The weather outside is frightful... or just insanely cold.

Once again, I find myself in Rao's Coffee in downtown Amherst, MA. I will forever abbreviate this state because I cannot spell it. Too bad, it's really very scenic here. This is my third visit to Adri's home town. Fall is amazingly colorful, winter is amazingly cold. It's still scenic though, the snow making it all very wintery. As snow tends to do.

This was a quickly laid on trip tog et away from Louisville for a couple days. Otherwise, it'd end up with me dwelling on some things. I like the distraction of Amherst, and the vibe of the town. I could maybe even immigrate here... I say maybe because I'm not sure I react well to the cold. Unfortunately, Adri has been working these few days and I've only had limited time to spend with her. But lunch, and dinners have been very nice. SHe's a great host.

Yesterday, I spent the time in the morning around Amherst meandering. Well, most of it was spent insde the coffee house as meandering outside was almost painful. There's a nice little local bookstore on the square that, while 1/4 the size of a standard Barnes & Nobles, has an incredible selection of books I've never seen in the local B&N. It is a college town and I suppose people here are well read??

After fetching Adri for lunch yesterday, I ventured down to Holyoke and searched for a local brewery I was told about. I must have circled the same block 5 times looking for the place. The GPS/google maps on the phone got me almost exactly not there. I mean I was withing a mile so I suppose that helped narrow it down. Eventually I pulled up beside a large abandon-looking brick factory and asked a delivery driver if he knew where I could find Paper City Brewery. He responded "You're looking at it". It's the kind of place you would never find unless you knew where it was. No signs or adds. Nothing but a grey door with no number or markings. This should be interesting. The owner (Jay) decided to install the brewery on the 5th floor of the building... and up the stairs I went. I walked into a room that had a very old early 1900's feel about it. Not much organization. Boxes and cases of beer stacked all over, except the one wall that was roped off to guard a collection of vintage motorcycles.

I was greeted by a older lady with a cheerful "Are you here to work?" To which I responded "No, I'm here to drink and take a tour if it's available." Well, turns out that even though the website said tours were available Monday through Friday during the day, the omitted that Wednesday was not exactly considered to be between Monday and Friday. I did learn that Wednesday nights are bottling night, and should you feel inclined to come help them with the bottling process you will be paid in a case of beer and fed pizza. If I lived here, guess what I'd be doing on most Wednesdays. It's very brilliant ploy by the owner, especially with the high volume of broke college students in the area. Imagine being able to get a free case of good microbrewery beer as a poor college student. Beats the hell out of drinking Natty Light.

At any rate, the staff (all three of them) were busy getting ready for the night's bottling operation. So no real tour was given, but they did offer to let me sample whatever they had on tap. And since they were busy, I was to just go behind the bar there and help myself. So I did. The lady who initially greeted was waited on something to be delivered, so she kept me company. In the times where she had to actually go do something, I occupied myself with the collection of bikes. For future reference, I'm not a fan of watermelon beer, but they had a wonderful blueberry beer and an excellent winter dark.

The owner was very much into vintage Harley-Davidson's and Indian motocycles (that's the correct spelling). I've been very much into getting back into bikes lately. I'm even thinking that should this airline thing go south, going to motorcycle mechanics school. At the very least I could save myself $70 by doing my own oil changes.

After more than a few samples and a conversation with the owner, I headed back to Amherst to wait for Adri to get off work. She had planned dinner and the Amherst family was coming over. I haven't seen many of them since the infamous birthday party with the missing Grey Goose. I love that hanging at Adri's is like a meeting of the United Nations. Represented were the nations of South Africa, Colombia, Pakistan, and Russia. And unusually I was not the only native born American, but the other American was currently living in SwitzerFrance... I'll explain later.

The other thing about Adri's friends is that when we're hanging out I feel like I'm the dumbest person in the room. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent person, but when the company are either workin on Ph.D's in Psychology (that's how it's spelled Katya, I looked it up), or engineers, or working at CERN (which is on the border of France and Switzerland... hence SwitzerFrance) creating black holes that are going to destroy the earth. Well, maybe the black hole part is not true, but how often to meet a physicist that's working on discovering the smallest particles of the universe. I think it's cool. And she was cute too. I also learned that Stephen Hawking is an asshole.

That pretty much brings us up to now, where I sit at Rao's again typing this. I feel so studious here aongst the other people typing and studying away. It almost makes me want to go back to college. Except I have no desire to actually do the school work.

I fly back to Louisville tonight, and back again to being in he real world. It's only a three day work week before I head home for Christmas. And i still have much shopping to do! I would like to thank Adri for hosting me. And Mo, Katya, Susya, Razzi, and Elane (not sure that was her name, but I'll call her that for now) for the enjoyable evening. Later.