Iron Heart Coaster - World Tour 2010-2012
-
Apologies. Here's my meger attempt at a Thanks giving update, without any pictures of the turkey or food, but really Jester's a hard act to follow. Was busy chowing, but managed to get a few anyway
Many thanks to Jester, once again for awesome updates and Pennsyvanian meibutsu/souvenirs and Giles for the coaster tote. 
Heading to the coast (Salinas, CA) this weekend and will bring them along.
-
-
T_W_E: I see a Hacker Pschorr Beer Mug. Where did you get that?
-
Giles done
Hectic done
Simon done
Seul done
Havingmysay done
Jestre done
that_was_easy doing
Chris
malibuboy
Gilbertt
simon626
Katsushin
Beatle
Shoque
charly
Denim Sailor
Nameness
LandoCal126Chris (ex Houstonchris) is up next, I guess TWE should be getting in touch around now.
-
Winging their way to Chris as we speak.
I watched Close Encounters of the 4th Kind four times per day for the duration of the holiday season, which I hope accounts for my lack updates. I could think of other excuses but there all about as plausible as the above.
-
And they arrived in today's mail.
I'll try to take some pictures and get them posted soon. I'm visiting my family in North Carolina and have sporadic access to the internet. Things won't get back to normal until 2011. Nonetheless, I'll try to make regular posts.
-
Glad to hear it Chris. I was hoping they'd get there before the new year. Enjoy!
-
OK, so the holidays are over and things are getting back to normal around here, which means that it's high time I posted an update for the coaster tour. For Christmas, we went to visit my family in North Carolina, which was fun. However, traveling with a relentlessly energetic, compulsively destructive, brain meltingly loud two year old is not. Nor is being a pack mule for the short ton of luggage that accompanies the three feet of terror. But I digress…
Visiting the family coincided with Charlotte's first white Christmas in my lifetime- a couple of inches fell in the city, which was just enough to look pretty without bringing the everything to a grinding standstill.
Of course, the WT coasters made an appearance under Mom & Dad's Christmas tree; every Christmas needs a little Iron Heart, right?
And no trip home is complete without sampling what is quite possibly North Carolina's finest contribution to cuisine:
This brings a new meaning to the phrase "tasty denim".
If you've only had Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the pre packaged boxes from the grocery or convenience store, or even worse, not tasted them at all, then I am truly sorry for you. Until you've eaten an original glazed doughnut fresh off the line while the "Hot Doughnuts Now" neon sign is glowing in the window, you have yet to experience true bliss.
On New Year's Eve, we made the 3 hour flight back to Houston and my wife and I spent a couple of days unpacking, doing laundry and cleaning house. My son spent a couple of days trying to spread the billion new toys that grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins insisted on giving him through as much of the house as possible. Fun.
Today I felt like having a burger, so naturally, I went to Texas's locally grown chain (I provided the drink, in case you were wondering. No burger chain is that awesome).
Turns out, IH coasters are good for more than just beverages. They also work great at holding bacon cheeseburgers.
I made sure no bacon was visible just for Seul.:)
They also functioned well as a candy dish for my dessert.
Anyway, that's what's been happening for the last few days. Pretty prosaic, but I hope you were at least mildly entertained. I'll try to find some more interesting stuff for you for the rest of my leg of the tour.
-
-
So we're due for another update, since it's been a few days. Looking over my pictures, there are a lot of food and/or drinks shots, which gives the impression that I'm a 400 pound alcoholic. Sadly, it's just that meals are generally the highlight of my boring days.
I'm trying to cut back on the overly caffeinated beverages with mixed success. Nonetheless, some days I need the kick, so here it is, the breakfast of champions:
For dinner Thursday night, I grabbed some food from one of our favorite Greek restaurants, Yia Yia Mary's. There's another place that I prefer for gyros, but that's something for another post… Anyway, I had moussaka and grilled asparagus, and baklava cheesecake for dessert. The wife had a truly uninspiring Greek salad (not worthy of pics). Oh yeah, and I grabbed a handful of candies that I've only found at that restaurant- ouzo flavored. Man, I love those things.
Today was errand day. First, we grabbed some sushi for lunch at a new(ish) spot; mostly because we had a coupon. The wife loves coupons. Overall, not bad and very friendly people working there. I'm always a bit weirded out when the folks making sushi aren't Japanese, though. Does that mean I'm a bad person?
Lunch was followed by some shopping for the kid. As the wife went looking for clothes, boredom set in, leading to my favorite photo of the day:
Finally, we swung by the Asian grocery store. I love the Asian grocery store. It always has the coolest stuff. Not just the groceries, but there are multiple shops and restaurants in there, too, so you can get all kinds of fun things. We got bubble tea and Korean food. Kimchee pancakes are surprisingly filling, in case you've ever wondered.
And here are some random things I found wandering the store aisles.
Roasted duck and pork
Apparently, dragonfruit is in season. Too bad I'm not exactly sure how to eat them.
Score! I have such a hard time finding squab with the feet still intact.
And that baby pigeon will make you thirsty, so what to drink?
Mmmmm, refreshing.And finally, while I'm not planning to make my own soy milk any time soon, we loved this particular appliance:
I'm guessing that "Germany" is the name of some industrial park in Kowloon. -
-
Now that I'm responsible for documenting my life for the WT, I realize how astonishingly dull said life can be. For the last few days I've basically been sitting at a desk and staring at my laptop. I haven't gone anywhere particularly interesting, nor done anything particularly noteworthy. The best I can come up with for you right now is some of what I've been drinking the last couple of days.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was in Charlotte for Christmas, I picked up some beers that I can't find locally. I've been working my way through them since I got home; at a leisurely rate of one new beer per day. Yesterday's new beer was this:
The sake flavor really comes through, which is a either a good or bad thing, depending on your preferences. I haven't decided yet which way I feel about it.And as a bonus, the bottle opener I keep in my bag (gotta be ready for anything, right?):
Considering that it was just a cheap souvenir I picked up at an ABC store in Vegas, it's a surprisingly good opener.Tonight's beer was this:
Since the label's damn near impossible for me to photograph, it's the Baltic Porter from the Duck Rabbit Brewery in Farmville, NC. The mindset of the founder/brewer sort of reminds me of Iron Heart:
I like how he's committed to making dark beer- stuff that isn't for everyone. I grew up in NC, and getting folks to drink anything darker than iced tea is an uphill climb.Anyway, that's all for now.
-
Maybe you can work out a deal where he gets some decent pants from IH. Poor guy's wardrobe is shameful.
Friday I decided to take a different route back to Houston and made a stop in the tiny town of Shiner, which is known for exactly one thing: being the home of the Spoetzl Brewery and Shiner beer. In operation since 1909, Spoetzl is the oldest independent brewery in Texas. For the first 60 years or so of its existence, Shiner beer was only sold within a 70 mile radius of the town of Shiner. It went statewide around 1989 (when a new owner brought the brewery back from near death and bankruptcy) and is now in 37 states and Mexico.
Yep, it's even a state landmark:
In the little sample cup is Shiner 102, so named because it's the anniversary beer for Shiner's 102 year of operation. They just finished brewing the first batch the night before I took the tour. Talk about fresh…Sadly, they don't allow pictures in the brewery, which is a shame- there were some great pictures of the brewery through the years, some old taps and beer making tools and a magnificent chair donated to the company back in 1995 when an expansion was completed. Called the King Gambrinus chair by employees, it's carved out of a single piece of wood with ram's heads for armrests (rams are a Shiner emblem) and a likeness of Gambrinus with a mug of beer at the top of the back rest. It's really awesome and I wish I could show it to you.
I stopped to fill up the tank in my car and, as is my habit, I checked the drink section of the gas station for offbeat energy drinks. I love silly energy drinks, the goofier the better. My two favorite finds are Hooters energy drinks, which taste nothing like buffalo wings or fake boobs, the two things for which Hooters is famous, and Ed Hardy energy drinks, which, according to the can, are "Like A Tattoo For Your Tongue!" which sounds... good? Naturally, I was thrilled to find a new one:
What makes it even better is this, on the back label:
It's actually not bad, but since I'm a city boy, I'm worried that the rednecks will be out for blood now.Then I headed on up the road, passing lots of nothing. Texas is a big, flat state. Some people like wide open spaces, but I find it dull. All that open space is good for one thing, though- cattle ranching. You know you're in the country when you see signs like these:
And no tour through Texas is complete without a picture of cattle.
These aren't the aforementioned Black Brangus, by the way, they're Red Brangus. I'm slightly depressed that I can even tell the difference and that I can name a half dozen breeds of cattle off the top of my head. What has living in this state done to me?Then I hit the town of Moulton. Don't let the location (middle of nowhere) and the size (really tiny) fool you. Moulton is hip. Moulton is badass. Moulton is street, mothafuckaz. How do I know this?
That's Bobkatz, with a "k" and a "z".
Hells, yeah, bitchez.
