Hanging out with Obama and Alyssa
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Burlington,
Vermont,
United States
Friday, May 25, 2007
this weekend found us up in b-town, vermont...home of magic hat beer, a damn fine guitar/bajo player called felix "sonny boy" wilson, and one alyssa brown.
we hung out with alyssa, daniela's best friend since, like, forever (aka since they met freshman year in college) and her german shepherd delilah. on saturday we paid a visit to the magic hat brewery (the "artifactory") to see and sample a bit of the magic. the brewery tour wasn't super-exciting, since the bottling line isn't in action on saturdays. we did see the fermenting room (where they use a strain of english yeast that's a couple of hundred years old), complete with foamy vats and a brewer or two poking around. the sampling bar was ok, but the barkeeps stopped paying attention to me before i got to try everything. i'm now inspired, though, to visit all the microbreweries that are in the area.
burlington is a great walking city, and we spent a bunch of time strolling around downtown and on the lake champlain waterfront. lots of window shopping and people watching kept us busy during the day. on saturday afternoon we caught a compact little man strumming frantically and stomping away on the cobblestones of the main pedestrian thoroughfare. we stopped and watched him for awhile, and ended up going to see him at a little coffee shop later that night.
we met up with another friend from college who was a former housemate of daniela and alyssa, and went to the show with her. decent show, very good pints of porter. it seems like i can order a different microbrew in every restaurant in burlington and never worry about repeating--the place has a earned warm spot in my liver.
on the way back down to new hampshire, we stopped over in hanover, new hampshire to see barack obama speak at dartmouth. big crowd, lots of waiting, and a 30 minute speech. barack is a decent speaker, and he talked a little about himself and about healthcare, the war, etc...nothing he said really stuck with me, which speaks to my cynicism and the overall lackluster speech. but daniela's friend alyssa said that, for the first time, she believed something a politician was saying. it sits well with my cynical self to know that he's not a washington lifer, ground down and molded into shape by the way business is done in DC. whether or not that translates to a) votes and b) the ability to actually get things done if he gets in.
i do know where i can get a good pint, though.
