Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one on the right, and that has made all the difference. Because, that’s the shortest route back to the house.
Namysłów Pils is alright. Generic, Polish beer.
The girl who’s To Do List this is needs a proofreader (she left the “i” out of “Daily”).
At 6 miles out of 7½, Sunday, I stopped in a Polish shop for a beer. This Perla Miodowa was surprisingly good and surprisingly honey-flavoured (unlike most domestic honey ales). Refreshing and energising morning-run treat.
Our Congressional Representative in Atlanta was — and for residents today still is — the gentleman, scholar, and warrior for change John Lewis (same name as the upscale department store with a socialist philosophy, here, but let’s stay focused). As a young man, he took a massive beating from Alabama police during a voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. A petition now exists (and you should support it) to rename the bridge in Rep. Lewis’ honour.
In my own virtual journey across a southern state (the GVRAT), I have now passed over the river and rest under the shade of the trees. I guess you can take the white boy’s educational bias out of the South but you can’t erase those fantastic quotes those awful folks are credited with. Actually, I blame Ken Burns.
So, there I stand just past the Hiawassee River. Only 3.1 miles today — a vacation, of sorts — as I focused on putting up the drywall in the laundry/cloakroom before inching the mileage to 389.9 on the beer run loop around West Bromwich. The lager, Kuflowe Mocne (Strong), was cold and crisp and well-earned. Like the John Lewis Bridge in Selma, AL.
I recently lamented that this DRINK/run diary has degraded into a drink/RUN diary and damn near into a RUN/run one. But, hungry and tired ¼ of the way through the run home I stopped for some vinegar crisps and a strong beer. Malt liquor smooth, a forty of Warka Strong and some orange juice would make a Funkski Monkski worthy of the rest of the trot (but, the beer would have to do on its own, today).
Back home after a hard 2/3 day at work and a painful trot home along the canals. But first, a stop in the News and Booze for a strong lager, Halne Mocne. Summery yummery.
Jackie needed some compost for gardening ventures and we are going to need a wheelbarrow for a lot of the upcoming refurb jobs so I did the morning run over to Oldbury and bought both, assembled the wheelbarrow in the car park, and ran back pushing the 120 liter block of compressed planting mix on my new trolley. The beer, an ice-cold Roztocze Czartowe Jasne Pelne, was my reward.
We both had online work in the morning but she has a half day Wednesday so for lunch I joined her on a (for me, second of the day) jog. At the end, this brought my Virtual Race Across Tennessee mileage to 208.7. My virtual location is shown on the map but there is no StreetView at this location (the nearest one is shown here):
As of today, 56 runners have finished the full crossing of Tennessee leaving something around 19,000 of us behind. I plotted a histogram of the remainers’ progress through today’s report in 10 mile bins (my group in red). For starting on the fourth day of the race, I’m relatively happy with staying on the high side of the lump:
Harnaś is a title given to the head of a gang of highwaymen in the Carpathian Mountains. These people were considered heroes like Robin Hood, seen more as protectors of the exploited highlanders than robbers of the rich. Today, Harnaś Jasne Pełne ennobled our gardening work.
Hottest day (so far) of the year and I was heading home from the now daily run. Break time! One of the Polski Skleps in Great Bridge served up an almost cold Kasztela which, despite being tepid, was remarkably refreshing.
The gardening done for the day, I settled into the local paper and another entry in the Neighbourhood Beer Tour. This time, it was Karmi which tasted like an overly sweet off-brand cola (not RC, but more like Ritz). I did my best to read the Polish label and found, in addition to the false claim that it is “not too sweet, not too bitter,” it is also not too alcoholic at only 0.5%. Still, it was refreshing and something different.
Different was not what I was after so, when that fiasco was over, an ice cold bottle of Perła Chmielowa Pils helped strip the syrupy remnants of Karmi from my palate. Yum.
Poured a new doorway floor and levelled up the grout lines in the neverending WC refurb with floor painting pending on whenever we can get the floor paint delivered.
When it is time to clean the brushes, we could probably do worse than using Karpackie. To be fair, it tastes surprisingly good for hobo beer.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 