Today I made a pilgrimage to a place I was very excited about. Avery Brewing, not Boulder itself, was in my GPS on the way out this morning. The ride there was beautiful, following country roads with a strong tailwind from Fort Collins to Longmont. A bridge had washed out along the way, but the winds were such that I didn't care about a detour. From Longmont to Boulder there was an excellent bike path, mostly secluded from anything particularly urban and complete with signs and underpasses wherever it crossed a road. It felt, for once, like biking was actually encouraged as something more than an afterthought.
At Avery, I awkwardly changed into civilian (non-biking) clothes at the bike rack and took a seat at the bar. I started strong with a beer called Samael, Prince of Darkness, which tasted appropriately dark, powerful, and delicious. Due to the events of the next few hours, however, I can't write an accurate review.
I rounded out the heavy beers on offer by sampling Xocolotl, Tweak, and my favorite, Callipygian, all of which are above 10% ABV. I won't go into detail, but briefly: Xocolotl is like dark chocolate, chile peppers, and sawdust, which I mean in a very positive way: earthy and raw, like pure cocoa powder. Tweak tastes like chocolate-covered coffee beans soaked in Xocolotl minus the chiles. Callipygian is like distilled vanilla and fudge essence - basically, the best complement to vanilla ice cream I could think of, and would make an incredibly indulgent, alcoholic, and expensive beer float. All three were very intense, coating the mouth with a small sip, best enjoyed like a whiskey for the way it fills your mouth and nose. I should acknowledge that any beer enthusiast would call total blasphemy on my Callipygian float immediately before getting curious and ordering one for themselves.
Deciding to be social, I ordered a lighter widely-distributed beer called White Rascal, a tasty Belgian-style wheat with the standard coriander and orange peel flavors, just to compare the tap to the bottled stuff I'd had before. It was a little more spicy overall than they might make it in Bavaria, I think, but perfect for someone with my weak senses of taste and smell. Out of everything, the bartender only charged me the $5 for the White Rascal, which saved some serious cash. He didn't even know I was biking across the country, so I'll chalk it up to some kind of patriotism given the date.
I approached a woman who looked alone and bored, figuring that might mean I had a low threshold to overcome in order to establish myself as interesting. She was waiting for her friend to get off work, and once her friend was free, they invited me to join them at a table. More Avery workers piled in and soon there was beer and food everywhere. I ordered an Ellie's Brown, but couldn't get through it due to tasters of Chai High, Maharaja, and some kind of pilsner that showed up, not to mention some multi-layer dip and beer pretzels. Again, I only paid for the Ellie's Brown. I was then invited to a pool party, which I could hardly decline. On the way out, another tray of tasters was just arriving - apparently, whoever requested it had completely forgotten it. I distributed it to other, surprisingly trusting bargoers.
The pool was mostly empty when I arrived, save for two younger guys at a table in the shade and one older, muscle-bound man across the pool, flexing and posing for a nonexistent audience. The two guys looked bored, so with the same rationale as before, I introduced myself and found out we were waiting for the same group. The beer sampling continued as they produced several six-packs of unlabeled cans containing an unreleased grapefruit pale that was brewed at Avery for an employee's wedding. It was, of course, delicious, citrusy and perfectly appropriate for a poolside drink.
James taught me how to throw a football properly, which is something I never learned growing up with video games. Most of my life, I mainly just avoided footballs and the people who like them. I even chose to attend UCSC based partially on the fact that they had no football team. July 4th seemed like the appropriate time to learn, though, and I got an idea how it works pretty quickly. Two Slovakian guys showed up and had a more difficult time with the football, so it must be something you absorb just by living here.
Finally, the rest of Avery showed up, as far as I could tell. More objects were thrown. For most people, the pool was just an excuse to wear fewer clothes, not something to actually interact with, and somehow I felt like a stooge for getting in. Eventually, it started getting dark and they invited me to watch fireworks with a group of them. In a fit of social anxiety, I declined, assuming for some reason that the invitation was only out of obligation. So I left, and immediately felt lonely. I need to stop doing that.
Earlier, I contacted John from New York, who mentioned that he had somehow ended up in Boulder as well. I couldn't reach him, so I wandered around at random for a while until I met another guy with a loaded bike. He said he's been homeless for 7 years, just living around Boulder, and was waiting to watch fireworks from there. I watched a couple shows get started before John got back to me, letting me know that his host was cool with me staying there.
When I arrived, I found that John had been staying for a while because he had literally broken his neck. Not riding his bike, either -- of all the ways to be injured on tour, he had attended a Grateful Dead (or the remains thereof) concert and had a tent fall on him, fracturing his C6 vertebrae and doing some other kind of damage to C1. I brought him a tequila-barrel aged beer from Avery (he likes tequila). I don't know if that helped with the neck injury at all.
I went to sleep on a nice air mattress that was already set up in the basement - it was meant for John, but he couldn't lie down, so it was passed to me. Lucky, I guess?
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