Prost!

A year ago today, The Girl and I were in Colorado, eating venison sliders and gourmet bacon-wrapped mac and cheese nuggets as appetizers between a friend's wedding and the dinner that followed.  Rain had botched many of our other plans for the trip, but we managed one good hike, a couple nice strolls, and a brewery tour.

This summer, I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail; the couple who got married in Colorado got engaged while backpacking in Wildcat Hollow, a backpacking trip I remember from my youth which for me was distinguished not by promises made, but by my aunt's encounter with pornographic fungus, my cousin's mental breakdown as she tried to play solitaire with a euchre deck, and my brother forgetting to take toilet paper when, in a fit of uncharacteristic modesty, he hiked at least three hundred yards from the trail before digging his cat hole.  It is arguable which of us had a more memorable time in Wildcat Hollow, but I don't want to make a contest of it.  I just have funny stories; my friends have each other, forever.

I wrote this post before leaving on my hike, because although they plan to visit at least once during my long walk north, I doubt it will be on this weekend, and I don't know yet whether I'll be off the trail in time to say this in a more personal manner, so I'm leaving it here to magically appear on the appointed day, and hope that they see it.

Happy anniversary, C and L.  Cheers!

The Girl took this picture on the night before the wedding, as we waited for our monster burgers.  They were delicious.

New Belgium

Fort Collins, Colorado is home to the New Belgium Brewery.  Before the flooding completely cut us off from the rest of the state, we managed to take a tour (it's so popular that reservations are recommended).  Tours of anywhere stuff is made fascinate me, and I'm not sure whether it's because of all the museums we visited when I was a kid, spending time in the garage with Dad, natural engineer's curiosity, or Mr. Rogers.  To be honest, I could probably credit pursuing a career in engineering to all of the same things.

A portion of one of the shadow box tables at the start of our tour.

I toured a few of the breweries in Bend, OR during Zwickelmania (I'd slap a link in there, but at this time, no webpage exists for that specific event.  If you're interested, do the search yourself, or check the Oregon Craft Beer website for updates), but that event is CRAZY with people, and while I learned a bit about the process, I also learned that each brewery does things a little differently, and many assume you already know a lot about how beer is made.  I gleaned what I could.

Mosaics run around the tops of these processing tanks in a room claimed by our tour guide to be "so beautiful, three of our employees have had their wedding receptions here." It was easy to see why.

The New Belgium tour was a little different; it was nearly 90 minutes long, and included five four-ounce samples of various beers, but explained almost none of the process of making beer.  However, it was thick with their corporate philosophy and practices, company history, and general good cheer (it ended with a "tornado slide" from the second floor to ground level).

Towering wine barrels used to age the sour beers.

Our guide's enthusiasm for the company and his place in it was infectious.  A few years ago, the CEO decided to distribute shares to the employees, making them their own bosses.  It is still an employee-owned company; at the annual meeting they decide which holidays to take in the coming year (Valentine's Day is a good selection).

The brewery owns two electric cars, and provides a charging station in the parking lot for visitors.  Solar panels cover the roof of the bottling facility, known as "Thunderdome," and they capped a pond on the property to create an anaerobic environment generating methane.  Between the solar panels and the methane plant, they produce up to 20% of their own electricity.

"Church of Brewology" fermentation tanks

Each bottle in this chandelier was hand-blown by a local artist.  There is no camera angle inside the building that lets you see the whole thing.  It's huge, and winds its way down a hallway and up these stairs.

Welcome to Thunderdome.  Over 20,000 bottles can be moving through this room at any given time.

I saw a sign near this ... chandelier?  that said Americans discard enough aluminum cans every three months to rebuild every commercial airplane in the U.S.  Art is also a good use for it.

Coloraindo

We went to Colorado.  We had terrible timing.  The trip originated because we wanted to attend a friend's wedding, and we planned to use that event as an excuse to visit another friend, do some hiking, drive through the park, and generally soak in some Colorado awesomeness.

It began raining two days before we arrived.  It rained for most of our first 46 hours in the state.  After we arrived in Fort Collins, the interstate was closed behind us.  For the first full day of our visit, we only had friendly sprinkling rain.  The three of us spent some time downtown, hiding from the rain in a coffee shop, a book store, and Snooze.  Really, we were stalling.  We had to burn some time before our scheduled tour of New Belgium Brewery, which was fascinating, delicious, and told us nothing about brewing beer (but their company history and corporate dynamic is amazing.  Go there.  Take the tour.  Drink some beer.  Tell Bernie I said Hi.).  More on that later.

By the next morning, flood waters in Fort Collins had severed our end of town from... pretty much everything else in town.  The hike was out of the question, and they were evacuating everyone from RMNP, so the drive was canceled, too (as though we could have see anything through the constant rain).  We spent the day reading, watching the rain, and building block towers (there might have been some help from the local two-year-old).  The weather broke in late afternoon, and The Girl escaped for a run.  I took a walk.  We still weren't sure road conditions would allow us to get to the wedding--or to leave once it was over.  Rock slides had been reported along I-70 (one of the other wedding guests was behind a car that got flattened by a falling rock.  He looked up to see other rocks moving on the mountainside, and left with all due haste.).

Our trip didn't go as we had planned, but we got to see some good friends, we got to try some excellent beer (New Belgium has a sour they only release every four years or so that blew The Girl's socks clean across the room), we attended a wedding at nearly 12,000 feet, and we saw a moose.  Oh--and we did finally get to go on a hike, on our last day in Colorado.  Considering the reports we heard from around the state of flood damage, we got off pretty easy.