Brews Cruising (Pt. 2): Bats to the Left of Me, Jesters to the Right

Driving through the traffic morass through Austin left me with a case
of tunnel vision as I headed through the surrounding Hill Country

I left Austin, TX with a severe case of tunnel vision.

Perhaps if I knew about the November 2015 Culturemap Austin's article naming I-35 through downtown as having the absolute worst traffic in Texas, I wouldn't have made the mistake of staying on the freeway as I reached the outskirts of Texas' capital city. This sludge-like trek through city limits reminded me of the first time I drove through Los Angeles in the late 1980s. Crawling along on city streets around 2 PM, I spotted an empty on ramp for the I-10 freeway overhead, thinking that this was a great idea since it was nowhere near rush hour. Little did I realize that almost every hour on L.A. freeways is like rush hour, and one mile and 20+ minutes later, I escaped the sludge and happily settled for the crawl.

The L.A.-style traffic and other circumstances meant there would be little exploring of Austin's treasures this day. But the traffic meant that the one stop I would be able to make would be the perfect cure, and it lay on the outskirts of town down a bumpy service road in the surrounding Hill Country.

Brews Cruising (Pt. 1): A Seventh Son Sighting in Big D

“A Seventh Son Brewing T-Shirt? In Dallas?”

Little did I know it at the time, the t-shirt, sporting the logo of one of the most well-regarded Columbus-area craft breweries, belonged to a well-traveled beer aficionado.

Similarly unbeknownst to me at that time, it was something of a symbol of a parallel growth in craft beer in two rather different cities, as well as a sign that I would be doing some fairly substantial beer traveling in the next few days.