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A Lite In A Plastic Mug
Last night friends posted about a reunion dinner of sorts taking place back in Wichita. The review of the new steakhouse came back with poor marks, but nothing to overshadow the joy of meeting up with those you care about. This particular group? Folks who were once part of the sales and service team I…
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A Leffe In The City Of Love
While Paris lies under a flooded Seine, I remember the time spent there over so many years. My favorite city, a city for love, but one in which I’ve often been happiest alone. Why is that, in the midst of the City of Light, would I feel most part of her love when sitting solo…
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Thank Goodness For Elephants
The drive from Port Alfred to George took us along South Africa’s dramatic eastern Cape towards the more well known Garden Route. We hugged emerald-clad cliffs dropping into the wild ocean on a road weaving along grades originally carved for trains. We made our way in silence, mostly out of sheer awe. When we stopped…
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Windhoek in Port Alfred
Unless you have an airplane, it’s not exactly easy to get to Port Alfred, on South Africa’s windswept Eastern Cape coast. On this trip, at least, it felt like a test of will. The flight school we’d visit suggested a guest house as opposed to the bland traveler’s hotel in town–for the same price I’d…
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Pubs: My First Real Pint
Pubs in England showed one face to me at first contact, like the “oldest pub in Oxford” where I went back in 2009–that had to be authentic, right? With its low ceilings and timbers so shellacked over the years by smoke and skin and paint to the point they looked plastic. We had ducked our…
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Nora’s
Friends first led me to Nora’s Smoke Shop several years back on a work trip to Orlando involving airplanes and sales and the doldrums as the real estate market tanked in Florida…we needed a dose of cheer. The guys sized me up and gauged correctly that I would “get” Nora — she’s a broad in…
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Yi, Er, Tsing Tao
Towered over by giant cans of the distinctive green, we made our way past tour busses into the shrine of Tsing Tao. The Germans brought beer to the city of Qingdao (the more streamlined Westernization of the name) in 1903, and today, the brewery captures 15% of the domestic market in China. Though the bottles…
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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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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…