Vicarious Vlogs: Human Powered Brewery Tour 2016

Today was the ninth annual Human Powered Brewery Tour.

A fundraiser for Rocky Mountain ALS, the tour was started by Celeste O'Connor and Scott Slusher in honor of Celeste's two cousins who died from the disease.

The theme was "The Life Aquatic" based on the movie...which I and apparently most other people have not seen...

But we can Google on it. I made my costume easily, I already own a lot of light blue and aqua colored items, like my old Pearl Izumi team jacket, and a pair of girls leggings from Target. I made my hat from an old red t-shirt I never wear, so I cut it up and sewed it together, and printed the traffic light patch from my laptop at home, and covered it with clear tape to keep it water resistant, and stapled it onto the hat. I made an extra traffic light patch for my pogo stick.

I only went to four breweries, that was all the energy I had. This was my day I promised to myself to get away from work, I SO NEEDED IT!

The plan was New Belgium, Odell, Horse & Dragon, and Snowbank. The group would go on to Pateros Creek and a couple of other breweries but I was toast, and toasted enough after those four.

This morning there was a thick fog, it was cool and it didn't look like we would have the kind of sunny day we've been having all this past week.

I got dressed in my costume with extra layers underneath. I took my pogo stick but my plan was to park at Odell and ditch the pogo stick in the car after we finished there, it's a long way to Horse & Dragon carrying that thing. I ran to New Belgium from Odell, where I parked in the empty lot that is usually jammed once they open.

We all met at New Belgium before they opened the doors at 11, took pictures in costume, and it was great to see a lot of my old running friends, I have been so out of the loop for a long time. I didn't drink at New Belgium, mostly talked with people, catching up and shooting video.

After about 45 minutes it was time to move on to Odell...I jumped on my pogo stick and pogoed to the street, then ran with the big heavy thing all the way to Odell. What a workout! The sun was starting to come out and the fog was burning off.

I had a taster tray at Odell, I wanted to try one of the beers in there, a pale ale I'd never heard of, and I knew I liked most of the others. Horse & Dragon and Snowbank were my first time visits. I'll definitely go back to Horse & Dragon. I had a Picnic Rock Pale Ale there and it was good. Then at Snowbank I had a taster of the chocolate cherry stout which was also really good, but I'm not too big a fan of dark heavy beers. And the alcohol content was more like wine...

It was a good call to leave the pogo stick early, the beer was strong, even in small doses.

Everyone stayed at Horse & Dragon a long time and the bike group went on to Funkwerks, but I wanted to check out the ones I haven't been to. Betsy and I took off for Snowbank and we sat there with our chocolate cherry stouts talking, and eventually the bike group showed up. By 3:00 I was done and headed home.

It was a nice day, was fun and a great distraction from the endless piles of paper in which I am currently drowning.

Last I heard they raised over $3000 for Rocky Mountain ALS. I did the best I could with the video. Hope you enjoy it, consider joining us next year for the tenth anniversary.