The more you mention beer the better this gets

Way back here in the land of 10,000 lakes, Summit Brewery just announced its first new beer in over two years, the Horizon Red. Apparently it's even hoppier than their IPA, which means I'm going to love it. I mention this only because you keep bringing up good beer. I need to balance the scales a bit.

Down along the dusty corridors of I-40, you can bet we're going to need to slake our dry throats after a long day of dodging truckers in the "Dolbow Volvo". So I think we've got the skeleton of our journey set up, and we can flesh it out after the plane tickets are purchased. Yeah, I just made a pun. I am my father's son, after all.

So I didn't listen to the sound on that video, just watched a few minutes of the drive. Looks nice. And if Captain Picard says it's good, it's good.

Next debate: what kind of music are we going to dial up?

Highland Brewery: You had me at Kashmir

John, you told me Asheville was cool, but you never mentioned WHY. You should know that any brewer whose IPA shares a name with a Led Zeppelin song would seal the deal for me. So never mind Nashville vs. Memphis, that pretty much settles it for me.

(Of course, I totally agree about the "country vs blues" point you made. Although I'm probably much more tolerant of country than you are, the chances of the Grand Ole Opry hosting a show that I would be interested in are about 1 in 12,998.)

So that brings me back to my earlier point: we need to push beyond Amarillo on the first day so we can actually enjoy Memphis. Otherwise we'll be toast.

Since I got so sick of re-typing in our stops into Google Maps, I went ahead and made a custom map with some of the times noted. It's far from finished but it's a good start. Check it out and if you want to make your own notes in it, send me an e-mail from a Gmail account.