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No Pull-Tabs No More
The last time I saw a pull-tab was in a package bar in Nisswa, Minnesota, as part of the gambling game played in dark lounges in the Upper Midwest, especially in the Land of 10,000 Lakes in 1992–at least in my memory. Never much of a gambler, me, even when consuming pitchers of cheap Milwaukee’s…
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Champagne In First
I can’t recall a time, when offered one of those plastic pearly flutes of sparkling wine (so rarely actual Champagne, unless it’s Air France or Emirates or maybe Cathay) …I can’t recall ever saying, “No, just a water, thanks.” And when they’ve truly upgraded you and served you the bubbly in a real glass, I…
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Colorado Native
Oh the bluebird-sky days of winter have returned as I sneak away to the slopes on a buddy pass and stolen time. The joy of living in Colorado versus traveling there to ski lies in choosing your mid-week day to escape, coming closer to the trifecta of good snow, light lift lines, and a wide open…
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Blue Moon & Mandarin
My plane was late landing in Nashville, and they couldn’t find me the right rental car. Gone midnight by the time I made it to the Gaylord Massif otherwise known as Opryland–a hotel so far bigger than necessary that it surely encompassed its own zip code–along with a strangely enormous human terranium inside. I’d had…
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Kölsch: The Beer That’s A Language Too
I took a late run in the day, when the train from Frankfurt dropped me off earlier than I expected in Köln (Cologne to the Francophiles and Englishmen). The rain had darkened the plaza and the Dom itself, not just the black soot of centuries tarnishing the cathedral’s façade and flying buttresses. Because the rain…
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The Bitch And The Burj
From this angle it looks like an icicle fashioned from obsidian, one stolen from the entrance to a fantastical mine and levered from the earth to pierce the clouds. As the fountains shoot up light against the sky settling into night, I look up at the Burj Khalifa, a symbol of Dubai in all its…
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A Heineken In Every Corner
It’s 2 a.m. body time, and I’m checking into a faceless, charmless hotel room hermetically sealed from all life outside. An air-conditioned box where I can let fall away all sense of time or place. I set out my things, and, knowing I don’t have a meeting til dinner time (local time) I drop into…
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Taking Port Into DXB
The bottle was a gift from new partners, and certainly not worth any more than the $25 limit imposed upon one by the policies of most corporations. I say this with conviction, because, unless it’s a rare vintage or from a top producer, Port in Portugal is very affordable…downright cheap (though I would never say cheap,…
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Sagres For Sour Stomachs
I keep the balcony’s sliding glass door open to the breeze, which washes up from the Atlantic down the hill. Thank goodness they aren’t picking me up til 6 pm, I think, as I roll over again in the stiff white cotton sheets on the twin bed in the Eden Estoril. I’m up on a…
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The Mayor of Dublin
I came into Dublin for the first time alone, on the beginning of a business trip, in the midst of February rain. I had the name of a pub, The Clarendon Inn (a friend’s dear departed mum knew it as her “local”), to anchor my first night in town. I found a seat in the…