Happy Beerthday

So now I can finally blog about the *surprise* birthday festivities. The irony is that Thursday’s actual-birthday night pub crawl was followed by Saturday’s *surprise* microbrew crawl. Hmmmm, does anyone see an issue theme here?

That’s right, Rita surprised me on Saturday by organizing a tour of various microbreweries in San Diego. How fun is that? What made this all the more special is that most of the 7 or 8 people who joined us don’t even drink beer. [Perhaps they just joined because they didn’t want to risk missing another rousing chorus of Whiskey in the Jar]. It really is so odd…nobody in Nashville drinks wine and nobody in California drinks beer. Must I bridge EVERY cultural divide?? [I’m still working on that football thing.]

Honestly – it’s like the Mississippi river is the demarcation line of alcohol. Tanins to the west, hops to the east and never the twain shall meet – or as Dr. Seuss put it: Red State, Blue State, Cab state, Brew state.

But when my wine-drinking friends DO engage in beer drinking, they are apt to say things like…”ohhh I taste apricot on the finish of this beer – don’t you?” Ummmm, I generally taste another beer on the finish of my beer. Just sayin’

And with the conclusion of the pub-crawlin birthday festivus…we officially return tomorrow to more installments about Southwest travel.