San Diego Visit (A Work Trip)

Never in my wildest dreams would I ever thought working for a beer wholesaler would have landed me a trip to San Diego. The trip was non stop, tons of fun, and was a great opportunity for me to bond with some of my coworkers. I will try my best to walk you through this with me but . . Beers, so many beers.

I left out of Richmond Saturday morning with two of my co-workers, and another two would meet is in CA, flying from Charlottesville. We had a layover in Atlanta, then onto San Diego, where we should have been united with fellow employees. Their plane had been delayed, and we were on our own to hit the town. I was already blown away by this point. We had left a seasonably chilly VA, and were now on the west coast. It was warm and the resort was full of the sound of children playing in the pool. We had plans on heading to Ballast Point in little Italy already so we just headed out early for that. It was packed, they had like 40 beers on tap, nearly half of which don't see distribution. I  would have been happy to sit there all night, we went on a failure of a walk about instead. 

The next morning we met Nick Flood (No shit his real name), our Green Flash tour guide, and our other two co-workers at the hotel bar to kick off the day of festivities. We headed off to Green Flash Cellar 3 first. It was quite the hike to get out there but it was nice to see some of the So-Cal landscape. We only see the occasional big bottle from cellar three in Virginia. This place had everything and lots of variants. It was super clean and not very busy. 

Pictured above is Nick Flood, in his backwards Green Flash hat. I appreciate that Green Flash didn't put their faithful through what the Bruery did with their wild fermentation program. This barrel house is dedicated souly to sour aging. The whiskey barrel aged beers like silva stout are still maintained at Green Flash. We went to Green Flash shortly after being here but didn't stay long, the talks of lunch got the crew plotting and scheming about how to break away and take advantage of being here.

I got very vocal about wanting to go to Pizza Port, so we did that for lunch. This place was amazing. They are a brew pub with five locations, and look at the beer selection. Their pizza is off the chain. Having lunch here also let the guys catch up on the status of their fantasy teams. I feel like we pretty much lost our escort at this point in the trip for saturday. We got back to the hotel, hung out for a bit. Then we went back to Ballast Point little Italy with the guys that just landed. Turnt up from there on out for events that included teaching craft beer in the hotel hot tub and walking around ocean beach.

Monday morning breakfast, and no one could drink their beer. I may or may not have ordered an Almanac Gose on the Green Flash tab. Food was great, but we were dragging ass. The original Alpine is pictured below is only a place to buy growlers and merchandise, so they built the pub, where we had lunch. The OG location was bad ass, and a testament to Alpine handle on all things hoppy. People flock to this dump for libations, barely leaving room to get down the street for the lack of parking. I was touched by the free hoodie I received that day. I have been to the holy land, and I got a gift better than a t-shirt.

So we had to be at the stadium pretty early. We got to go on the field and attempt to drink more beer. Tony Rawls managed to sneak of an get a selfie with Kendra Wilkenson!! I was so jealous, and elevated Rawls to a whole other level in my book. The game was cool. It's sad for San Diego that the chargers will probably be moving but the stadium was ancient. The steelers walked all over them, and the steelers fans were in attendance. 

Back in the streets afterwards naturally. Pretty crazy being from the east coast and thinking about us doing something after a monday night football game but we did. First we got some late night California tacos, pictured below. Then we went back to mission beach to drink with the Breckenridge rep on the beach. The beach was amazing. I can see how a man could get used to this. I wish I had thought to take an additional day off to stay a little longer. Andrew and I visited stone bright and early at the airport and back to the east coast we went, whomp whomp. I'll be back California, prepare yourself.