Tools in hand, we went to work on the cooling tower aspect of the project, complete with wrapped copper tubing, compression fittings, welding…you name it. Ok, so we didn’t exactly get to the welding part because we began running into some serious setbacks with the initial design. After many variations, and even more failures, we finally looked at each other and said “Maybe we should just look into buying one of these setups on-line”. Needless to say; the project has been shelved again, and the rest of the evening was spent reducing the beer stock in my fridge.
Saturday found me doing some stuff around the house and the TV was on for background noise. An ad happened to come on about a store that had just opened up and claimed to have “the largest beer and wine selection in the state”. Now how the hell am I supposed to pass up something like that?? I noted the address, googled some directions, and I was off.
Wine Nation was the name of the place, and it was a mere hour away, in a town called Millbury. Ta Da!
I brought my camera inside but didn’t really feel comfy snapping pics so I just busied myself with perusing the various offerings. I was on a quest for stouts, and I managed to find almost a dozen different ones that looked like they would be worth checking out. I also picked up a banana bread beer, as well as a bottle of mead. I almost topped things off with a bottle of saki, but figured my wallet was going to be crying enough as it was, so I didn’t.
Here, lined up and ready, are the aforementioned stouts. I’ll do a quick blurb on each one as I work my way through them.
Saturday night found a bunch of us out and about and many beers met their fate that night.
Sunday was a charity run for family members of riders who have been killed while riding. We met at Danno’s for some of the usual pre-game libations before we headed on out to the rally point. Danno even had the foresight to pack a little travel case for us thirsty riders…
Upon arriving, we took our place in line. And there were many lines – turnout was estimated at over 600 bikes, maybe even 700. Nice! A nice day, too.
We had some time to kill before the run started and fortunately the open bar helped us kill that time in a very enjoyable fashion. But then the call came in; head to the bikes! We finished off our libations and headed back outside. But once there, we found a dilemma; we still had a few minutes of waiting! Dammit, why did they kick us out so quickly? We could have enjoyed another round of…hey, wait! We’ve got road soda’s, courtesy of Danno! Sweet! (Those poor blue and silver cans never stood a chance...)
No sooner had we put those cans to rest than the bikes started firing up and we were off. Here are the obligatory action pics…
Off to the side at one point, there were 3 huge horses who were running back and forth, tossing their manes and tails into the air. Pretty sweet.
Uh-oh, suddenly we were all braking, slower…slooooower…slowwwwwerrr…annnnd Stop. We could see everyone way up on front of us was easing over to the side and shutting down. This is never a good sign, and sure enough; a few minutes later and we could see the flashing lights of police cars and ambulances (seen over the people’s heads in this pic).
Word came back down the line that one of the riders had crossed over from his side of the lane and bumped into another rider, sending them both off into the woods. Both riders were allegedly ok, nothing broken, just bumped up a bit and were headed to the hospital to be checked out. Good, glad to hear that it wasn’t anything serious. Now, about us getting moving again? No? No. Not going anywhere, huh? Well, we can’t go forward…and this was the scene behind us...
Hmmm…we’re not going anywhere soon. And remember the condition of the road sodas we’d brought? Yeah, so that option was out. We were stuck. Fortunately, one of Danno’s buddies that was with us knew where we were and said he could get us out of there and back to the bar in short order. Sweet! We fired things up, u-turned it and headed down a side road, a few lefts, a few rights, and bammo; we were back at the bar. And just in time, too! Look who decided to join us! It’s the Captain!!
All too many of us were willing to show our best Captain pose.
Matt even found a Captain Morgan cut-out and then we had TWO Captains!
The real Captain then started handing out plastic shot glasses.
Hey Captain, these are nice and all, but how about filling them with something? Yay! Free samples!!
And look; the natives are restless and want us to drink more!
Hey, Mike is here! (He’d had problems with his bike and had missed the run, but he got things running and showed up.) And he’s got beer! (We'll let it slide that he left his lights on and that we then had to push start him when it was time to leave. We'll let that slide...because he's got BEER!)
Things were rolling along very nicely, especially since the Captain was doing his level best to get rid of the free sample stuff. He was pouring the shots as fast as he could and giving them out to anyone that wanted them. We took turns going up and grabbing shots for the entire group – 7, 8, 9 at a time! That stuff was great!
Matt even found a Captain Morgan cut-out and then we had TWO Captains!
The real Captain then started handing out plastic shot glasses.
Hey Captain, these are nice and all, but how about filling them with something? Yay! Free samples!!
And look; the natives are restless and want us to drink more!
Hey, Mike is here! (He’d had problems with his bike and had missed the run, but he got things running and showed up.) And he’s got beer! (We'll let it slide that he left his lights on and that we then had to push start him when it was time to leave. We'll let that slide...because he's got BEER!)
Things were rolling along very nicely, especially since the Captain was doing his level best to get rid of the free sample stuff. He was pouring the shots as fast as he could and giving them out to anyone that wanted them. We took turns going up and grabbing shots for the entire group – 7, 8, 9 at a time! That stuff was great!
As the afternoon wore down, the parking lot had begun to thin out and we realized it was time to mosey along, ourselves. We finished our beers and started cleaning up our area when we suddenly realized there was one full soldier still with us. Matt grabbed it and pounded it in about 30 seconds.
From there, we headed to a house party that was a lot closer to home. Pulling in, we were handed beers, burgers, dogs, etc. Man, this is great!!
Uh-oh…we were missing someone. Checking my phone; I had a text from the missing party. Zig had a flat! I gave him a call to see how he was doing and they were waiting for one of Crissy’s friends to swing by with a trailer and retrieve them. A few hours later, when I texted to see how he was making out, he said ‘great’ and texted a pic of an empty beer, so I think it was safe to assume that things were back to kinda-normal.
Before too long, it was time to head on back home. Man, what a long day it was. Wish I was doing it all over again today. But alas, I’m at work today. And here at work, there are way fewer beers (and way fewer laughs) to be found. Oh well. The weekend is coming…
Oh yeah; on my trek out to the beer/wine store on Saturday, I too pics of something pretty cool. I'll get those posted up later in the week. 'Til then...
Ride Hard, Take Chances.
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