IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BEER!

OKTOBERFESTS

Football season is in full swing; unless you’re the NY Football Giants and you’ve decided not to start playing; but autumn IS here and what that means there are a number of very very good reasons to drink beer. It's the time of Oktoberfests folks and here in southeastern Pennsylvania there are enough festivals dedicated to liquid gold there is no reason to book airline tickets to Munich Germany where the whole silly Bavarian bacchanalian celebration began nearly 200  years ago.

Here is a website about the original oom-pah party which began as a wedding celebration to a King Ludwig in 1810. This year's Oktoberbest in Munich began on September 16 and will go until October 3^rd.

OKTOBERFEST IN MUNICH

Want to see what you’re missing in Munich? Here’s a link to a webcam:

OKTOBERFEST LIVE CAM

NO BUDS FOR YOU

According to tradition only original Munich beer is sold at the beer tents and each maintain strict adherence to the "Reinheitsgebot", the Bavarian Purity Requirements for beer.  There are six breweries represented: Augustiner (a personal favorite), Hacker Pschorr, Hofbrau, Lowenbraur, Paulaner and Spaten. Not an IPA in the bunch. 

Here's a BBC article about the Reinheitsgebot:

PURITY LAWS

HOME IS WHERE THE BEER IS

Can’t make it to Munich? I didn't think so and neither can Team VFH and right about now you're thinking there's too much effort going on with beer between logistics and what can be drunk. But, here is a small collection of festivals dedicated to liquid bread in the Philadelphia area that is all about having some beers with friends:

PHILADELPHIA AREA OKTOBERFESTS

Autumn is a very popular time for beer and doubly so in this area that really likes its beer. It seems there's an Oktoberfest everywhere you look, even the Philadelphia Zoo had its own version of an Oktoberfest; alas too late for this year.

PHILADELPHIA ZOO EVENTS

RIDE SALLY RIDE

Heck, celebrations are literally down the street from us in Collegeville. The local Appalachian Brewing Company establishment (a small chain) is hosting their yearly Oktoberfest Ride for bicyclers on October 22nd. Though the Reinheitsgebot will NOT be represented here, you can literally hold your breath and walk from our place to APC. The challenging course which begins and ends at the brewery covers approximately 62 miles.

OKTOBERFEST RIDE AT APC

STOUDTS

A personal Oktoberfest favorite of mine is the month long celebration at Stoudts in Adamstown near Reading. I have gone a couple of times over the years. There's a large dance hall and music to go with the lederhosen and great beers. The highlight of the day is the parade of the roasted pig and the tasty beast leads a cha cha line through the place as the oom-pah band plays... I know I know there might be TOO much excitement. But heck, it's better than watching the Giants lose another game. Ein PROST!

STOUDTS OKTOBERFEST  

KISSES THROUGH THE MILKY WAY

CAPTAIN UPDATE                                   

Janet is on her two week trip white water rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. For a myriad of ridiculous reasons your favorite Team VFH clerk did not accompany the captain on this trip of a lifetime. Ain't that a kick in the head.

She is with the adventure group OARS and according to their information she will be traveling 250+ miles from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead and going over 47 rapids rated 5 or above on the Grand Canyon scale of 1 to 10. She’ll be hiking and eating well and having the time of her life. There’s no cell phone service and the OARS people could not even give me a timetable as to where she’ll be at any time during the trip.

postcard from Janet

PHANTOM RANCH

But, post cards are available at the Phantom Ranch, the only lodging below the Canyon rim. Accessible only by the river, hiking over 7 miles down into the canyon or traveling by mule, the Phantom Ranch is an oasis of wood or stone cabins first constructed in the 1920s by the federal government and space is extremely limited. Currently reservations are up to 13 months in advance. In 2019 there will be a lottery system instituted.

The Phantom Ranch Canteen

DINNER RESERVATIONS AT THE PHANTOM RANCH

A canteen at the Phantom Ranch makes breakfast and dinners, for lodgers, hikers and rafters and reservations are required here with special seating times for both meals. Evidently you can also buy beer here and I received a wonderful postcard from Janet yesterday telling me this. Mail is hauled up to the rim by mules. She’s enjoying herself and says she’s sending me kisses nightly through the Milky Way. I’ve never seen the Milky Way. I am missing so much. Ain’t that a kick in the head?

The Milky Way over the Grand Canyon

EMBRYONIC JOURNEY

RAFTING IN THE GRAND CANYON

The far more adventurous half of your favorite traveling duo is doing it again. The true captain of Team VFH is off on a two week, 200+ mile white water rafting adventure down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Ever since I first laid eyes on her Match.com profile picture where she was holding a fish she caught in Alaska sweetly smiling Janet has regaled me with tales of her hikes up Colorado mountain tops and how she would wrestle alligators and grizzly bears at the same time.

I’m no couch potato. I’ve run 9 marathons. I have hiked overnights on trails on my own and have taken week long canoe trips down the Delaware. But, the operative words here are “canoe” and “Delaware”.

                       

A number of years ago we tried our hands at white water rafting. We took a day trip on the Ohiopyle River while camping in Western Pennsylvania. I was assigned “captain” of the raft and Janet and I were paired with three teenaged girls who did not paddle. Rafting and canoeing are completely different and the intuitive nature I have with a canoe simply doesn’t work with a raft. Yeah, we tipped over at one point and I was kind of caught under the raft for a bit; it wasn’t fun and I was finished with the whole raft experience. Janet though wanted to go out the next day on a rougher stretch of the river.

That did not happen. But, this trip did. It’s a “bucket list” item for her and it is something she claims she has dreamed of doing for ages, although the first I heard about this was about 18 months ago.

Conversely, my “bucket list” item is to hire a boat and captain to sail us through Croatia’s Dalmation Islands. She thinks this is a great idea too, but first she wants to go on a hut-to-hut hiking adventure in New Zealand. I really just want another glass of wine while admiring a sunset over Hvar and she wants to bathe in the chilly waters of the Colorado and fend off rogue Maori warriors.

Janet's kind of traveling

Do you understand now the title of this article, Embryonic Journey?

This is my kind of traveling

Anyway, I wasn’t very keen on this Colorado River adventure so I begged off it. Janet recently retired and so this was her reward for her long career as a teacher, but this reward is costly and for me quite prohibitive. The trip itself is approximately $6,000, which doesn’t include tips for the guides, airfare or hotels and incidentals before and after the trip, but on an excursion like this the guides do all the work and you just hang on for dear life. So between the experience and the pampering it’s worth the money. It usually takes booking years in advance to get on a trip like this, but Janet was quite fortunate to get a place on this trip when a single opening became available a scant 18 months ago. Two weeks ago, feeling guilty about not sharing this adventure with Janet, I announced I wanted to go on the trip. The people at OARS, the outfitters for this journey, laughed at me.

OARS, Inc.

You know though the more I look at this trip the more I wish I had said yes a long time ago. Janet is going to have a lot of fun. She always seems to do things right. She is the captain after all. I can't wait to fight off those crazy Maoris in NZ.