a cabin in which no children are allowed.

For a fee, a passenger may bypass the ban on cellular phone use in flight. For a higher fee, another passenger may reinstate it.

Liquids are now allowed in carry-on baggage, but passengers are prohibited from carrying any solid objects.

No person trained in martial arts shall be allowed as a passenger. Their whole body is a weapon.

In the event of sudden cabin decompression, swipe Visa/Mastercard/Discover for an air mask, which are available for convenient purchase above your head. Please purchase your own mask before assisting others in purchasing theirs.

Colorado - Part 14

A girl walks backwards in place on the moving walkway, and a man in the next lane has a mustache that shakes my faith in facial hair.

"Did you hit yourself?" I overhear a mother say, "Now you know how it feels. It hurts, doesn't it? ... I don't need your slime on me!"

A woman lounges on the floor like a Roman chaise, waiting for grapes from nubile maidens. There's a reason the seats here have metal dividers, ma'am, and you have circumvented it.

On the plane, the girl in the window seat is drawing somebody. Probably not me... hopefully not, since I was eating a sandwich and haven't shaved in days. Or months, depending on your definition. But then again, air travel doesn't do wonders for anyone's appearance. I think I'd take it as a flattery—she seems skilled.

As the plane starts to taxi, she stops of necessity, but we seem to be delayed due to a mix of maintenance, weather, and personal politics. Flickering static and tumbling bass noise on the teevee screns, lights turning on and off, the cabin begins to remind me of Escobar, sans Scotch, sans soda, sans dancing.

Nevermind, she was drawing some sort of airplane wing-inspired nautilis curve study. A hype piece on the teevee screens placates the crowd in the wake of a high-profile plane crash and kills time on the ground during our delay.

Airport security isn't scare tactics after all, though I had firmly believed it was. 'Pro' travelers look back at poor schmucks getting stopped at the scanner, thinking, "Why can't they simply follow the regulations and breeze through as I do?" A culture in which compliance is valued and, dare I say, rewarded. This—not plastic water bottles and toenail clippers—is the real danger.

The drawing is abstract but taking form. Lines fill in even as the bumpy ground travel hints at an eventual liftoff. She mutters to herself, unsure whether to look out or shut the window. Praying, perhaps, and it is a choppy takeoff.

In ORD, my Gonzo twin dashes off to Frontera: a highly rated, tiny, packed restaurant, to try the signature Goose Island Marisol. It's expensive as it is delicious, but I have to grab a table as I seem to be in everyone's way.

I admire the light orange, the trace of unobtrusive mango, and the less-sour pineapple of the brew as I glance up at what are apparently decorative HVAC sculptures, a mural, and a teevee evidently showing teh mastermind chef blending fennel into a casserole. This place needs a delivery door. Four PM should be off-hours for a restaurant, but airports know no such thing. Description says "Latin-style White Ale," but it's godlen in body and wheat (grains of paradise?) is not overbearing, though there's a cling-ering sweetness that could be a wheat presence.

'Copperplate' (the typeface) is EVERYWHERE.

Colorado - Part 13

It strikes me that there's a disturbing trend in payola memberships to skip airport security lines, which doesn't serve the interest of security at all, but definitely makes some cash and provides the 'haves' another opportunity to buy out of interacting with the 'nots,' short of flying into Aspen's own airfield, playground of private jets.

In security, my film is hand-checked at my request by a bearded agent who remarks, "How could I say no to someone with such an epic beard?"

The golf carts ferrying the morbidly obese/mobility impaired around the terminal evidently lack the horns so common at other airports, so the drivers whistle to alert travelers to their presence. Deciphering the tone and tune, I determine, is better left to ornithology.

Each announcement on the train between terminals is accompanied by a particular musical riff. How whimsically mnemonic.

Water emits from the fountain in a limp dribble into my leaky bottle, filling it only 20% full. Meanwhile, I am 100% certain that recent regulations are in fact a racket to sell bottles of water to air travelers.

Colorado - Part 12

At DEN, the young man behind me looks like he has pink eye, but it is Colorado, after all. An old man in front of me smells of bergamot, but that doesn't make him an earl. Or even named Earl.

The giant woman from Hawai'i who has talked so long with the car rental agent gets a patdown because evidently it is unclear just what she may have concealed under that mu'umu'u.

Lefty's Mile High Bar & Grill is not what you think, being at an airport, even though it is Denver, after all. The cart next door labeled "Climax Jerky" seems unabashedly dubious though. Decent product, no sodium nitrate, and it's only double retail price. There are free samples, so now I'm eating dog treats from a metal tin with plastic tweezers at a mile-high meringue pie airport (if you've seen the architecture, you will know what I mean.)

I hit the john and find myself in 'line' behind one guy for at least four open urinals. I figure he's there to watch, but he finally picks one, cutting me off in my own path.

Colorado - Part 11

This sauna isn't quite warm enough and smells of piss—not as bad-smelling as Denver proper, but I'm eager to be off homeward. A nasal man, a screaming child, and a medicated mother—all mercifully outside the unfortunately thin-walled sauna, insulated as poorly acoustically as thermally. I'd have waited until later but I've already been up for 17 hours at least. A woman strolls by who looks like she could displace most of the hot tub. Clearly not in Boulder anymore.

Denver smells like the middle ground between fried food and fried dogshit. Dinner at Yard House was far too large, with some kinda oatmeal stout, the name of which I neglect to record, but the quality of which I designate "good," a Green Flash Hop Odyssey: Citra Edition (enough to confirm my distaste for Citra), and a taster of New Belgium Paardebloem which is just okay enough for me to forget I didn't like it and buy a bottle when I got home, to surprise (and disappoint) myself again. Tasting my companion's Alaskan Amber makes me wish I'd gotten a large.

One man's appetizer appears to be deep-fried boneless piglets, arranged like Lincoln Logs.

Colorado - Part 10

The pay-for water bottles in the hotel room say 'Aspen Pure,' bringing to mind two things: I did not see this brand in Aspen, and Denver tap water tastes nicer than Aspen's anyway (as does Boulder's). It's a non-smoking hotel, and despite an overdue update to the decor, much appreciated, it still maintains a bit of bourgie 90's charm.

One elevator smells like garbage, and one stairwell smells like cannabis. These unpleasantries are immaterial to me, as the hotel also sports the first sauna of my voyage, though regrettably the last. "When will the US get on board with other civilized nations?" I think, but perhaps ubiquitous air conditioning is a fair trade-off. Cool fluorescent lights, winter imagery, frosted glass, and brushed metal (plus the aforementioned climate control) make the hotel feel slick and ice-cool, or pallid and dim, depending.

Colorado - Part 9

We leave the beers to melt in the car, as we walk around downtown Boulder. There are too many Greenpeacers, and one of them gets my death-glare in the face—I maintain that this was by accident,  but my subconscious machinations answer and explain themselves to no one.

I'm still tired from waking up before 4am and hiking one of the tougher slogs I've ever slogged. Slugged? I find a tea house and sample a staff favorite from an eccentric man with a mustache more impressive than my own before paying for a cup of my usual. I rejoin my party and we make our way to The Kitchen; I order a Firestone Walker Solace, which I desperately need in the figurative sense. A slug for a slog.

It comes in a giant snifter which appeased and amused me. Tart at first, but then wheaty as it should be. Something else is here as well. Maybe oak, or maybe not. Maybe also grains of paradise. Maybe I'm slipping. My portobello sandwich arrives and it's great but too salty after all the parmesean.

We depart.

Colorado - Part 8

I lay awake in bed, anxious and barely able to sleep between the excitement of Avery and the threat of an exorbitantly early rise. I dance the long dance between drunk and hung over to the tune of a lonely ghost playing a single castanet.

I wake myself up and ready myself for a balloon voyage destined never to happen. Such travel must be dangerous, I think, or the purveyors could never stay in business at the cancellation rate we seem to experience (an 'unexplained gust,' I am told, is the cause for alarm amid otherwise perfect weather). The lights in the hotel courtyard (the sun not yet being up) are the giant high-pressure sodium vapor globes that make light pollution activists cry a single tear.

In consolation, we hike up a mountain at dawn. Suffice it to say, I have more than the elevation to surmount. On the way back from breakfast, I notice a sign reading, "The Joint: A Chiropractic Place." I begin to suspect that Colorado is full of such ham-fisted puns.

Colorado - Part 7

I wake up in Boulder, having evidently fallen asleep on the ski lift and missed my stop. The hotel smells awful, but it's nice and expensive so I shut up about it. "Go Texas Blaze," it says on the lobby; I'm assuming a sports team, but can't help but think that Colorado has got Texas beat when it comes to blazing.
The Purell machine spits a limp stream of Everclear at me after my half-assed workout with tiny, low-liability hotel dumbbells. The peppermint tea in the lobby takes the edge off the queasy feeling of the ride over and the hang over. Last night's Mezcal hasn't been quick in saying goodbye, and the ride over was scenic and seasick in equal parts.
A fancy vegetarian dinner and a pair of purple yoga pants that come in a little bag make me feel right at home in Boulder, land of new-age hippies and Avery Brewing, but it's the latter that has my interest. I get a ride over and realize that it's Uncle Jacob day, and that means a bunch of Really Great Shit is on draft in the secret-stash back room. My eyes light up like Christmas in July.

Hand of Buddha
Light with some wheat and citrus. The intro to a surely wild evening, and a reminder of mindfulness in the tasting experience.

Brazo Rollizo
Smells of tequila barrels and tastes like BEEFY ARM. Jerky, some tequila, lots of wood and smoke with caramelly malt. The barrel aged version of Trogdor (see below), the name is supposed to mean "beefy arm." The young man beside me (from Mexico) assures me that it does not. Further, he explains that all distilled agave is mezcal, and that tequila is a subset thereof. And that there are mezcalerias in Mexico much as there are small craft breweries in the US.

Ross' Mom
Has got it goin' on. Bold and very sour, almost vinegary. Some apple and maybe tart cherry, but not an orchard. Closer to salad dressing; Cantillon fans are bound to enjoy. Supposed to be sweet, but so tart it's almost dry.

Rub-Barrel-Aged Czar Imperial Stout
Smells like magnificent thrift store leather jacket. Marshmallow even. Creaminess that's definitely marshmallowy, almost cardamom. Faint warming rum on the finish. This was stand-out my favorite beer of the night, even above the Brazo Rollizo and Trogdor. I order a bigger serving later, not ready to depose the despot quite yet.

Tweak
Big, cold-coffee flavor with sugar. Bitter enough to be balanced. Big and bold, but not really evident of being 15% ABV. Danger, Will Robinson.

Bad Apple
Tangy with apply, but dryish, almost woody. Less acidic than Ross' Mom, but with a brett-funky nose.

TROGDOOOR
Smokey and doppelbock—the best of both worlds, properly balanced and not overwhelming. Not quite Charkoota Rye, but it's not trying to be. Outstanding rauch.

3point7 Milk Stout
After everything else, this ends up tasting like chalk-olate milk. A bit chalky, dry coconut stanky (that's what I write on the pad, unsure exactly what this descriptor could mean). Kinda root-herbal.

My phone is dying, the paper map is confusing, and the walk back is over a mile through an un-lit industrial district. I steel myself, but remember to pay my tab, as well as buy the gigantic metal sign hanging on the wall. I get a message that someone has been sent to get me, so I head to the landing zone for extraction, wondering whether the giant metal 'A' would have served better as a shield or a blade if I'd had to defend myself on the walk home. The ride is most welcome.

Colorado - Part 6

After scouting the town for a watering hole, Snow's was packed, Ryno's (in spite of the lower prices) was not my kind of crowd—a pizza parlor meets an arcade meets a bar meets a frat party meets me and then I excuse myself and go somewhere else. Not that the service wasn't good. Just the ambiance was off. Eric's Bar has an edge of danger, and not in the fun, exciting way, just the dangerous one. The Cigar Bar looks expensive, but covered in a patina of scum, frequented by the kind of well-to-do aging degenerate would go to smoke cigars, drink pearls-before-swine Scotch, and get away from the Missus. The sort of place that you'd expect to keep a list of callgirls on hand, a curious intersection of the classy and the seedy. Escobar seems too hip for me—not enough people to constitute critical mass, and too loud and flashy to pass the time. The place drips with the 1970's charm/sleaze that I know only too well, but my mood is wrong.
I settle on Finnbarr's, another underground joint where I get a Speckled Hen in a can. The town is electric tonight, and I can't tell if it's alternating current or direct. As I look around me, I see most people as lonely as I am, just with conversation partners, where I am only writing to you, faithful readers, until these friendly people and I exchange words for a bit before they have to leave. Empty pleasantries. I hear murmurs that there's excitement to be had at The Regal (nightclub, not a movie theater), and further murmurs that the coked-up atmosphere there is a black-out rail-yard of train-wreck yuppies.
...
I return, in spite of myself, to Escobar. It's the passenger compartment of a 1970's airplane with a teevee in every window. The DJ is good, and the joint is hopping, lots of 40-something, but a couple of 30s and 20s as well, including the girls asking the bouncer if it was actually fun in there, and then ask if he's lying. They leave quickly, paying attention to nobody, absorbed in some odd club ritual, possibly bound for the Regal. 70's sleaze for all. Perhaps my seminal nightclub experience, I have begun to pen:

The RULES of the "Club"
1. If you enter The Club alone, you will leave alone. You will also be alone in the middle, but that's incidental.
2. If you don't dance with your wife, I will. Or at least I'll try, even if I'm 20 years younger than you, and 3 years younger than she.
As I leave, I see a man, a newcomer, small only in stature, busting the sweetest moves of anyone in this muthafuckin' plane, and enjoying the attention he so richly deserves. Mentally, I wish him success where I have failed. The world needs him.

Colorado - Part 5

The evening continues after a dinner of one of the best buffalo burgers I've ever experienced. I had a girlfriend once who used to remind me that I didn't really like buffalo burgers—how wrong she was. We proceed in search of a bathroom, a wallet belonging to one of our party, and Justice Snow's, whither we are bound for drinks. Our priorities being what they are, we find Snow's first, then make a grand circle looking for the smoke shop suspected to contain the missing articles.

Upon finding the smoke shop (closed) across the street from Snow's (open), we put aside the disappointment of the unintentional circuitousness of our path for the elation of finding ourselves at our final destination, and we celebrate with an absinthe fountain. Our dulled senses of navigation suggest that we do not need these drinks, per se, but the dejection of our fruitless search suggests that we could certainly use them, and besides, I need a bathroom ("per se" be damned). Together we seek the inspiration of the green muse. There is fire (which the barkeep diligently extinguishes before I, in my haste, can consume it), and the tiny silver shovel keeps hitting me in the face. It may be a spoon, but it strikes me (ha!) as more spade than spoon.

Inspired, I try the Auchentoshan Three Wood—it's almost unbearably hot (even after absinthe) with peach, cabbage, citrus, grape, and wheat. Even with cucumber slices in the water (try it!) to cleanse my palate of the absinthe (La Fee), I fail to taste any of the stuff listed on the bottle, even with the power of suggestion. My associate is talking to a man on his other side, who is also talking to me, and I to him, though my responses must seem aloof, because I can't hear a word he's saying. I hope my associate will talk to him long enough that he buys us drinks, but the gentleman's attention shifts to someone else (presumably actually within earshot), and we pay for ourselves.

 I look at my watch and realize it's somehow just after lunch the next day, but I'm still here, only my clothes have changed and I'm a few seats over. I peruse the drink menu carefully, and when I hear that the Hamlet of Shacksbury (made with an egg?) is currently not on offer (they're out of something; I don't recall what, but I don't think it's eggs), I shift gears and order a Poet's Dream, which seems exciting and interesting without having a completely asinine name. It's great (and the first time the bartender, who I realize is actually younger than I am) has made one, so I congratulate him. I see something on the bar that is not on the menu, and busybody that I am, inquire after it. The barkeep explains that it just showed up the other day and was not on the menu, so we pour ourselves some, and form our respective (and respectful) opinions. Corsair Triple Smoke is magnificent, buttery, smells like Colonial Williamsburg sans horeshit. Warm, not hot, remarkably smooth, with some peat and smoke, backed up by some serious body.

Colorado - Part 4

I cracked a SKA Brewing True Blonde Dubbel—what can I say, I'm a sucker for wax-dipped bottles. It's good, toasty sweet, Belgianesque and almost a bit of smoke. Not a dubbel, of course, there's no such thing as a blonde dubbel, but I guess "Blonde Belgian Strong Ale" doesn't sell. Dubbel the pleasure for the people who prefer blonde (ale, of course).

I took a free bus to Snowmass (Aspen being a town of old money and little nice beer). Next up was a Huvila Arctic Circle Ale. Deep malt, dry cherry-raisin, some wood. Pretty oxidized (and being imported and not, perhaps, popular),so I'm guessing it was a year or so old. Some juniper bittering balance, and this drinks like a really good Alt.

Colorado - Part 3

We return to Aspen and retrieved the tickets for the Aspen Music Festival. I rent a bicycle and tear around the town, hitting every bottle shop in sight. Adhesive with sunscreen (not enough) and perspiration (too much for 8000ft), I crack an Odell 90 Shilling and declare a new rule for the Family Vacation Drinking Game: every time you're running late for an event and have to run out the door, finish your drink

The show is kids performing, a final rehearsal. Electric, but the crowd is sparse—the kind of classical music snob who knows to leave awkward silence between movements, silently applauding only themselves, in recognition of their sublime pretension, saving the audible golf clap for the end of the act. One girl has a face that lights up as she plays, expressive beyond words. She seems genuinely ecstatic, but it's hard to tell. An eye-line between the conductor and the drummer in the back crackles, cuing off a crescendo, and it's clear that the kids are on fire, wasted though it may be on the bored retirees doing crosswords in the newspaper.

Dinner is good, including a lightly smoked Colorado buffalo carapaccio that came on a bed of lettuce and looked like a pile of raw meat, which, I remind myself, it is. Returning 'home' after a provisional detour to the supermarket, I crack an Aspen brewing 10th Mountain Oatmeal Stout. It's everything that is good about stout and oatmeal. Balanced, not overbearing, filling, slightly sweet. It constitutes part, if not all, of a complete (if not balanced) breakfast, so I finish it off in the morning with smoked salmon and vintage Gouda.

"Let the bacon flow like a crispy river."

Colorado - Part 2

There was a guitar never meant to be played, and a golden treasure chest that begged to be opened, but the real treasure was a folding memory foam couch and fresh (relatively speaking) linens, a blanket which I grudgingly traded for a 'cigarette blanket' (the foam kind from cheap motels that always has cigarette burns in it), and a denim duvet cover which looked like the pants from the 'before' segment of the infomercial flickering on the teevee. I'd been up for only 21 hours, but it felt like 40 days, and preparing to sleep for 40 nights. An untimely awakening in a thin bed, I roused unwillingly to push the button on the kettle that my drunk alter ego had prepared to make my then-future, now-present self tea. We schlepped around on the mountain, making copious records of the state of Maroon Bells. Every tourist, every camera, making up the most comprehensive, if narrowly-focused, topographical survey. Oskar Blues Mama's Lil' Yella Pils was on offer—I passed after a sip. "Dream big," I said.

Colorado - Part 1

It was just past midnight when we finally arrived at the condo, which to see the state of it, seemed more like a con-don't.

The lackadaisical do-it-yourself housekeeping ethos was evidently either not communicated to the (evidently ir)responsible party, or they elected to remain noncombatants in the guerrilla war in the midst of which we now found ourselves embroiled, waged for the side of cleanliness and order.
Nerves were thin and spirits dulled as we ferried armloads of dirty towels to the (free!) laundry room around the corner and made the beds with the cleanest looking sheets we could find. Speaking of spirits, I cracked my bottle (recently acquired—I dashed to a liquor store while my compatriots were shopping for breakfast goods at the sort of store that specialized in jerky, Twinkies, Mountain Dew, and other forms of post-apocalyptic wasteland fare) of Boulevard Harvest Dance wheatwine, Boulevard recently having expanded distribution to my home state, but this particular part of the lineup not having made it over yet, as my father cracked a Pabst tallboy (the neutered 3.2% ABW variety that shows up in grocery stores) only to quickly recant and partake of my prize instead. I was steeling myself for a night on an unfriendly bunk bed sans sheets, and galvanizing for good measure.

It was foamy, fluffy, evidently as shaken by the unexpectedly extended voyage and subsequent housekeeping as I was, but eager to breathe free. Hops, grassy, floral, maybe even pine, paved the way for a peppery spicy body which drank more like a beefed up saison than anything else. Black pepper and coriander kept the brew from cloying, though it did seem to linger, leaving lacing on the glass as on my weary palate.

Finishing the volume, laying the empty vessel to rest alongside the memory of the girl from the flight over; perhaps the most beautiful I had ever seen. Like Dante and What's-Her-Face. Beatrice.

Colorado - Part 0

I present for your reading pleasure, this utter fabrication, a work (but not the kind without play) of (im)pure fiction, peppered liberally with fact. Out of order, sans context or perspective, the record of a family vacation in Colorado.

Transcribed from my illegible pen-and-pad writings, from the thin pads and cheap pens that sit idly by the dusty in-room hotel telephone; the kind you only use to call the front desk before you leave in the morning to say that there's something wrong with the toilet, and could they send maintenance up, because you just can't bear to look the front-desk clerk in the eye and explain that you shat it up yourself.

That kind of pad.