For me, the biggest impediment to writing is putting the first word into the machine, knowing how much it’s going to hurt before I’m through.
Seldom if ever do the right words just fall from the ether and arrange themselves on a page. When it happens once or twice a year, I’m suspicious that my muse is playing a practical joke on me; it can’t possibly be this easy.
I’m an up-the-middle, old-school fullback sort of writer; two yards and a cloud of confetti. I keep hammering away at it until it fits together.
In 2026, “40 Years in Beer” #85 appeared at the end of January, just as the quarterly print edition deadline cycle at Food & Dining Magazine began. There’d be a lot to do, so my side projects always paused until the magazine was published.
However, that never happened. John Carlos White died unexpectedly just as we were making final preparations to go to the printer. Amid the sadness and confusion, I tried to get started again with “40 Years,” given that #86 largely was finished. It appeared on the 19th, though in all honesty my heart wasn’t back in it, at least yet.
There was a three-month gap until #87 at the end of June. Since then, nine installments have appeared, once a week on Tuesday apart from one week off. I’m excited; it’s taken me four years to cover the first four decades of my life, and now I’m all the way up to 2004!
Now I can’t find any of my files about the two Euro trips in 2004.
- #97 Tour de Trappiste (Beercycling 2004). The circumnavigation of Belgium by bicycle as we visited all the Trappist breweries in that enduringly awesome brewing nation.
- #98 The 2004 Euro Motorcoach No Holds Barred Finale. The last motorcoach excursion to date explored Czech Republic and Bavaria, and included the most breweries ever visited.
They’re somewhere. Photos are intact, and that’s good, but everything else evidently has been misplaced; it does no good to label bankers boxes if a file lands in the wrong one.
Also, 2026 Vacation II approaches (by the way the cover photo was taken at Popham Beach, Maine in 2017).
Basically, until there is time to begin diving into bankers boxes in the basement, I can’t finish anything. I can begin, and sketch things out, and get the photos queued, but we’re looking at another few weeks until the next two installments are finished.
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