Beer Diary

Greetings and salutations! This is my humble beginnings of a vision long in the making (i am more dreamer than doer....thankfully i fell in love and married a doer with mad techno skillz). Ok....so i love beer and i love hiking, but before i delve into all that i thought I'd give a short background (recent) history of me:

Sometime shortly after the year 2000 AD i lost my construction job and convinced my future wife to quit her job. We wanted the hell out of the concrete jungles of Michigan (we were mostly restless and needed change.....i love my Michigan....no hard feelings). We came up with a list of necessary requirements of our new home to be:
#1 We wanted to be somewhere where there is good beer (Michigan has good beer esp. Bells)
#2 We needed mountains
#3 We needed rivers
#4 We needed a large body of water near us (preferably an ocean)
#5 We wanted to be near a large metro area for jobs and cultural events
Boulder, Colorado looked appealing, especially since we already had some friends living in Summit County, but alas there was no ocean. Anchorage....brrrr....way to dark and cold. Seattle.....to much of a concrete jungle. Portland...hey!....Portland seemed like the perfect match for us.
We sold most of our belongings the summer of 2001, packed up our two vehicles with cats, art supplies, musical instruments, said our goodbyes, and headed out west.....we had no home waiting for us in Portland and no jobs, but we didnt care...this was to be an adventure.

Background (short) beer philosophy:
I am not a beer snob.....in fact i am more of a beer slut (i will not turn down a beer unless it's skunked). That being said, some beers are better than other beers and i prefer the better beers. Beer styles i favor: Imperial Stouts, Barley Wines, Strong Ales, Imperial IPAs....you get the idea.....i loves beers that have a mean kick to them. Beer brings out the poet/dreamer/lover in all of us. It is a great gift.