Now Entering New England

Hey everybody,

If you like beer porn then there's probably no better place to go than the Dogfish Head brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware during craft beer week.  It's not their main brewery but it's the brewpub/restaurant where Dogfish Head originated and it still maintains a brewhouse for what they serve on tap.  Their beer menu consisted of about 10 of their normal brews and another 15 seasonal or experimental brews available only this particular week.  I sampled about 10 different beers which varied from jalapeno-flavored ales to ginger IPAs to one that tasted like a pine cone mixed with Fernet and cough syrup.  After the first few sips of that one the bartender must've seen the look on my face because she said, "Yeah, I think that's pretty much the worst beer we've ever made."  You know what would've been nice?  If you'd mentioned that before I ordered it.

It's funny how each region has its own ubiquitous (for them) local vacation spot, which is where I think Rehoboth Beach falls in the spectrum of coast-side towns.  It's a summer destination for people from all over the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia area.  It has one of those kind of old school salt-water taffy boardwalk-type places feel to it where you can picture a bunch of families taking their kids for a week or two.
I took the ferry from Lewes to Cape May in southern New Jersey, driving for a bit along the ocean until I arrived in Atlantic City.  My two driving observations of New Jersey is that everyone drives at least 15 MPH over the speed limit at all times and are annoyed when you do not and that the NJ turnpike is the biggest ripoff road in the continental U.S.  Why is there a toll plaza every 10 miles?  Anyway, Atlantic City itself is more or less what you might expect, a scaled-down Las Vegas strip of huge casinos directly on the beach boardwalk.  Souvenir and t-shirt shops abound, and the size of the casinos themselves makes walking distances deceptive.  That may explain the proliferation of pushcarts, basically a guy pushing a cart with two or three people in it along the boardwalk, presumably to get them from one buffet to another.  One thing I've also noticed the last few times I've been to casinos is the increase in numbers of Asian gaming areas.  Casinos are usually ahead of the curve when it comes to figuring out where their bread is buttered... they'll probably be the only U.S. industry that's in the black when our Chinese soon-to-be overlords finally take charge.

My biggest hesitation, actually fear really, in coming to Jersey was that I would surely encounter my life's nemesis:  the Guido.  For many Italians, the Guido is the embodiment of all that is unholy in this world.  Their origins are shrouded in mystery but my theory is that it's sort of like what Saruman from Lord of the Rings said about how the Orcs were made.  "They were Elves [or Italians] once. Taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life."  I was concerned when I continued north toward Hoboken that I would somehow cross their spawning grounds but that was not the case.  I stayed with Hugo the Juice in North Bergen and when we went out that evening to the beer garden or at any of the sports bars where we watched the Devils-Rangers game we were unmolested.  We did notice, however, that we were the only guys in all of Hoboken who are not on steroids or HGH.

While in the north New Jersey area I took a trip to Ellis Island in order to visit the immigration museum.  The interior of most of the buildings where immigrants coming into the United States were processed have been maintained in their original form, so it was striking to look at the old photographs and then picture how people were moved through the various stages of the immigration process.  The main reason I went is because my great-grandpa came through Ellis Island in 1924 in order to work in the U.S... I'm not sure if that was when he worked on the Brooklyn bridge or whether that was on another trip.  There is a very cool immigrant database where I was able to find a digital copy of the ship's manifest that showed my great-grandpa on the lists, which was a little bit of an emotional moment for yours truly.

I drove out to northwest New York the next day to stay with Amy and her family and I have to recommend the drive if any of you have the opportunity.  The Finger Lakes area is quite beautiful, especially if you enjoy driving through picturesque small towns.  I really enjoyed being hosted at the home of the "most spoiled girl in the world" but I have to admit that my highlight came when Brian handed me a cooler full of venison steaks on my way out the next morning.  Oh, baby.  I spent the next night in Providence, Rhode Island, mostly to say that I've been to Providence, Rhode Island and from there proceeded to Boston.

The first and only time I've been to Boston was on the tail end of a business trip back in 2002 with the one-and-only E-man.  I had asked my buddy Murph (a Boston native) what I should see when in Boston and he told me to drive up the interstate to Peabody and go to this place called The Golden Banana.  So one night after work the E-man and I took the rental car to Peabody to visit The Golden Banana which as I'm sure you can imagine is a "gentlemen's club."  And, as I'm sure you can imagine, when a "gentlemen's club" is right off the interstate it is not one of the highest quality.  It might have been a Tuesday night and there might have been three other patrons in the entire place and one guy might have been asleep/passed out/dead.  Anyhow, we ended up strategically seated on the end of the catwalk where the pole was located for optimal viewing.  After one of the strippers had done her thing she came over, the E-man handed her a few dollars and said to her, "You are very professional."  Maybe you need to understand that the E-man is a 5'4", 110 pound Chinese guy with coke bottle glasses and a very thick accent to understand why this moment was unforgettably awesome for me and very confusing for the stripper.

Anyhow, this trip to Boston unfortunately did not involve any golden bananas.  I stayed with Chris and Sarah who are possibly the two best people ever and whom I miss dearly because they laugh at all my jokes.  Chris just finished law school and his graduation is coming up next week, so this weekend involved a softball tournament and a pub crawl with soon-to-be lawyers.  Chris and Sarah have been living in Boston for 7 years and they have the tour guide thing down, so I got to hear a surprising amount of historical detail about events that occurred in downtown Boston leading up to the revolutionary war.  We tooled around various neighborhoods, visited Fenway Park, and caught a hip-hop show featuring F. Stokes (http://www.fdotstokes.com/).  It was a great weekend and Boston is a great town... it has a little bit of everything and it's easily walkable.  And, of course, the company was fantastic.

http://youtu.be/DA4TxHf1ZTc

Next I'm headed up the coast then making a left turn toward Canada.  Hope everybody's going great, and here come the pictures...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/JUbrwShiw8FjK3g88

Take 'er easy,
Dave