A blog is born

Over the weekend, a group of friends and I rode our bicycles to the Broken Barrel Tavern, a kind of Mecca on tap for lovers of micro-brewed, handcrafted beers in Palm Bay, Florida. It has a wide selection of IPAs, Stouts, Porter, European beer and other deliciously frothy concoctions to keep a thirsty biker busy all afternoon.

Their food is good, too. Smoked chicken wings with a variety of sauces, from Jamaican Jerk to Spicy Habanero. And their Cuban sandwich rocks. Testify!

Lover's Note: Tank top for girls bears the logo: "I blow kegs."

This is a unique group of bikers. Da Bastard is a wizard of a designer and welder and has made several beautiful one-off choppers and burrito bikes.

I've made a couple of ratbikes out of reconstructed Schwinn parts, my best being an old Torpedo frame with Stingray handlebars and a Phantom saddle (that's my bike up front). Other folks in our gang rode their store-bought cruisers and Basmans (I'm in back, riding the Basman).

We're the Florida Chapter of the Chopaderos Outlaws Bicycle Club. We ride because walking sucks.

As we drained one heady brewe after another, we talked about all sorts of stuff, like the maddening habit of Miami drivers who stream through the left turn lane after their light turns red. The bullshit level rose along with the alcohol level in our blood.

As did the girl-on-girl face sucking, and the display of one gal's ample cleavage. Viva la difference!

This was relatively easy to achieve because the beers we were drinking had super-high alcohol content.

On about my second or third beer, I told my friends that by Thursday I would be out of a job. Unemployed thanks to corporate downsizing, after more than 25 years in the newspaper business.

They offered heartfelt condolences with the best intentions, and I thanked them.

And then talk steered toward what I would do with all this free time. I told them my plan was to help a friend move out to Santa Fe. They told me about brew pubs in the area. The Bastard said he'd hook me up with some buddies in Escondido and San Diego, and I promised to visit the Stone Brewery, the ultimate Valhalla.

That's when the idea of this blog came up. I should travel, drink beer and write about it. Whatever else happened along the way I would record as well, in the natural order of things: Drink. Piss. Fuck.

I should be so lucky.

And now, a great song by the Pogues to get the ball rolling: