South Carolina 2012 with Matt

The Southend Brewery was really great and we sat outside and looked at the Charleston... ummm... scenery. When we were driving around before we couldn't help but notice the women folk and their lack of clothing. This was quite normal because it was in the 70s but and I loved Matt's comment that the beautiful women were good for morale. We were already in good spirits but that was the icing on the cake.

I slept on the couch in Matt's hotel room and it didn't go well. I'm too old to be sleeping on couches. So I was really looking forward to some coffee and breakfast. I took out my camera to take a picture of myself with my food and saw that it had been smashed. I dropped it on the ground last night when we stopped at Taco Bell and apparently we we ran over it with the car. So this was a really good way to start out the trip. Fortunately modern phones have a camera on them so I was still able to take some pictures. That would come in handy today because after breakfast we drove to the ocean to hang out for a while. It was so nice to be back out here at the Atlantic.

I love the ocean so it surprises me that I haven't been here since 2008 when I went to visit my Dad who was living in Melbourne, Florida at the time. I would never swim in the ocean because I'm scared of sharks and all of the other animals living out there that can hurt you. But I am a big fan of walking along the beach in bare feet and wading into the water. Matt was all for this and we spent the better part of an hour just walking around. Right now nothing else mattered and we could just live in the moment. Life was good.

Matt has been a good friend of mine since our respective siblings married. I knew right away that we would get along. I invited him to write for our satire news site The Daily Burner and he has already recorded one podcast with me. I brought my recorder out here to entice him to do another one and we did. While sitting on these stumps we looked out onto the sea and talked about a lot of things ranging from nautical terms, how many things you can name in the ocean, if we would set sail with Pirates and Paul Giamatti. You should check it out if you have the time by heading over to Burnin' Down the Podcast Episode 21: Ponder at the Ocean.

We saw this monster sandcastle on the beach so we decided to play a trick on our friend Nicole. Matt put together a shoddy little castle and I took a picture of it and sent it to her saying that Matt built it. Then he took a picture of me with this giant one and I sent it saying that I built it. She didn't buy it so I don't know what our intentions were but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

We drove through the city of Charleston checking out the houses and buildings and admiring the old world charm. The city has been around since the late 1600s and a lot of the old buildings and streets remain intact. It's something that cannot be duplicated in newer cities like Milwaukee. Now don't get me wrong I love my hometown but this place has some old style character. We stopped to grab a couple of beers at the Southend Brewery and I rode the clear elevator to get a bird's eye view of the operation. I've been on lots of brewery tours and I brew my own beer so the process always fascinates me. While there are the basic similarities it is always interesting to see what kinds of beer someone else makes and how they set up their operation. I was very impressed with it.