Vancouver for the holidays

August 21, 2020August 19, 2020 / Greg / Leave a comment

Almost eight months later, I have a vivid, yet simple memory. My wife and I were in the Calgary airport on Christmas night enroute to Vancouver for a short vacation. We were happy to be getting away to a favourite city for a few days and to be able to exchange our Saskatoon parkas for lighter rain jackets as we escaped from a prairie winter. My memory now of that night, through a prism of a pandemic that has grounded my traveling in 2020, is just of the simple, unadulterated happiness I get from traveling. As we sat waiting for our flight on to Vancouver, sharing a snack to tide us over before a very late night McDonalds run after we landed, I remember feeling at peace. And I wonder when I’ll be able to enjoy sitting in an airport again.

More than just sitting in an airport, I’m looking forward to eating and drinking in public establishments around the world again. On Boxing Day morning, as soon as it opened, I wandered into La Taqueria Pinche Taco Shop, one of a number of “must visit” places every time I’m in Vancouver.

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Patio beers in November

July 19, 2020July 19, 2020 / Greg / 2 Comments

I was sitting on the tarmac in Saskatoon shortly after boarding when I started to hear a constant patter of freezing rain striking the body of my plane. Looking out the window into the dark of a November morning, hoping that we’d get loaded and de-iced before the weather got too bad to take off, my mind drifted to where I’d be landing later that day and my plans for my first night in Phoenix. As the freezing rain intensified, all I could think about was escaping winter and having a beer on a patio.

Leaving behind a few days of -15C weather and then a just in time escape from a freezing rain storm, I landed in Phoenix in 30C weather. It took remarkably little time for me to drop my bags at my hotel, change into shorts, and make my way to the Arizona Wilderness outdoor beer garden just on the north edge of downtown.

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A taste of Japanese craft beer

March 9, 2020March 8, 2020 / Greg / Leave a comment

On my first Sunday in Japan, I felt a bit adrift. Fall Sundays for me are usually spent in my basement, a collection of delicious snacks and excellent craft beer near at hand to sustain me for a day’s worth of watching football. I didn’t really have any desire to spend my precious time in Tokyo seeking out a bar to watch NFL football in, but I had a plan for visiting some excellent craft beer bars and thought that would be a nice way to enjoy an afternoon.

After filling up my belly with a healthy amount of sushi at a fun conveyor-belt place in the neighbourhood, I made my way to the taproom at the Baird Brewing Company. While there was no football on, the World Cup of Rugby was underway so I had a prime seat with a group of ex-pat New Zealanders watching their country take on Namibia.

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Mile high baseball and beer

January 3, 2020December 31, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

With a very limited amount of time in Denver this past fall, I based my non-work time in the city around a couple of late season baseball games and some craft beer sampling. This is the luxury of second visits to places – there’s no need to rush around seeing the sights to alleviate the fear of missing out on something.

Once my meetings wrapped up on a Friday afternoon, I got to work in making the most of my weekend in Denver. First stop: my all time favourite piece of public art – “I See What You Mean” or as it is more commonly known as, “Big Blue Bear”. My weekend was off to a great start.

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A whole lot of gose

December 14, 2019December 14, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Baseball and beer. Pretty much a perfect pairing.

My annual baseball trip this year was to Washington thanks to already being in the city for some professional development. With five days to take in the sights of the American capital, I needed ample refreshment along the way to fend off the heat and humidity of the east coast in July.

On my first night in the city, I made it to Dacha Beer Garden under threat of a severe thunderstorm. Their outdoor garden is nicely covered and sheltered from the elements (thankfully!), and I couldn’t resist pairing a Joint Resolution hazy IPA from DC Brau with PEI mussels. Pretty good match and worth getting completely drenched on the walk back to the hotel when the storm hit with an amazing ferocity at the most inopportune time for me.

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Seventh honeymoon

September 30, 2019October 1, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Since getting married six years ago, my wife and I have kept up a tradition of taking a “honeymoon” each year. Some have been a bit more exotic like our first trip to Boston or our actual honeymoon to Puerto Rico, and a few have been to make sure the tradition stayed alive. “Honeymoon in Regina”, even for a Riders game, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

We decided to celebrate our sixth anniversary by heading back east to New Brunswick to spend a week with our family. With my wife’s family mostly in the southwest part of the province, and my mom and dad up in the northeast, we had to split up for a few days (not sounding too honeymoon-ish, is it?). Upon getting a good night’s sleep in Nackawic after landing in Fredericton on the first evening, I drove across the province to Beresford to meet up with my parents and their dog, Tia.

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The old stomping grounds

September 23, 2019September 22, 2019 / Greg / 1 Comment

When I traveled to Halifax in June, it was for an almost absurdly short amount of time. Fly in on a Friday, meetings on Saturday, fly back home before the sun was up on Sunday morning. With so little time, I knew this was going to be a “greatest hits” type of trip. With precious little personal time on this visit, I charted a precise course through a city I know very well… but one that is changing rapidly, and becoming a touch more unfamiliar on each and every return visit.

My flight touched down at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, and at 5:30 I was sitting at the bar of my hotel’s restaurant, which fortunately for me, is known for its oyster happy hour. A dozen delicious oysters to reacquaint me with the taste of the ocean… this is the way you kick off a visit to Halifax.

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Into the mountains with dad

September 7, 2019September 7, 2019 / Greg / 4 Comments

I’m not going to bury the lede on this… The five day, 2,200km road trip I took with my dad from Saskatoon to Calgary, then onto Banff, Lake Lousie and Jasper, and finally back to Saskatoon via Edmonton was one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long, long time. Every time I speak with my dad on the phone since he returned to New Brunswick, we end up talking about this trip and how much fun it was. Here’s the recap of an epic road trip, at least what I’m willing to share publicly. As with any good trip, there’s always a few things that need to respect the mantra “what happens on the road, stays on the road”

Calgary

When dad booked his flight from Bathurst, NB to visit me in Saskatoon in May, I immediately booked hotels for a mountain road trip so he could see the Rockies up close for the first time in his life. He arrived in Saskatoon, got acclimatized to my hometown for a couple of days, then we packed up the car and pointed it west. About seven hours later, we rolled into a rainy Calgary. First stop was at National on 17th, a great beer bar close to our hotel. Dad seems to be a fan of the pint I picked for him.

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Windy city pints

August 31, 2019August 31, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Chicago is an interesting, but slightly logistically challenging city for craft beer exploration. If you’re staying in the centre of the city as I was, and want to visit a number of breweries or taprooms, you really have to do some traveling by subway and bus to some far flung locations. Like every trip I plan, I pinned a number of potential destinations on a map, then using the limited time in the city, tried to hit the really interesting and convenient places.

By far and away, the brewery I was most excited to sample from was Rick Bayless’ Cruz Blanca Brewery. You already know I’m a bit of a Bayless fanboy, in love with every culinary thing he does, so of course I needed to see if I would be a fan of his brewery.

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Snowbanks for miles

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

People in Saskatchewan, at least around Saskatoon, have no idea what a lot of snow looks like. Snowbank size is relative, but when I visited my mom and dad in northern New Brunswick in March after an epic winter, there was no question who should have had a licence to say something negative about their winter.

Landing in Bathurst, I was immediately taken by the amount of snow on the ground. Driving on the highway from the airport into town was like driving down tunnels of snow. Even after about a week of melting, here’s what the snowbanks in my parents’ driveway looked like.