Off Day St. Cloud, MN

June 25, 2020

Off Day in St. Cloud, MN

I slept great last night in Sam’s daughter Ella’s bed. My body was sore and tired. This morning I had a two hour work meeting on Zoom that began at 10 AM Central Time. I sat out on Sam’s deck and listened to the sobering prospect of online remote instruction in the fall.

Sam, Ella, and I drove downtown to the White Horse Tavern. As we entered, Sam was asked to sign a contact tracing sheet and provide his phone number. Servers were wearing masks and the booths had been separated by dividers. I ordered a Bacon Cheddar Burger along with a Voyageur Boundary Waters American Brown Ale.

After lunch Sam took me to see his office, and we walked around the court buildings in St. Cloud. We drove back to Sartell and picked up our bikes from Brandon’s ’shed’. Afterwards we drove to House of Pizza where we joined Brandon and Paul, who was originally from Liverpool.

The Manchester versus Chelsea game was on TV and we caught the nail-biting finish, while enjoying pints of Finnegan’s Amber. Chelsea won the game, meaning that Liverpool had won the season, the first time they had been champions in thirty years. Paul was ecstatic and bought us all a round along with pizza. 

Sam and I drove over to Pantown Brewing Company, where his friend Ryan was waiting for us. Ryan and I had met in New York last fall. I enjoyed several pints of Pollinator Wheat along with handfuls of Matchstick Cayenne pepper pretzel sticks. It was Beeranthropy night, and representatives from the Bee & Butterfly Habitat Fund were raising money. There were two women in bee outfits, and they had a small hive of honey bees. Afterwards, Sam and I drove back to his place where we sampled various specialty beers from his collection. 

It was a restful off-day. Because I was several days ahead of schedule, I decided to take another off-day tomorrow.

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