I am not a party guy. I might look like a party guy, might smell and talk like a party guy (you would be excused for believing, in other words, that I am a party guy) but I am not a party guy.

I prefer groups of 2 or 3. I also (and this may surprise you) prefer the company of women.

So when I was invited to Seattle for Boy’s Night, an evening of beer sampling and low-key (we are all middle-aged now) carousing, I was a bit reluctant. The key to things was that I had been invited by my good friend John, who I have known since high school.

And so I made a reservation at a cheap hotel and headed for the border on a day that reached 16 in the sunshine.

The border lineup was more than an hour. It stretches all the way to the corner far up in the photo and around the corner.

When I got to the part where the single line splits, I picked the one on the left. Turns out to have been a mistake: each car was taking a good 5 minutes. I eventually got to the border guard. I handed him my passport, already open to my picture.

Guard (black crew cut, gun prominent): Where you from?

Me: Aldergrove.

Guard: Take your glasses off for me.

Me: takes glasses off.

Guard: Where you heading?

Me: Seattle.

Guard: For how long?

Me: I’ll be back tomorrow.

Guard: Why you going down?

Me: To see a friend of mine, have dinner in Seattle.

Guard: This friend, how long have you known him?

Me: about 35 years. We went to high school together.

Guard: What’s his name?

Me: (gives John’s name)

Guard: Where does he work?

Me: I don’t know the name of the company.

Guard: You’ve known a guy 35 years, you don’t know the name of the company he works for?

Me: No. I can tell you what they do, though.

Guard: What do they do?

Me: They make call forwarding software for distributed call centers.

Guard: And this friend of yours, what does he do there?

Me: He’s a mid-level project manager.

Guard: What do you do for a living?

Me: I’m a database developer.

Guard: Would you work on something like what your friend works on?

Me: Well, I could, but I don’t.

Guard: where you staying?

Me: Days Inn on Aurora.

Guard: got a reservation?

Me: yes.

Guard: Got it handy?

Me: yes.

(Guard takes paper with reservation on it)

Guard: When was the last time you crossed the border?

Me: Let’s see, that would have been about a month ago.

Guard: Where were you going then?

Me: To Boston. We drove to Seattle to catch a plane.

Guard: What was the purpose of that visit?

Me: It was a family funeral.

Guard: Who was the family member?

Me: My brother. My younger brother.

Guard: What day did you cross the border?

Me: Hmm… I don’t remember exactly. I think it would have been (wrinkling brow) the 5th of February.

Guard: You don’t remember the day of your brother’s funeral?

Me: Yes, I remember that, it was the 7th. But you asked me what day I crossed the border.

Guard, looking at the screen in front of him: You sure it was the 5th?

Me: No, I told you I don’t remember exactly, but we flew down 2 days before the funeral, so the 5th. Oh, wait, it must have been the 4th, because we stayed the night near the airport.

[I'm starting to sweat a bit now. I'm getting the feeling that I'm not doing well, and my hope now is that when he turns me back he at least returns my passport.]

Guard: Which hotel was that?

Me: The Rodeway Inn, near the airport.

Guard: And you went through the (mumble) border crossing?

Me: No, we went through Peace Arch.

Guard: Thank you.

He handed me my passport and hotel reservation.

Good thing it was a gorgeous spring day. I had the top down and the music blasting. I headed 0ff for Fairhaven and Chuckanut Drive, which, unfortunately, was thronged with the Slow, the Pokey, and the Very Very Frightened.

I hadn’t had time to grab any lunch – in hindsight, I should have taken something from home because I had a nice leisurely hour and some in the sun to eat it, but I had figured on a 20-30 minute border wait and then getting something in Fairhaven. I found, however, that on this first really beautiful warm day of spring, everybody was out, and I couldn’t even find a parking spot in Fairhaven. I poked along Chuckanut, enjoying the view and chafing at the pace, which could only charitably be described as glacial.

When I got to the other end, I poked around the exit at Burlington for a fast-food place, as it was now getting close to 2:00 and I was getting hungry. The only place I could find that didn’t have a massive lineup (apparently, when the sun comes out, Washingtonians head for McDonalds) was a Jack-in-the-Box.

Eating drive-thru on the freeway is difficult with the top down (plus the buffeting at 80-90 mph gets tiring when it is still cool out) so I put the top up (but with the window zipped out, of course) and headed south.

The Jack-in-the-Box sandwich sucked.

Once there, I met up with my fellow bons vivant with alacrity and much shaking of hands. We delayed a bit, sitting in the sun, while the only one of our party with local phone access arranged cabs, and then off we went.

The first place we went was the Jolly Roger Taproom at the Maritime Pacific Brewing Company, in Ballard. And the first beer I tried was the Islander India Pale Ale, which was superb. Many IPAs leave a sort of bitter film clinging to you like a turbid ex-wife, but this one was bright and strong and bitter with a clean bite of hops. Very, very good.

We had to wait for a seat, which wasn’t too long in coming. I hadn’t even time to finish that wonderful IPA when we were seated at a table. We ordered.

The food took its sweet time getting there, which was fine, as nobody was in any kind of hurry. But if you had limited time and didn’t want to spend it drinking beer, well, it would suck. But we did have time, and we did want to spend it drinking beer, so it was all good and didn’t suck at all.

Then the Deep Fried Bacon arrived.

Now, you may think that, for 5 middle-aged men, none of whom regularly run marathons, and the fittest of whom could still stand to lose 15 lbs, this would have been tantamount to suicide. Take a strip of bacon, batter it in a beer batter, and then deep fry the bastard… surely this is a cholesterol load that would cause near-instant heart failure, or at least enough artery-hardening to cause some lesser-used extremities to go numb.

I can only conclude that the alcohol in the beer (I think I was on my third pint – the Nightwatch Amber ale) saved us, as nobody turned blue. As it turns out, deep fried bacon is not as good as one would have thought, although it was still better than middlin’, but it was salty and that raised an even greater thirst.

I had Morroccan chicken (quite nice) which arrived with my fifth pint (dry-hopped IPA from the cask) and after my sixth – a sad goodbye pint of Islander IPA – we paid our rather large beer bill and headed out to wait for a taxi.

The taxi driver was cool and crammed us all in – four good-sized men stuffed into the back seat meant that we didn’t need seatbelts, and we couldn’t have used them if we’d tried. When we got to the 74th Street Alehouse, I opened the door and it was like one of those snakes in a can beingopened. Fortunately, though I was carrying six pints of silliness aboard, I managed to remember to open the door on the sidewalk side.

The 74th had a very nice ambiance, and I suddenly found myself in an Irish mood and consumed a pint of Guinness, and then one of Harp.

Let me say that for me, there are two broad categories of music. There is the Stones, and then there is everybody else. So it is with beer: there is Guinness, and then there is everything else. Everything Else encompasses a wide range, of course, from the I-love-it-but-it-isn’t-Guinness to the godawful, but if I were forced to drink only one brewed drink the rest of my life, I would choose Guinness.

The 74th had nothing resembling a sweet and creamy dessert on the menu, and so after an hour or two we shifted down the street to the Naked City Taproom, where I was disappointed to find that the nose-ringed trendy counterculture serving wenches were not, in fact, naked.  I suppose this would be due to them risking cutting their feet if someone broke a glass, which a rather inebriated patron at the table next to us managed to do.

I remember little of the beers at the Naked City, save that I failed to finish one that was 14% alcohol and so sweet it made me gag (yes, really).  I had at least one other one to wash the sugar out of my throat, and I seem to remember somebody ordering some port or claret or something, and I did drink a glass of something that resembled champagne. And then there might have been a parting beer as Last Call was Called.

I do remember deciding to stop when I couldn’t bring the images from my left and right eyes together.

We staggered off to our hotel and then the next morning 4 of the 5 of us had breakfast at Beth’s Cafe while the 5th one sat and looked green. Actually it was much closer to noon as the more hung over of us didn’t get up until after 10 and then we had a wait at Beth’s and then the food wasn’t quick, the place being busy as hell, and so it was brunch.

I left Seattle around 12:30, ended up stopping at a rest stop as Beth’s 6 egg omelette and shovelful of hashbrowns made a rush for the exit – in fairness, I don’t know whether this was due to the greasiness of the greasy-spoon food, or the beans/salsa in the southwestern, or was due to the aftereffects of somewhere north of 8 pints of beer, but in any event, I did find a rest stop in time, making the border wait at the end much more pleasant than it would otherwise have been.

Tags: Brewed, Hopping, Things to do with Beer