Friday at the Bloggerpalooza II....Hijinxs in Milton & Beyond--Part I

*Continuing on with my recollections of last weekend at the Bloggerpalooza II.*

Check out THIS POST about Thursday's part of the trip if you missed it.

Friday morning I awoke early.
I was apprehensive about getting up on time, since this cut rate motel had no clock and I own a "dumb phone" so I had no alarm APP either to fall back on.
So I willed myself to rise early for morning ablutions and I was dressed and around the corner to the office for the free breakfast by 8am.

The pickings were slim as they say in the breakfast room.....3 kinds of juice, 4 kinds of cold cereal(and only 1 wasn't of the "sugared" variety), a tray of unappetizing doughnuts(like you'd find boxed in the grocery store, not like you'd find fresh made at a donut shop)and teeny tiny muffins(amuse bouche sized)also of the boxed grocery store variety, another tray of bread products(wheat and white slices, English muffins and 2 kinds of bagels).  There was also coffee(reg. and decaf)and packets of no name brand instant oatmeal next to the coffee urns.
No fruit or yogurt or protein, just a buttload of carbs.
sigh
What do you expect for $40 a night?

So I opened a packet of oatmeal and then looked for some hot water, which was not to be found.
sigh
About this time the breakfast attendant came into the room and noticed me standing there with an agitated look on my face and a bowl of dry crunchy oatmeal.
She said something about getting the hot water carafe out(hey, the breakfast had been open 1.5 hours already!)and she wandered off.

Not knowing how long this would take and the fact that I was wasting away(ha!), I took a half of a bagel and dropped it into the toaster slot and grabbed a tiny tub of cream cheese and a knife.  If I had to abandon the oatmeal plan I'd not starve to death after all, hooray!

I poured a Styrofoam cup of OJ, gathered my now toasty 1/2 bagel, knife and cheese and took a seat at a table.
About that time the attendant returned with a carafe of hot water.  I got up to soak my oatmeal and bumped the not-quite-stable table and the OJ went flying.
sigh

After some quick damage control involving many paper napkins and a now sticky table, I refilled the OJ cup and pumped out some not quite hot water into my oatmeal and went back to my table.
By the time I ate the 1/2 bagel and drank the OJ, the oatmeal was as soft as it was going to get...which turned out to be about half way to edible.
Mmmmm, half crunchy oatmeal.
Just call me Mr. Ed.

After that fine morning repast *cough* I went back to the room to get myself ready to face the day and check my emails and such.
As I sat at the rickety table in the room where I set up the laptop and surfed the interwebs the tv and the light above it spontaneously went out.
WTH?
I wasn't anywhere near either of those articles.
So I went and tried the remote for the tv and tried unplugging and replugging it in.
Then I did what every knowledgeable person does in this situation.....I hit the tv.
Still dead as a doornail.

I called the front desk and told them the tv and light had shit the bed and they said they'd send someone over to check them out.

The offending items......

5 minutes later a maintenance guy showed up.  I explained what had happened and he walked over to the wall next to the bed and flipped a switch and both items came on.

He just smiled at me, like, "Man, are you one dumb bitch."
Except I didn't go anywhere NEAR that wall or that switch on said wall when this happened!
I was sitting at the table on the other side of the room!!
So I told him that and he just smiled and shook his head at me.

Honestly, I am convinced that there were gremlins at play in my room.

But moving on.......
I left and drove the minivan over to the Inn in Lewes, as we were suppose to meet at 10am there if we wanted to do the Dogfish Head Brewery excursion that Jay had dreamed up.

So I ended up driving the minivan and taking Jay and Randy with me to Milton, and anne marie and Todd followed in their Ford Fuckus Focus.  Jay had printed off directions since the only time I'd been to that brewery we were coming from Ocean City MD.
We found the place readily(after a wrong turn getting out of Lewes)but we arrived a few minutes too late for the first tour of the day at 11am.
So we stood around and waited for the noon tour.

What better time to take some photos, right?

Oh, you thought I meant photos of people, didn't you?
Well here they are......

   back l to r-Jay, Randy  front l to r-anne marie, Todd

That metal sculpture behind them was from a Burning Man gathering, the same as the large metal tree house sculpture which sits outside the brewery building entrance.

And the gift shop had 120 Minute IPA!
This stuff is potent and they only make it a few times a year and it sells out fast.  Notice the cardboard holders are just plain white.  They sell this stuff so fast it's not worth making fancy designed holders for it. lolz
It's been a week since we were there and I bet all that 120 Minute is gone at this point.
It's quite expensive too, at $9 a bottle.
Yikes!
But did I say it has quite the kick yet? 
1 bottle of this and my ass is on the floor!  8-)

Here's Jay next to the cases of beer.
I wonder why he looks so happy?!?

Did I mention that DFH was very crowded that day?
Besides the regular brewery tours and people coming in to taste beer and buy beer, there was some sort of organized Brewmasters Association Tour and Seminar going on last Friday.
We saw a group of these Brewmasters finishing a tour on our way in so when we arrived there was a great cacophony of slightly buzzed folks and we couldn't even get to, let alone SEE the tasting bar.
We had to stand around and window shop in the gift shop for almost an hour before starting our tour.

Randy and Todd when out to get a sausage sandwich at Bunyan's Lunchbox, while we waited.  The Lunchbox food wagon is shown here in a photo I took last October.....

Which reminds me.....I never did blog about our trip last October to OC.  I must get right on that....ok, maybe tomorrow. lol

But I digress.....

The tour finally started and we were off with our DFH tour guide.....

After climbing the stairs of death, we heard all about the process of brewing while we gazed upon huge vats of wort, mash, and beer with the DFH logo on them....

Here's Randy getting "the shot".....

They had the founders of DFH, Sam and Miranda Calagione's brewing set-up in a corner of this room.....

This set-up is a step up from the one Hubs and I use.

 

 

Here's the hopper.....Sir Mix-a-lot would approve..... baby got beer.......

 

And here are the original capper, bottler and drying bottle tree.....

And then it was time to pause for a shot before going back down the stairs of death.....

At this point in the tour Todd, anne marie and myself bowed out and went to have a rest in the tasting area.  The rest of the actual brewery tour I had seen already and after that part of it they walked about 60 of the 63 acres of this facility.  I had already been on my feet for over an hour straight and if you've seen one brewery warehouse, you've seen enough.

So the 3 of us got a head start on our tasting samples.
And this is when I made a startling discovery......
anne marie is a 60 year old virgin!
WTF?!?
A 60 year old BEER virgin.

The tour guide offered that she should try one of the beers made with grapes called "Noble Rot", since anne marie likes wine.
And I suggested the Midas Touch and Tweas'n ale beers since they are made with fruit and honey.

And thus is how anne marie came over to the "dark side" with us.....

Oh, and disregard that slightly inebriated voice on the film who called the brewery Doghead Fish...lolz






And here's some more film, as Sluggy starts in on her third sample(World Wide Stout)and anne marie gets happier with her second ever beer......



And finally another short clip when Randy & Jay finished the tour and started began their tastings.
By this time a few of us were halfway "in the bag" as they say.....lolz



After we finished sampling and pulled Jay away from the tasting bar, we headed into the gift shop to make some purchases.
$400+ later, here is what I left with.......

Jay and I hit the Bunyan Lunch Wagon before heading out, as it was almost 3pm and we hadn't had lunch yet, but we didn't want to stop anywhere for a real meal since the dinner plans were coming up within a few hours.

The trip back to Lewes turned into an adventure all of it's own too.
I got turned around(9 oz. of beer will DO that to me!), Jay couldn't get service to use the GPS APP on his phone way out there in the boonies, so we had Randy go into a convenience store and ask for directions.
Either Randy misheard the guy or he made the mistake of telling the guy we "aren't from around here" and he thought it would be jolly good fun to send us off on a wild goose chase.
About 15 miles later, after following our directions, we ended up in Milford, which is in the OPPOSITE direction from where we needed to be heading.
Jay was able to get a signal on his phone there and we headed back in the right direction and did get back to the Inn in Lewes, no worse for the wear.
And Randy got a nice ride and saw more of the fine state of Delaware...but mostly some boring parts of it. ;-)

Once back in Lewes it was about 4pm so we headed up to the Hospitality Suite that 6 of the attendees had booked for their stay at the Inn. 

This sure beats the 2 bit gremlin filled motel I was staying at in Rehoboth!

And there were nice views of the canal out on the deck overlooking the water....

While I was outside taking pictures, this persistent seagull was busily swooping upward and dropping this mussel from his beak, over and over again on this dock, trying to open the shell.
I watched until he did get that sucker open and munched away on it.

Dang! Now I'm hungry again......when is dinner?

Then I went inside the suite to meet some more of the weekend attendees who had arrived while we were at the brewery that day.

Part 2 of our Friday at the Bloggerpalooza II coming soon....

Sluggy