Acquired Taste

This weekend I ran the Auburn Classic Half Marathon. I finished. If you're ever interested in the races I run, and my results, they are posted on my other blog, which I now use as a race log.

Race organizers know that a race will get much more participation when beer offered at the end of a race. This race offered beer. Markers along the way reminded runners of the reward at the end. "8 Miles til Beer". That keeps some runners going.

They didn't have beer. They had low calorie, low carb faux beer, but they had no real beer. Michelob Ultra and Bud Light. What the FUCK are they thinking. I just ran thirteen miles, why the hell do I want this watered-down diet crap they erroneously call beer. That's the stuff high school kids use to get drunk, and even some of the immature college kids, but once you get a taste of the real classic brew, there is no going back to the kool-aid beers. There are decent mass-produced beers out there, there is no reason to go for the cheap Bud/Coors/Miller brands that are an insult to the beer industry. The last time I bought that swill was to fertilize my lawn. Age has produced a beer snob in me. I also spent some of my High School years in Germany, where they have laws about making beer. I cannot imagine what they think of the massively-consumed American beer posers.

Now, I can think of good uses for these American insults to beer at the end of a race; How about soaking your sweaty, hot feet. That would feel so good on my "dogs" after a long run.

These are beers: Newcastle (Draft), Carlsberg, Guinness, Various Microbrews to numerous to mentioned. Even Sam Adams produces good beer, and Warsteiner (German Budweiser) will do in a pinch. Some of my planned vacations are to do a beer tour of Belguim, hiking the Alps to taste the different local brews of Bavaria and Austria, and touring the cities of Prague and Vienna on foot, finding local food and beer that are unique.

I don't use beer to get drunk, like I did when I was a young dumb conservative. I've matured, learned a few things, became a bit wiser (or less wiser, some would say), and don't want to waste the last half of my life on inferior food, drink, or products.

Have I become a food snob?

Why are all the "American" versions of food so bland and tasteless. I don't go out to eat much, unless I really have to, and then I try to find locally owned restaurants. Why go out and get cheap food, when I can make something much better at home. Who knows what they put in the food to get people to crave the taste of junk food (salt?chemicals?fat?fat?fat?), but the people I know that live on restaurant are very unhealthy, overweight and usually obnoxious about their right to destroy themselves with cheap junk food. I don't live the way I do to live longer, but to live better. Ok, Time to go, I'm starting to get of f on a tangent, different rant for a different day.

Picture of niCk at the finish line. (Warning: it's not pretty)
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