As his birthday approached, I sensed he was apprehensive about this age milestone.
Sixty seems like reverse puberty. We'll be going through some changes during this decade. Aging bodies and finishing up our careers. It's exciting! And scary. I wrote the blog about this very thing when I turned sixty. March 1 was Paul's turn to join the 60 Club. He warned me - he wanted no surprises.
What does one do if he doesn't want a "party" for his birthday? We planned a pub crawl of course! Our tailgating pals, Ehreckes and McKims came to DSM to celebrate with us on Friday night. It was Kari's big bday earlier in the week, so we had 2 to celebrate.
Initially, Paul planned about five stops. I reminded him that we're 60 (except those youngster McKims).
We started at Peace Tree. It's a Quonset hut brewpub in the East Village. The place is named after a magical tree in the area that is now Lake Red Rock, near Pleasantville. As you can tell, I didn't think to snap the photo until we nearly drained our beers. We did take our own snacks - something that is welcomed at the places that don't sell food.
Then we went to the larger joint, Confluence in a warehouse area off Bell Avenue near Grays Lake. Paul and I usually enter through the other door, biking in. Confluence sells beer all over the state and one can find their beer on tap many places. After I took this pic, Kevin and Kari's daughter Kacie joined us. She recently moved back to Iowa from California and said she had fun hanging with the oldsters. It was nice to see her.
Our last stop before supper was Carl's Place. Because you need a good dive bar to bring you back to your small town Iowa roots.
Carl's is located near Hoyt Sherman on Woodland Avenue. It was hopping - filled with young people. In fact, Donnie tracked down one other group of older people for us to talk with. They too had noticed that we raised the average age of the joint. We watched the end of the ISU/Oklahoma game on the big screen. The Cyclones young team gives us reason for hope for next year. Plus ISU is really a football school, right? haha
We stopped at Gilroy's Kitchen for pizza on our way home. The conversation had me laughing so hard. Watching Paul laugh was fun too. Kevin can be quite entertaining and is a good artist. When we got home, Odie was so overjoyed to see that we brought friends with us.
Saturday morning we tried a breakfast casserole I put together Friday afternoon. Sausage, hashbrown, eggs, and cheese - nothing fancy, but filling. We are already excited about the football season and tailgating. Seven games this year! This is a good group to be sixty with.
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