This morning, I packed up my collection of pint glasses again. It’s a fairly modest collection compared to what I had a few years ago, when an accident resulted in ‘broken everything’ I owned. I’ve picked up more than a few in the year and a half since then, and they’re usually the last thing I pack up when it’s time to move (again). There are memories in these glasses, and it’s almost like every new pint adds to the special nature of each glass. I don’t know, maybe I’m special too – I name my vehicles.
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Last time I checked in, I was working a new job and I was excited for the future…and then my life caught up with me again and I got fired a week before my birthday. My boss told me I had lied to him, somehow, but I had shown up to work so early that day he hadn’t been fully ready to fire me. I was finally doing the kind of work I thought I liked, once upon a time, but it was too good to be true, and it didn’t last long…and I ended up in a delightful little cabin out in the woods on Mt. Hood paying (apparently) criminally low rent, looking for work, and the work I got as a cook at the local Roadhouse was just enough to get me by the last few months of 2023 and into ’24.
Going on in the background over the last year has been the case of my elderly grandfather, slowly becoming non-decisional and in need of supervision. He’s also a bit of a stubborn old bastard, and my situation is flexible since I don’t have any particular commitments to keep me in any one place. So we decided – over many long conversations – that I would be the best choice as a caregiver and supervisor, able to live with the old man and try to get him to take showers once a month and whatever. Thus I found myself packing my modest collection of pint glasses – a decent metric of how the last year plus has gone – as one of the very last things I had to complete to move out.
The last few months have been a mix of happiness and bittersweet moments where I realize I have to give it all up. I don’t have to do this thing for gramps, but there’s nobody else in the family who can (or would), and I’ve got a chance to explore Albuquerque again. It’s had several years of decent development since my last residency more than a decade ago, so I’m excited more than anything to try the new beers from the new breweries, and check up on the old ones I’ve loved since the day they opened, and find some new friends along the way.
Up here on Mt Hood, however, there’s not a whole lot of variety to be found. Lots of Deschutes, basically everywhere, with Boneyard and Sunriver making the occasional appearance at the Hoodland Thriftway. But even the selection there gets stale, and after a few weeks I’d run through the offerings and started thinking about making a drive into Sandy, a trip of 20 miles each way, just for ‘different’ beer. Not that there was a whole lot of selection there, but at least the local Fred Meyer carried a bunch of brands I enjoyed, so I was more likely to find something I wanted to drink. Something from Fort George or Pelican, for instance.
I often thought it was ironic, that I’d move into this weird bubble of almost zero beer distribution in Oregon, and find myself happier than ever before because of my surroundings and the people I met. I had to be content drinking the same 4 or 5 beers at all the little bars I spent time in – there just isn’t that much demand for anything fresh and new in this little corner of the world, and it’s probably a good thing becaus you’d never drag me out of here alive if I had more beer selection on the mountain.
I am going to miss the rain, and lush greenery, and the giant Gernman Shperd that greets me at the front door every morning, and delicious, pure mouuntain water from the tap. I’m going to miss the friends I’ve made up here, and maybe the cozy nature of this little mountain community. But this is a beer blog, after all, and I need stuff to write about, so here we go to Albuquerque, where some of my favorite beers live.
And then, it was done
I’m sitting at the westside taproom of La Cumbre Brewing, drinking a ‘Project Dank’ IPA of suitable profile to fit the title. Several weeks have passed since the day I packed up my glasses, and I have successsfully managed to make the journey to Albuquerque, with almost all of my posessions packed into or on my Excursion. I had money to stay in a motel each night and take my time, and it wasn’t a complete disaster like so many of my previous moves. I stopped at Great Basin Brewing in Reno, and the second night I was too tired to do anything, but apparently Kingman has a decent little scene…but I was pretty focused on this trip, and didn’t feel comfortable taking any time away from the actual trip.
Generally speaking, if you’re going to move to Albuquerque, April is probably the best time to do it. Still cool enough to get outside and do things, not cold and bitter like the winter months, and it can be fairly pleasant outside – on a patio, with a funky, dank-ass beer in your hand. This location doesn’t really have a ton of character, but they do have the whole selection of LCB beers and it’s within riding distance of my new digs so it’ll have to do. I’ll probably have to join the mug club at some point soon, which will be a first for me.
With some minor upgrades to the house, I can now keep tabs on gramps while I sip on a pint and not feel too guilty about not being there. I take it seriously, but I can only spend so much time in the house, like anyone else. I’m anxious to get out and try the beers of ABQ, while checking out the new taprooms and breweries and all the things that make a city a great place to come and drink beer.
I’m making plans to visit places like Rio Bravo Brewing, La Cumbre’s og brewhouuse/taproom, Steel Bender, and some old favorites like Ponderosa and Tractor. Things have changed since I was last living here in 2012(ish) and it’s mostly good, with lots of places to sit back and enjoy a pint of quality local beer. I’ve already visited a few of these places a few times with family, but I need to get in there solo to get a real feel for the places and how they work. I’ve made some connections that I hope to use to get into another brewery, BTS style, but I can’t put anything on the record yet. I feel like a lot of other beer folks here realize how underrated ABQ is overall, and some are looking to change that image.
As I mentioned, I did manage to stop at a brewery on the trip, Great Basin, in Reno. It was the first night of my journey from Brightwood, a little ‘villiage’ on Mt. Hood, to ABQ, and I was thirsty after a day of driving. The restaurant was huge, and the enormous bar had video poker machines set into it, so you had to sort of sit sideways with your drink and food because the monitors are front and center. They were doing strong business on a friday night, and the touristy feel was palpable, with a strong local flavor. The beer was passable, but I’ll have to look at my untapped check-in for more detail, so I wasn’t blown away. There was a foreign man that wanted to argue about American tipping culture, and a lovely bartender who tried to apologize for him, but that seemed like a normal friday night. For the record, I’m pro-tip, but only because nobody ever gets paid enough in the industry, and until that changes the rest of us need to carry the burden of making sure our service people can get by.
The second night I found a Sierra Nevada Torpedo tallboy at the local store and some pad thai, and that was just enough to get through the next day. I didn’t really look for a brewery when I got to Kingman because I was tired and historically Arizona doesn’t have a huge brew culture, but there weren’t any local options available where I picked up the Torpedo. That’s a strong indicator for the strength of the local brew scene (at a glance), and if you’ve only got a few hours to get food and something to drink on a multi-day trip, you’re not going to look very hard for something local. Sometimes you just want to pick up some cans and crash for the night, and if the word BREWERY doesn’t magically appear in my sightline while driving through town, you’ll have to rely on the local grocery store, or maybe liquor store, and that’s just the facts.
As I tell people, this is just a record of my travels through the world, with beer, of beer, because of beer, and you might wonder what I did on a multi-day trip through 4 states. It was pretty fucking boring, honestly, but those parts of the country aren’t known for the depth of their brewing scene. I tend to have a singular focus when I’m traveling anyways, so maybe I missed a few things along the way. Back when I started this project, I had some vague idea in the back of my mind that I could make this a travelling beer blog, but that dream has withered on the vine with all the events of my life over the last 2 years. Oh well. I’ll just have to focus on ABQ for a while.
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At the very least, I’ve had the chance to enjoy a few pints with my dad over the last few weeks, something we always wished we could be doing when talking on the phone. This won’t last, as #RVLIFE means you’re always looking at the next stopover, but it’s worth talking about – those chances you get to spend with the people you care about, and make them into happy memories of some sort. My dad was the one who really turned me onto craft beer, back when things were easier and I was a bit younger. My folks were on a trip to visit the midwest, and dad had brought a couple of ‘pigs’, large plastic bottles with beer in them that could be charged with CO2 canisters and pour ‘fresh’ beer. It was the technology of the time, and the contents were from a small brewery in ABQ called Il Vicino. They are now known as Canteen, but they still have a few beers on tap that were OG or have been around a while. I can’t remember exactly what he brought to Iowa that year, but it was tasty and validated my belief that ‘domestic’ lagers were basically trash beer.
Over the years, we’ve shared laughs and smiles over many pints, and I’m fortunate to have someone so close that shares some of that lifestyle. They’ll be pulling out soon, for eastern destinations, so I’ve tried to enjoy as much patio time with dad as I can grab. We don’t need much of an excuse, but permission must be obtained, so a decent day of projects around grandpa’s house is equity used on the patio of a few taprooms. What I’m trying to say is that I understand that you, dear reader, may not always be in the position to go down to the local taproom and take in the view for several hours. I’m here for you. Through my adventures you might learn how to navigate the maze of choices and scenes where craft beer is present. Maybe not.
At any rate, I will cherish my time in Oregon and especially the last few months I spent on the mountain. I met some really great people up there, and I suppose that I’d probably have stayed there for awhile if gramps hadn’t needed my help, toiling away as a cook in a roadhouse for…not enough. I was extremely fortunate to find the accommodations and work I did, and it’s been a tough cookie to swallow, leaving such dreamy lands for the dry and dusty ‘high desert’, but I’ll make it work, like I always have. Some of my early posts, when I was in Astoria, were bleak and depressing, and since then I’ve managed to get a changed the perspective. I’m trying to maintain that perspective, and I hope to write more often about that…along with all the excellent beer I drink along the way. Stay tuned. I’ll be back soon.