Hobo Lifestyle

Back in the US, Northern States for the Summer

2025-07-20T11:47:00.000-04:00

My time in Europe was both productive and fun, which I'll talk about, but a budget flight landed me back in the US, where I decided to spend the summer rolling across the northern states. Winters up here can be pretty brutal, so now is the time to hitch around for a little adventure and check in with friends.

I'll catch you up on my Europe travels, and you can choose to listen to those stories as well by freely subscribing to the "Freestyle Travel Show" on any podcast app, or use these links here:

#118 - Quick Trip Through England

#119 - To The Netherlands

#120 - Hitchhiking from Holland to Spain

#121 - Journey From Portugal to Greece

Just reading those titles, you get an idea of the path I was on. I caught up with a couple of friends, one in Amsterdam and another in The Hague. From there, my next big target was Portugal, where yet another friend was living who I hadn't seen for a while.

So, on down I went, through Belgium, France, and Spain. It was pretty go-go-go, but I got some good rides along the way and even some breif invites. For example, a guy in France picked me up around sunset on a rainy evening and invited me to meet his wife and stay the night, complete with some home cooking, local wine, local cognac, and plenty of stories to be told.

I also caught up with a friend in Spain, someone I'd met while volunteering for Couchsurfing.com back in 2008 in Alaska. From there, I at last made it to Portugal, where my friend had already gotten us tickets to Flamingalo, which called itself "Portugal's Burning Man."

My friend is a techie, travel-minded guy, like myself, and he's actually had a lot to do with Couchsurfing, BeWelcome, Hitchwiki, Trustroots, and other nomadic types of sites on the web. Between hikes and the festival, and catching up, I found myself writing some code for both Trip Hopping and rideshares.org, a new little project we started on a whim.

Speaking of Trip Hopping, a lot has gotten done over these past few months in my free time. I recommend heading over to TripHopping.com or downloading the app on Android.

I've gained access to 4,000 bus companies around the world, so along with flight costs and hitchhiking spots, you'll now see the times and costs of bus tickets for wherever you're going. I've also made it easy to find travel companions. You can load up all your preferences on your profile to show potential hosts, guests, or travel friends what you're about. On top of that, those preferences can be used to give you super-specific recommendations on what to see and do no matter where you are in the world.

Trip Hopping is awesome, get after it.

Actually, it's on Trip Hopping that I found a flight from Athens, Greece, to New York City while I was sitting in a coffee shop in Lisbon. For just over a hundred bucks, I found my ticket across the Atlantic Ocean. All I had to do was hitchhike from Portugal to Greece in less than two weeks. Easy.

I got moving, inching my way into Spain, staying with a host here and there, stealth camping in French cities, and stagnating a bit in Italy. I paused for a couple of nights in Lubljana, staying with a Trustroots host who'd done plenty of hitchhiking over the years as well.

At last, I blasted through Croatia and Serbia via 18-wheelers and the rest of it, crossing borders until I finally got into Greece and caught one last ride into Athens. Once there, I had a place to stay with a few housemates who'd all done their share of traveling. I roamed around the city, hit some breweries on my birthday, and at last jumped on the NYC-bound flight.

This was two months ago, and my route from there was from New York to Virginia Beach, down to North Carolina, across the state to Nashville, and up through Indy to Michigan. From the Upper Penninsula I came down through Wisconsin to Iowa - and that's where I am now.

Those stories are also on the podcast:

#122 - From New York to Nashville

#123 - Midwest Hitchhiking

Since being back in the States, it's been a lot of checking in on friends and family. One brother in Manhattan, a friend who originally picked me up hitchhiking who lives in Virginia Beach, another brother in North Carolina, and my third brother and other family in coastal North Carolina.

I saw one of my Mississippi friends in Asheville, did some pet-sitting in Nashville, then saw more friends one by one on the run up through Indy and Michigan.

So now I'm in the middle of it, catching up with Liz in Sioux City (she's been on the podcast a handful of times and we're recording another episode today), and next I'll be backtracking to Minneapolis to see another old friend.

The summer will keep rocking on, hitching westbound. The exact path isn't laid out, and diversions are always welcome, so we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, you can follow along on Trip Hopping, Instagram, and the rest of it. See you down the road!

I Wound Up In England And Now The Rest Of Europe

2025-04-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

A month ago, neither England nor any of Europe was on my mind. I thought I might be hitching through Albuquerque en route to vague adventures through Texas and the east of the US. Then came a message from my good friend Molly, proposing I come join her in England to help capture some video and photos of her trauma-informed teacher training... and so here I am in Europe. Amsterdam, now, but we'll get to that.

I'd helped similarly around the same time last year when Molly asked if I'd come to Ireland, so just like last year, she helped organize the funds to get me flown out to help with her organization, the Yoga Mandala Project.

The flight was out of Las Vegas, so having wrapped up a successful session in Phoenix improving my own Trip Hopping app, it was time to hitch to Vegas.

Want to listen to this and the upcoming stories on my podcast? Search and subscribe to my free podcast, the Freestyle Travel Show, on your favorite app, or listen on Spotify:

#116 - Police Thumb Down My Nevada Desert Run to England

#117 - Quick Trip Through England

I got a late start hitching out of Phoenix and caught just one ride that took me past Kingman to Golden Valley, the turnoff to Laughlin. Having a couple days headstart before my flight, I figured I'd use the "free" rooms in the casino in Laughlin. I haven't had many gambling days in the past year, so gone are all the perks that come and go - that being totally free rooms in Vegas and everywhere else.

Laughlin needs people, always, so a night there was going to cost $15 and come with $35 in freeplay (money you have to gamble), so it was bound to be essentially free.

But I did not make it to Laughlin on this first night. The sun went down in Golden Valley, a mere 20 miles from Laughlin, so I was stuck walking the desert road, fruitlessly sticking my thumb out to passing headlights to no avail. Tucked under a bridge in my bivy for the night, I'd have to wait for the sun to come back around.

Come the sunlit morning, getting a ride took only minutes, and soon I was in front of the Tropicana in Laughlin. Indeed, I paid the $15, and indeed I ran the $35 in freeplay through a video poker machine until it became $25 actual dollars. So, I got paid $10 to sleep there that night.

I refrained from any actual gambling since my cash stash was too low to take a chance and show up in Europe at zero. My flight was the next day in Vegas at 5pm, just 100 miles away on a stretch of road I'd hitched backwards and forwards a dozen times at least. No problem, I figured.

I didn't take any chances, waking up at sunrise and walking from the casino to the main road like I had many other times, pointing to Vegas. After more than an hour of cars passing, finally, one stopped, but unfortunately for me it was a cop in a marked SUV. He came to tell me that "doing this," as he stuck his thumb out, was illegal in Nevada. I know better than to correct a cop, as I know how the law is written in this case, so I just had to stand there smiling and keep things smooth.

I explained I was going to Vegas to catch a flight, and he seemed sympathetic, but not enough. Despite me "seemingly like a good guy just on his way somewhere," he told me that if anyone were to call in or if him or any other cop drove by and saw me with my thumb out that the first time he'd write me a ticket, and if caught again after that it would be straight to jail.

Not a great situation. He drove off, and I then realized just how tricky this would be. I've been given this type of warning before, and usually eyeball the coming car to see if it's a cop or not before sticking my thumb out. In this case, I'd already seen police pickup trucks, regular cars, and the SUV like his - too many types of vehicles to identify oncoming traffic in the distance.

So, I walked and walked into the desert hills, unable to stick my thumb out except for very selectively, more or less counting on someone realizing that a man walking in the middle of nowhere alongside the road more than likely needs a ride, thumb out or not.

As the miles and hours counted up, so counted down the time until the flight. What would I do if I missed it? The question had no good answers. I kept walking.

At last, when all hope was nearly lost, a box truck pulled over and suddenly, I was wheeling straight for Vegas. Relieved, I sat in smiling silence (with a driver who didn't speak English) until we got to an exit on the highway less than 6 miles from the airport. I hopped out, and even though I had a two-hour walk ahead of me, it would be just enough time to get there.

Desert drama over, soon I was up in the air for an overnight flight to London. I landed there in the morning and had a 5-ride hitchhike day to get to Southampton, my intermediate destination. Three pretty girls and two guys in vans with a fair share of walking in between is what got me there.

India Jane was waiting for me in Southampton, a girl I'd met in Nepal for a brief adventure and was seeing for the first time since then, offering to host me for a couple nights until I was needed in Poole for Molly's events. It was good catching up and spending a day wandering the city, then I spent half a day hitching just two rides to get to Molly's area.

Once over there in Poole, I spent shy of a week meeting different yogis and people involved in the Yoga Mandala Project, along with a couple of familiar faces I'd met the year before in Ireland. Shooting video, snapping pictures, editing video... the days melded together, and a lot got done.

By the end of it, Molly easily talked me into joining her in Liverpool to take a little more video, providing me with money for a bus to make it easy. I rode with her to Southampton, where she was taking a couple days off with some other friends a ferry ride away, so I caught up with India again before bussing up to Liverpool.

A few days in Liverpool involved some more video and pictures, then the other yoga women went their separate ways until it was just Molly and I for a final night. Just a day before, I'd plotted my escape from the UK by way of a found $20 flight from Manchester (the next city over) to Cologne, Germany. This would get me to "mainland" Europe. For what? Well, to see some friends in the Netherlands, at least, then just see what could happen next.

Molly and I had a good time running around Liverpool; she took me to the Cavern Club of Beatles fame, and I guided us to Brew Dog taphouse, one of the better beer spots in the UK. The early morning came quickly, and we parted ways just outside the rented apartment, her to make her way by train to London and fly to Phoenix, me to hitchhike to Manchester to catch the Germany flight.

Shy of two hours later, I'd walked to the edge of Liverpool to what should have been a decent hitchhiking spot, tired from no sleep but with all day to get there. My flight wasn't until 10pm.

After a couple hours of getting no rides, which was unexpected in that spot, I was exhausted. A breeze of WiFi blew in just long enough to see I was only a few minute walk from where a bus picked up, heading directly to the Manchester airport. Fine, I thought, I had some paper UK money that would otherwise be hoarded until my next trip over, so I'd use it for the easy bus. But it turns out I didn't need it.

The bus arrived, and I was the last of four people waiting to get on. I asked the young driver how much it cost to get to the airport. "Just hop on in," he smiled, and I didn't hesitate the free offer. This particular bus is the type that people get by buying their tickets online, so showing up with cash wasn't a thing, and he could really care less about me jumping on with plenty of extra seats. A nice win.

And so, I showed up at the airport nearly twelve hours before the flight, but better than missing it. The flight itself was just less than 2 hours and dumped me in Cologne, Germany, well after midnight. After a long wait in a passport line, I was out on the street and just a 10-minute walk to a big forest to camp for the night.

My agenda? Well, in Germany, I had no ideas. I was just there because that's where the cheap flight landed. My main concern was seeing my great friend Walter near The Hague, and my other friend just north in Amsterdam. So, I spent a day wandering through Cologne, getting a couple glasses of Kolsh (the boring beer the city is known for), and camping again, now north of the city.

The day getting from there to Amsterdam took 10 rides, some walking, and waiting in the sun, but it was surely worth it. I got dropped off on the opposite side of the city as my friend, a two-hour walk, but a great walk. Amsterdam was more alive than I'd ever seen it, perhaps because it was a Friday, and perhaps because it was probably the first warm and beautiful day of the season.

Along the canals in the south, there were hundreds of people circled up with bottles and cans and picnic blankets, laughing and carrying on, some looking like they'd been there all day by the count of empties piled up. Towards the center, the bike traffic was thicker than memory served me, cafes were packed, spilling into the streets, and everyone in good spirits.

I reached my friend's place in a good mood and caught up, each sharing stories of our recent travels.

This was last night, now here I am on another good looking day in Amsterdam, the city that always seems to have one more layer to show me each and every visit.

The plan now? Well, I'll spend some days here before making my way just south to Walter's, which I'm always excited about. And after that, I couldn't say. There's ideas of hitching to Portugal, the front-runner at the moment, but with the weather getting better, it feels like all of Europe is fair game.

So, as always, we shall see.

Trip Hopping My Way Down The Road

2025-03-10T17:42:00.008-04:00

Trip Hopping has been my obsession lately. It's my revived travel app that takes on just about everything travel-related for a rambler like myself, and I'll get into that shortly.

Otherwise, it's been a good year. I got back to the USA this past Halloween and have since hitchhiked my way from the east coast to the west coast, spending New Year's Eve 2025 in Reno, then bending to Northern California before dropping to the bottom.

If you're not listening to my podcast, the Freestyle Travel Show, you're missing out. My recent travels are talked about in the latest episodes, you can fully catch up through these links or your favorite podcast app:

#111 - Back in the States

#112 - Hitchhiking from North Carolina to Arizona was Awesome

#113 - 2024 Hitchhiking Stats and Travel Recap

#114 - Revisiting People and Places

#115 - Hitchhiking Down California

In February I reached Phoenix, which has been talked about for a while now. This brings us to Trip Hopping. Quick history lesson: I started traveling like this in 2007, started using Couchsurfing to meet people and find places to stay, and immediately decided to make a complimentary website for people looking for rides. A Couchsurfing host named Larry in Phoenix liked the idea, so we started calling the site Trip Hopping.

We had several get-togethers to work on the site, calling it either a hackathon, a collective, or a brew. Eventually, ongoing travel and distractions (with me being the sole dedicated developer) lead to the site fading away.

I'd think about it from time to time, and a couple of years ago those thoughts became more frequent. No other apps or sites were hitting the mark, none achieving the vision I had in my head as the perfect travel app that could tie it all together. A combination of aggregating all the great existing sites and information, as well as providing a platform for spontaneous meetups and "digital hitchhiking" and other such things.

It had been years since I'd written a line of code, but upon discovering a framework called Flutter, I was reinvigorated. Flutter was developed to write one codebase that would work across web, Android, and iOS, rather than having to learn different programming languages and maintain scattered code for it all to work. There are other ways to do this now, but Flutter is what caught my attention.

One day I was watching some YouTube videos about it, the next day I was installing it and playing around with it... and that same day I was suddenly rebuilding Trip Hopping.

So, here I am, back in Phoenix. What was supposed to be another "brew" became a solo mission (Larry decided at the last minute that the house wasn't suitable for a crew of people), but it has been productive nonetheless - and at least one person did indeed drop in anyhow.

I'm at the tail-end of the session now, with the largest milestone being the release of the app on the public Google Play store for Android.

The app now shows all the ways to get from A to B, from posting rideshares directly to pulling in data from all over to show other rideshare sites results, flight costs, buses, trains, and even the best actual spots to hitchhike from, as well as direct links to relevant hitchwiki articles.

Members can go "live" when they want to share a ride or meet up for a beer or a hike or to hang out wherever they are. We can share our upcoming trips to see where each other are going and comment and like them like any other social network. People can post articles, advice, entertainment, or unique spots on the map to share - that's all a bit like a travel-specific Reddit that also intelligently puts these links where they need to be seen (like a link to a shuttle between Salt Lake and Las Vegas when you're searching that route, or a campsite near a hot springs when you're looking for a place to stay nearby).

I even added a feature that lets you import the contacts on your phone so you can see them on a map, so you never miss out on seeing an old friend when you're closeby, even if they're not on Trip Hopping.

It's awesome. There's more. I love it.

And also... I'm starting to go stir-crazy. It's not full-on, but I'm just about to that point - time to move. A month in one spot is a lot for me, so it's saying something that I'm still not fully losing my mind yet.

So, I'll get some more done this week, then it's off to... northern Arizona to see friends? Laughlin to try and make a few hundred bucks at the casino? Camping in the desert somewhere? Eastbound..? Definitely east bound at some point, perhaps over the Atlantic depending on a thing or two.

We'll see, but yes, I gotta keep moving. Another "brew" is not out of the question, maybe even in the coming months in a place like North Carolina. Trip Hopping is already far better than it was 10+ years ago, and I'm not going to let it fade away this time.

That's it for the moment. If you haven't checked out my Patreon page, that's where I post an exclusive micro-podcast a few times a week and other good stuff for the people who really want to support my travels and the other things I'm up to... like pouring hundreds of hours of my time into making the best free travel app on the planet. Just saying.

Good times, catch you on the next one.

Revisiting People and Places (podcast)

2025-01-10T18:46:00.001-05:00

In this episode, I talk about tripping Wyoming to Utah, Reno, and California while reflecting on what it's like revisiting people and places over nearly 18 years of non-stop travel.

Hitchhiking Statistics for 2024, recapping my travels

2025-01-04T20:08:00.006-05:00

In this episode, I recap my travels in 2024 traveling across 34 countries, and go through some of my hitchhiking statistics from the year.

Robert Struggles in Chicago (podcast video)

2023-08-22T18:10:00.001-04:00

Robert Struggles found me online while looking into traveling. We finally met in person five years ago, and just recently I saw him again around Chicago to hear that he's made some trips as far as Hawaii and Europe, as well as around the continental United States. Dig the conversation, and also I give some updates on my recent hitchhiking and travels through Iowa and Minnesota, filming Hopping episodes on my way to see Robert in Chicago.

Liz Stewart in Iowa (podcast video)

2023-07-31T10:07:00.000-04:00

Liz Stewart makes her fifth appearance on the show, this time in Iowa, where she's been living for nearly the past year as she's battled to stay clean with her presidential cat sidekick. I hitchhiked on over from Wyoming to see her, film some Hopping episodes, and have a book signing while in town for Nomadic Moonlight. It was the busiest weekend of the year in Sioux City as cyclists swarmed in from around the world for RAGBRAI.

Desolate Hitchhiking from Vegas to Portland

2023-07-25T16:53:00.007-04:00

Staying Clean and Fresh While Traveling

2023-04-25T20:11:00.000-04:00

Staying clean while traveling might seem like a challenge, especially if you're a "Freestyle Traveler" who may be hiking, hitchhiking, taking buses, or putting yourself in any other number of unique travel situations.

Some people get comfortable with their own stink, but this isn't cool in many situations that may affect your travels. If you're hitchhiking, your ride might get cut short by someone who can't tolerate the stench. If you're bellied up to the bar, others might not want to get so close to you. You may even get kicked out of some places if you're particularly brutal.

Let me share some obvious and not-so-obvious tips for staying clean on the road in the form of these categories:

Ideal quality and quantity of clothing and storage
Toiletries to carry (and what not to bring)
Keeping your clothes clean
The places and ways to get cleaned up

Best travel clothing for staying clean

Let's start with your clothes. I've written an entire guide to ultralight packing, but we'll focus on clothes that don't stink here.

Merino wool is your best friend. This fabric is most commonly used for shirts, underwear and socks. The secret's been out on Merino wool for a while: it doesn't start to stink nearly as fast as other fabrics.

If you can get two Merino wool t-shirts, a max of three, you'll be in really good shape. They're insanely comfortable and dry very quickly, which makes washing them easy (I'll get into a trick with that below). You may also want to find a balance between a darker color that will hide potential stains, but keep in mind that for things like hitchhiking, brighter colors win... so that's why I like certain blues and greens.

The same goes with Merino wool socks and underwear: two to three pairs are plenty. The stuff isn't cheap, but since you'll only need two or three of each item it kind of balances out.

Store your clean and dirty clothes separately. This should be fairly obvious, but even just having a plastic grocery bag to stuff your dirty socks or underwear in to separate it from your clean clothes will do the trick. If your backpack has an external pocket, I suggest stuffing that grocery bag in that outer pocket for further separation.

Toiletries

Some essentials:

Plastic ziplock bag
Br. Bronner's soap
Deodorant (hack video)
Toothbrush

Bonus:

Beard trimmer
Toothpaste
Mini shampoo
Chapstick
Sunscreen

A standard ziplock will contain your stuff and prevent spills and also may be required if you're flying.

Dr. Bronners is the ultimate travel hygiene product. This liquid soap goes a long way, with just a few drops being enough to wash your body; 2oz bottles last me forever. You can also wash your hair with it, brush your teeth with it and wash your clothes with it. It's the best.

A toothbrush is a given, and snapping the handle off to save weight is the oldest trick in the book. I made a video about how to melt down deodorant into a smaller container for travel, it's worth a watch.

I have an entire post about the lightest and best beard trimmers, I suggest you give that a look and decide for yourself which way you wanna go with that.

I list toothpaste and shampoo as "bonus" since you can use Bronners as both. Also, often times if you have access to a proper shower you'll probably also have access to shampoo, whether it's at a friend's house or a hostel or otherwise, so you can get away without carrying it yourself.

I rarely use chapstick or sunscreen. Particularly, sunscreen is extra obnoxious for me when I'm not sure I'll have a proper chance to wash it off later in the day or for days... but people do love their sunscreen, and I'll probably pay for it when I'm older. It's up to you.

Washing clothes

If you're staying with a host (through Couchsurfing, Trustroots, Couchers, BeWelcome, etc) or a friend or whatever, then you might have access to a washing machine which is a no-brainer. I tend to wash my clothes at the latest possible moment, like the night before or the morning I leave, so I hit the road completely fresh.

Pro tip: If they use dryer sheets, keep them with your clothes in your bag rather than throwing them out and your clothes and pack will smell extra fresh for a while.

Any sink is another option for washing your clothes. Maybe you sprang for a hotel room, or maybe you somehow have access to a public bathroom for an extended period of time. Fill it up with water, a few drops of Dr. Bronner's, scrub your clothing items, rinse them, then let them dry.

You can do the same in lakes and rivers, as Dr. Bronner's is all-natural.

One of the most efficient ways to wash your clothes, however, is to do it while you're washing yourself, which I'll describe in the next section.

Washing yourself

Below I describe a multitude of places and ways to get cleaned up, some are obvious, some not so much. I mentioned washing your clothes while washing yourself, which is as simple as wearing your clothes in the shower, for example, soaping them up with yourself, rinsing them, and then drying them out. This is where Merino t-shirts really shine, as you can take a shower wearing one, wring it out a bit, and throw it right back on and it'll dry very quickly while you're wearing it.

Shower while staying with friends/hosts/hostels/hotels

This is an obvious one, but of course you can use a legit shower often when you're couchsurfing or staying with friends.

More times than not, when you have access to someone's shower you'll also be able to borrow their towel, so I recommend not packing a towel of your own, of any kind, as it's a waste of weight and space. In a pinch, you can always use a dry clean shirt you already have as a towel.

Like washing my clothes, I try to take a shower at the last possible minute when staying somewhere, so I'm optimally fresh when I hit the road and may not know when the next wash will come.

Truck stop showers

Most major truck stops have showers you can use, but often it costs ten bucks or more. However, most truck drivers get more free shower credits (for fueling up) than they can actually use, so ask nicely and a driver just might let you use one of their credits.

Sinks in public bathrooms

You will master the art of the sink bath (also called a bird bath or whore bath for fun). Grab some paper towels, lather them up a bit, and hit your armpits and crotch. Splash some water on your face. Off you go. This is best done as quick as possible in single-occupancy bathrooms or on the sly in bigger bathrooms. Just don't make a mess. Break out the Dr. Bronner's if you have more time/privacy.

Rivers/Lakes

This is a great one, just go for a swim with some Dr. Bronner's and you're good to go. Just like showering, you can jump in the water wearing your underwear and t-shirt and soap those up while you're at it too. Totally clean!

Gym memberships

A classic van-life and car-camper trick is to pay for a yearly membership to any of the big gym chains that are in cities everywhere. Many don't even use the actual gym facilities, and do it just for access to the showers. Often there's a place to sit and charge electronics or just chill as well.

Beach showers

Beach towns and similar spots will have public shower heads either in a bathroom or right on the beach or boardwalk. Some people get weird, so you might wanna make it quick before they have a reason to complain. Have the Dr. Bronners ready and speed through a beautiful shower and feel fresh.

Wet wipes

I rarely use wet wipes as I find it one more thing to carry, and all the above tips get me by, but plenty of travelers swear by them. Having them does mean you can clean up in a pinch, anywhere, at any time, and not have to count on finding a public sink, lake or shower somewhere. If you don't mind carrying a few, it could come in handy at some point.

Stay clean, and travel well!

I hope that helps you out in staying clean along your travels. Enjoy the journey, friends!

Nomadic Moonlight is my latest book

2023-04-01T21:10:00.002-04:00

Nomadic Moonlight is my second book to be published and it's a fun one. It tells the story of my first decade of living out of my backpack and on the go. With each turn of the page, we jump ahead to what I was doing and where I was at during the next full moon, starting with my last moon living in New York.

There are hitchhiking adventures, new friends, romances, jail, getting punched in the face, falling in love, stealth camping, keeping up with family, harvest seasons and all kinds of practical travel advice laced into the stories. I had fun writing it and reliving so many adventures, while also seeing just how much the full moon lined up with some of my crazier stories.

I hope you love it, jump on over to Amazon to grab an ebook or the paperback and feel free to leave me a review when you're done.

Keep dancing!

Going to Every Brewery in Chico, California

2023-03-06T19:42:00.005-05:00

I didn't know I was going to go to every brewery in Chico in a day. Sure, going to a few made sense if I was in town, but as I hitchhiked out of Reno, I didn't even know I was going to Chico.

Sacramento was my destination after a few days in Reno where I'd come to put Zane Lamprey on my podcast. As I stood on the onramp near the casinos, I was aware that Zane and his crew were also heading to Sacramento, or perhaps already had, and he had a comedy show there later this night. The tour manager had offered to give me some free tickets if I made it.

It only took two rides to get to Sacramento - one short ride to the edge of Reno, and the second from a girl heading to the Bay Area that dropped me off along the way.

Off to the brewery I went, along with my friends in town who were also fans of Zane. Many beers, many laughs - you know the score.

I spent a couple days in Sacramento with my friends, and after just some beers and food here and there I was down to single digits in the cash department - less than ten bucks and starting to feel it. This is when Chico popped up, as I had a friend there who usually needed help with one project or another.

I hitchhiked up there with just one ride from a guy who dropped me off at Sierra Nevada Brewery. And no, this is not the day I went to every brewery. In fact, I only had enough money to get a half-pint, which I happily did.

My buddy picked me up there and we headed just out of town to his place where I spent the next few days. There wasn't as much to do as I thought, or at least he wasn't quite organized enough to find things, but I did come out of it with a couple hundred bucks which is a world of difference compared to the few dollars I had before.

Chico is one of my favorite towns. I have a good handful of friends and places that I like and really can't come to town without seeing them. The coast was calling my name, but before I could hit the road, one of my friends suggested I make a Hopping video where I went to every brewery in Chico in a day - so I did.

You can watch the video, I recommend it, but I'll tell you how the day went as well. First, I got another friend on board to come along and do the filming. He'd just been telling me he was getting interested in making some videos, so this was perfect.

We started early at Farmer's Brewery to make sure we'd squeeze in every brewery. There are only six breweries in town, but I know how easily I can get distracted by awesome beer and friendly people. Friends joined us along the day as we went over to Sierra Nevada and the Mulberry Station Brewery.

In the middle of the day, we took a break from beer and switched it up to cider, as I know the owner of Lassen Cider who makes some killer bottles. We continued on to my favorite brewery in town, Secret Trail, then wrapped up by going to Nor Cal Brewing and ending at Allies Pub, which is home to British Bulldog Brewery.

I was pretty well toasted by the end. By my friend's count, I'd tried thirty-eight different beers - and I don't think that counted the half dozen ciders I tried in between. Somehow we rallied out later that night going to a dance party and getting into other shenanigans.

I spent a few more days in town after that, recovering from the day, helping out other friends with yard work and the like, and just enjoying the Chico vibe. Finally, though, it was time to pull myself away from the magnetic town and hitch towards the coast.

A friend living in a mortuary awaited me there, along with another spontaneous mission I hadn't yet thought of: going to every coastal California brewery north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Why not?

Hitchhiking to Reno for the Zane Lamprey Interview

2023-02-28T14:43:00.002-05:00

I first heard of Zane Lamprey through shows he had like Drinking Made Easy. I got in touch with him when I heard he was also making gear like jackets and backpacks, and doing standup comedy at breweries. We remained in loose contact, and when I saw he was going to be doing a show in Reno, I reached out to him about being on my podcast, then decided to head that way. You can keep reading, watch the video of this adventure below... or both.

Starting in Wyoming, where I'd come for a wedding, I began hitchhiking westbound. I had two or three days to get to Reno, so felt no rush and even considered detouring to Boise.

The first day started easy and finished in a drunken flurry. A ride from a couple women into Idaho came immediately, then another two rides, another two, and finally one last ride into Boise where I arrived well before dark. It was a lightning-fast day, really, waiting only several minutes between each ride.

I was in Boise, as I hoped, but really had no idea what I was doing. So - I went to Barbarian Brewing. Beer is often the answer, and so again it was. Sipping on a beer there, I studied the satellite map of the area considering possible stealth camping spots. I messaged a couple of friends I had that might be in town too, and also someone I knew online who'd started a beer-discount club.

You can't assume people will have a couch for you, but the hope is that at least someone is around to be a drinking buddy for the night. I wound up with both. The woman from Boise Beer Buddies was nearby and dropped into Barbarian to join me for a drink. This became a tour around to another three, or four (or five? six?) breweries getting sloshy into the night.

I crashed at her place and paid for it the next day: hungover and hitchhiking in the 105-degree heat, often with no shade as I slogged through the day. Three short rides and many hot hours from when I started, and I was only one town over on the far edge of Nampa. Luckily, I got one last ride to Winnemucca where I arrived right around sunset.

Only a couple hours drive from Reno, but no point in going any further. I was beat, and I wouldn't have a place to stay in Reno until the next night anyhow. If I was going to stealth camp somewhere, my choice of the bushes in the desert near the highway here was better than the dense streets of Reno.

In the morning I hitched a long ride from an 18-wheeler just short of Reno, and a ride into the city from a girl going to catch a plane to Indianapolis for a gaming convention. She dropped me off right in front of the El Dorado casino where I was fairly certain I could get a free comped room.

I was right, they stuck me in room 777, begging me to gamble (which I would do, to my detriment). Getting up to the room, I chuckled at the thought that a night ago I was stuffed in a bivysack on the side of the highway and now I was in a fancy-pants hotel room for free. I also realized I hadn't had a bite of food in two-plus days.

I walked, as if I hadn't been walking enough already, a ways from the casinos to a place I knew had all-you-can-eat sushi. It was more expensive than the last time I'd been there, but I was there, had the money, and was as hungry as I get. So I chowed down and perked up even more remembering that all-you-can-drink sake was included.

Over the next couple of days, I gambled away over a hundred dollars playing blackjack, hit up Revision Brewery for some tasty beers, and left myself with just around forty bucks to live on until I could make money some way. Stretching this kind of money is something I've had to do a lot, so I soldiered on with confidence.

I met Zane Lamprey at a nearby brewery an hour before he had to perform, and we hopped backstage to record the podcast. You can find that interview by searching for my podcast "Freestyle Travel Show" on your favorite app, or you can watch the video.

It went well and so did his show, and I wandered on back to the casino and was fairly certain I'd hitchhike to Sacramento in the morning, which is coincidentally where Zane was going too. Summer was well underway, so beyond Sacramento, California had plenty in store for me and my hitchhiking ways.

Summer Hitchhike to Wyoming for a Wedding

2023-02-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

My Spring of travels went from Phoenix to Wyoming by way of Nevada, Salt Lake, and a couple days on the river in Idaho.

Starting from Phoenix, I hitchhiked to Laughlin, Nevada - a small casino town on the Colorado River that serves as the border to Arizona. While fairly uneventful, I hatched a plan to hitchhike to Vegas where I figured I'd film a fun beer-related video for my Hopping channel and catch one of those budget flights to Salt Lake for a boost.

Hitchhiking to Vegas took only one ride to Henderson where I hit up some breweries on arrival before the last leg to the strip where I had another comped casino hotel room waiting for me. Why do I get these free rooms? Because occasionally they catch me slipping, like on this very first night where I blew the last hundred bucks I had trying to get myself a little more beer money. Backfired.

So, a plan I'd made to try and visit as many breweries in a single day by walking, was now no longer financially viable. I still took a walk the next day, hitting up Able Baker and a couple of other breweries with the little money I had left.

One of those breweries was fairly new, Neon Desert, and I wound up featuring them in this episode you can watch here.

And so, a couple days later I was on the plane just up to Salt Lake where I caught up with a good friend of mine, and as luck would have it, he was going on a fishing trip in Idaho the next day. I joined in with him and some of his friends at the cabin they had up there and had a couple of great days floating the river with them.

He dropped me off in Idaho Falls on his way back to Salt Lake, and although it was rainy and close to sunset, I somehow hitched two rides to get to Alpine, Wyoming before having to camp out anywhere. Instead, I had a nice bed to sleep in at the house my mom had been living in.

My mom, however, was an hour or so up the road outside of Jackson where she was a camp host during the summer with her fiance. And that "fiance" title was about to become "husband," and the wedding was a reason I was up there.

Waiting for the wedding, I wrapped myself up in days of video editing to complete the second season of my show "Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure." During this time I made plenty of trips back and forth to Jackson, hiking around and drinking beers, and even filming new videos. You can watch one where I hitchhike up to Snake River Brewing, and all the other Jackson breweries.

The wedding came with the backdrop of the Tetons and more family like my sister coming to town, and altogether I enjoyed the hell out of that part of Wyoming like I always do. With the editing for my Hopping show complete and summer now peaking, I was eager to keep making some moves.

Zane Lamprey, a comedian who's had some successful drinking shows himself, had an upcoming gig in Reno. I got in touch with him about getting him on my podcast, and so a new direction and destination arose. Next post: on to Reno and California.

Hitchhiking across Texas to Arizona

2023-02-17T13:12:00.002-05:00

Let's hitchhike together, shall we? We'll start at a casino in Louisiana, we'll midpoint at some more casinos in Las Vegas, and we'll end in the blissful serenity of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We'll even throw a plane in there, we'll float on the river, and hell, let's drink some goddamn beer.

Speaking of beer, that's where we left off. I'd just made a mission out of visiting every brewery in the state of Mississippi in under 24 hours, and after a hitch over the border, I found myself staying at a casino by Shreveport, Louisiana. Was it the Horseshoe? I can't remember, but I was staying there for free on account of being a degenerate.

Drunken, seesaw gambling is good honest work, and while I've put most of it in while in Vegas over the years, it turns out that the almighty Caesars network of sin and fools stretches far and wide, even to Louisiana.

On this trip I was smart, meaning: lucky. I blackjacked in short bursts, just enough every time to leave the casino and afford a couple beers and Louisiana foods like crawfish, catfish, and étouffée. Hobo Lifestyle, living it up.

A few days of this and I was back on the highway with my thumb out to Dallas. Two rides is all it took; first a pro basketball player from Trinidad, then a guy who owned a kayak rental store. Before dark, I was hopping in my buddy's car who was currently playing house with the latest girl he'd drummed up on the apps. This was the one he was gonna marry. At least that's what he told her.

The visit was short, grabbing some quality beers and a feast while we caught up before crashing in the guest room. In the morning, after dropping his lady off at her work, we somehow squeezed in a bakery, a couple of breweries, and even a trip to some video game museum before I was back on the road heading to... well, at that moment I wasn't certain. West, for sure. Phoenix was the closest thing I had to a complete thought.

A pickup truck and two 18-wheeler rides deep and I was putting some thoughts together. This truck driver was obsessed with legal nuance and loopholes bordering on unusable. He was the type to talk about your name being written in ALL CAPS being a different entity, not having to pay taxes, being owed a certain amount of gold and land as a birthright and other such ramblings I've heard before. Fascinating, seemingly airtight (without someone else in the know there to rebuttal), but a lot of talk.

Looking at the map, I saw that I could hop out of his truck in Big Springs to make a run at Carlsbad, New Mexico to drop in on a family friend. I did so at dark, and consequently slept under an overpass - the nicest accommodations for a hobo in the desert for miles, and was back on my feet when the sun peeked up.

The first ride of the day came from Juan, a guy who bought me a breakfast burrito to chow then and a cigar to smoke later... much later as it turned out. I think I held on to that thing for a good six months.

A few more rides with good walks in between and I arrived in Carlsbad, eventually meeting my friends at the brewery in town. Beers, feast, beers. Sound familiar? Standard operating procedure for travelers dropping in on friends after a time apart.

Another morning, another drop-off. Backpack on back, thumb outstretched, and road reaching the horizon. The Phoenix idea was drawing more attention.

First ride of the day came from a couple who took me to a brewery in Cloudcroft for beer and pizza. At this point, you gotta wonder if I'm lucky, a master of manifestation, or simply admit that beer is the glue that holds humanity together.

Did she slide me $27 afterward when her husband wasn't looking? Yes, pay me after feeding me and lifting me down the road. I've long since refrained from declining or arguing such gifts, to do so is to deny their joy of giving, of helping, of proliferating a culture of kindness. And I'll savor the sandwiches it'll buy, and the beers that'll wash them down.

Two more rides got me to Las Cruces and back to the interstate, I-10, the main vein from Florida to California with less than four-hundred miles between me and Phoenix. I have a great friend there, and while you know that travel-plus-friend-equals-beer, you may not know that this particular friend goes a step further. We always brew our own beer, drink the highest quality beer (big stouts, in particular), and generally find a way to have an otherwise kick-ass time.

The next ride would get me there, it would just take a couple days. It was a girl, about my age, thirty years old, who pulled into the shoulder of the interstate.

"Two heads are better than one," she told me as I hopped in. She was hoping I'd help her panhandle for gas on the way to Phoenix, something she'd been doing since she was eighteen when she became what she called "car homeless."

Now you might see someone like myself, out on the road with a backpack, not from "here" and benefiting from the kindness of strangers, but panhandling is not something I've gotten involved in. I solicit rides, sure, but I often do so from the side of the road, rarely employing the (advised and often fruitful) strategy of approaching people at gas pumps and the like. Either I don't wanna bother people, I'm conveniently shy, or I'm afraid of face-to-face rejection. I haven't thought about it enough, but in any case, I avoid it, and as I say, I'm looking for a ride, not money. Unless you just force-feed me $27 when your husband isn't looking.

But, I'm also a gracious guest, so if she wanted my help in exchange for a ride, I'd give it a shot. But, I sucked at it. Before dark, we stopped at a Walmart and two gas stations looking for handouts and I struck out every time, even drawing the attention of the owners of one place that kicked us out. She, however, was a pro and managed twenty dollar bills and a couple gas jug fill-ups.

By dark, we landed at a desolate gas station nearly on empty when a self-proclaimed "reverend" came out of the literal desert woodwork offering a fill-up. His card was declined partway through, but a partial fill-up was welcomed just as well.

We drove into the night, both getting tired, and parking the truck a hundred miles shy of Phoenix near another remote gas station. She was up with the sun, I crawled out of my bivy sack next to the car and welcomed the new day. She talked her way into one last jug fill-up from some road-trippers, and we were golden.

We arrived with masterful timing, as my buddy happened to be driving nearby in the otherwise sprawling splatter of a city they call Phoenix and other names depending on how far you're bleeding outward into the desert.

Game on. I spent over a couple weeks there as we drank great beers at home, great beers at breweries, great beers we brewed ourselves, and indeed brewed a couple more batches to drink down the road sometime. And during all this, I was in the midst of editing my show about beer. Have you watched Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure? Well, there you go.

There was much more editing left to be done, a creative but tedious chore, but something that had to be done. With summer approaching, I figured Jackson Hole, Wyoming would be a good place to post up and finish. And while I started this post promising Vegas, a plane, a boat, and Jackson, let's take a breather and save that for the next one. Stay tuned, friends.

Going to Every Brewery in Mississippi in 24 hours

2022-08-16T17:46:00.003-04:00

"How long would it take to go to every brewery in Mississippi?"

A question I posed, over beers, of course, to my fellow beer nerd friend John Lovegrove.

"24 hours or less," was the answer.

That's all I needed to hear. Only days later, I was getting after it.

I suggest watching the video above, showing the adventure of going to every brewery in Mississippi. If you only have time to read at the moment, here's how it went down.

My friend was up for driving and her boyfriend was down to join in on the adventure too. We started at Lazy Magnolia, the oldest brewery in the state, and also close to where they lived in Gulfport.

We were out the door just before 6pm, giving us until 6pm the following day to pack in all the breweries. Heading back towards Chandelier Brewing in Gulfport, we began knocking them off quickly.

Including Lazy Magnolia, the first eight breweries were relatively close together. We hit Fly Llama in Biloxi, then Hops & Growlers, and Craft Advisory in Ocean Springs where we know the brewer, Martin.

Next we went to Lost Springs, just blocks away, which was actually the first "new" brewery to me, that I hadn't been to in the past.

Nearby we hit Puff Belly and finally Fort Bayou, where again I'm friends with the brewer (it's who I'd been staying with while in town actually).

Now we had to drive up to Hattiesburg, the first "big" drive (~75 miles), and also we were racing against the closing hours of The Porter, the second to last brewery of the night.

We made it. We got some beers down there, then headed across town to Colludium Brewing, also new to me. We ended the night there, properly drunk and without a place to stay, so the car in the parking lot is where we wound up.

Somewhere around 4 or 5am my friend woke up and I began stirring as well, restless, so a drive to Waffle House got the next day going. We burned some time looking around the Lucky Rabbit, a self-proclaimed "junk joint" with antiques and vintage doodads to look at.

Southern Prohibition was the brewery just blocks away, known by many as the best in the state. However, they were under construction going on months now. Luckily, my friend knew the brewer, and he let us in early to check out behind the scenes, have a couple beers, and sent us off with some to-go beer.

We had four breweries to go, each about an hour to ninety minutes driving apart.

We hopped out of the car at Threefoot Brewing in Meridian right as the manager rolled up. He had no idea about our mission but gladly escorted us into the brewery to shower us with beer, chicken & waffles, and other happiness.

With our vibes even higher, we rolled into Jackson next to their only brewery: A beer store that brewed in the back.

We blasted through those beers, then drove on to Key City Brewing in Vicksburg. We lingered there for a bit, then set out on the final drive.

Natchez, the name of both the brewery and the town, sat right across the river from Louisiana. We rolled into applause, as they'd been anticipating us. They poured 14 beers on a giant flight board, and at last, at 5:05pm, I took the record-breaking sip of beer to secure my place in history as the guy who drank at every brewery in Mississippi in 24 hours.

Altogether I'd sampled 95 different beers from the breweries - something I wish I'd kept closer attention to, as I would have shot for a solid 100.

My friends had a drive back to Gulfport ahead of them, but I had other plans. West. Simply west. Ideas on the way, but just west for now.

They dropped me off on the Louisiana side of things, properly full of beer, sunset approaching, now on the road with my thumb out.

I actually got a ride in the back of a pickup truck before my friends even drove away, and I was off. More rides to come, including a police officer. A free casino hotel room in Shreveport awaited - the next adventure was already beginning.

How the free cruise went down

2022-07-10T17:49:00.004-04:00

I got two free cruise vouchers for being a degenerate gambler in Las Vegas. Go me. After much hitchhiking around the country, preoccupied with my travels, I found a friend who wanted to join me on the cruise.

To reach New Orleans, where the Caribbean cruise would be leaving from, I had to hitchhike from Austin. One day and three rides landed me in Houston for a night, where I stayed with a friend with a mutual craft beer interest. And beer we had.

Why not just watch the video?

He dropped me off in downtown Houston the next morning to start a long day. I walked a ways to get out of downtown, then proceeded to get four rides from four different girls and ladies in between long waits and walks.

Alas, I wound up in New Orleans. I stayed at a friend's house in the days before my buddy flew to town I'd be cruising with. He'd rented an Air Bnb, and was eager to check out the city. He'd never been to New Orleans, so this was a trip in of itself for him.

We hammered around the city, getting our kicks for a couple of days, then walked up on the mighty cruise ship.

The cruise itself was seven days. Open bar, buffets included. We stopped a few times at islands and the shores or Mexico and Belize. Cruise-life is far more insulated and plastic than my typical ramblings around the planet, but I embraced the drink-and-chill as we blasted through the week. Dig the video to get the vibes.

After the cruise, it was on to Mississippi. Beer was involved. Stories and video coming next. Cheers!

Hitchhiking to Breweries in my YouTube show

2022-04-26T14:01:00.000-04:00

Season 2 of my show "Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure" kicks off today. This first episode starts in Denver with a few incredible breweries. Every Tuesday a new episode will come out, following the hitchhiking journey to breweries from Colorado, through Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and the season finale in Portland, Oregon. Enjoy!

The road's got my attention hopping from writing to vegas to cruises and beer videos

2022-03-24T16:10:00.000-04:00

Vegas animals.

I started 2022 with a focus: write my first screenplay. I made a hell of a lot of progress on that while staying with a friend in chilly Vermont, and soon my attention was pulled elsewhere. Pulled to other places, and pulled to other projects. Here's how I went from writing by the fire in Vermont to chasing a free cruise in Vegas and spending far too much time video-editing in Texas. It all gets tied up in the end.

Let's start with the cruise. For those following along, you know I spent far too much time in Vegas (and elsewhere) last year gambling and taking advantage of free rooms and meals. Like my early days of traveling, I'm back on their radar and the freebees are arriving in my inbox on the daily. Enter the cruise.

One such offer reached my email along the lines of "stay at our casino for five free nights and you'll get a free cruise of your choosing." Curious. I kept reopening the email, looking for loopholes, details, and anything else to discourage or encourage the trip. After eyeing a $40 flight from NYC to Vegas, I decided I might as well go for it.

My buddy in Vermont saved me some cold hitchhiking by driving me down towards the city a few days before my flight. The city is my old stomping ground. I grew up nearby, and it's where I last lived in 2007 before the backpack became home. It's not a shock that I have a brother there I could couch surf with and old friends to keep me entertained catching up with.

I also reached out to Couchers.org, the latest hospitality site trying to replace the (essentially) defunct Couchsurfing site, and interviewed one of the co-founders on my Freestyle Travel podcast.

But let's get to Vegas. I soared across the country like a drunken eagle, with not just five days, but fifteen days of comped rooms ahead of me. Five in Vegas to fulfill the free cruise offer, five at a casino in Laughlin to break it up, then another five back in Vegas. I was still in screenwriting mode, so I figured a couple weeks of free hotel rooms would keep that going. And to an extent, it certainly did.

View from room in Planet Hollywood.

The cruise... well, not totally free. I waited in a line with other gamblers who'd taken the bait, most twice my age and many who'd gotten this cruise voucher a time or two before. That comforted me a bit - at least it couldn't be a total scam.

While the voucher for two was for a "free" cruise to any place of my choosing (the Caribbean being the most enticing), it would not cover government taxes and some other fees. I should have seen that coming, but it still seemed viable, and all I had to do was stay for free in a Vegas hotel room. It should be noted that, yes, I gambled, and yes, I lost most of the dwindling money I had left. So, free? I dunno, I have to Vegas a W on that one, ya got me.

I hitchhiked about a hundred miles from Vegas down to Laughlin, which is insatiably boring compared to Vegas, and this was ideal considering I was aiming to hole up in the comped room there to keep writing. Being that I had no money left to gamble either, I made quite a bit of progress.

My writing spot at the room in Laughlin.

Five days later I was back on the highway with my thumb out, hitching a couple rides back up to Vegas the day of the Superbowl. Although my money was depleted, I was given several free drink tickets to use each day and had a few free food comps at my disposal as well. Hunger and sobriety can keep their distance.

I arrived in Vegas with no plan beyond, and as always, something clicked at the last minute. For the immediate move, my buddy had bought me a plane ticket to South Dakota so I could pick up his RV. He needed it driven to him in Dallas, and I was the guy to do that favor for him. Seemed like a good move, and gave me more time to ponder this cruise situation.

I got to the RV in South Dakota and immediately started driving. I basically kept it moving until Oklahoma City, where I met up with an old friend for lunch, then kept it rolling until Dallas. My friend had a new girlfriend there and seemed to be digging in a bit after a choppy stint of RV travels he'd done in the months prior.

While spending some days kicking it with him, my mind shifted sharply to my beer and travel show, Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure. The editor who'd been tasked to edit all the episodes was well overdue, and communication had become spotty. I'd reached the point where I needed to embrace the idea that I may need to take it on myself.

I got in the zone and I've been in the zone since. Thankfully, I at last got the editor on the phone and I think we've gotten on the same page. And although the original page didn't involve myself sitting in front of video editing software as much as I am, I'm happy to get things rolling.

For those of you who've been patiently waiting for Season 2, I'm happy to give you this trailer and the promise of a premiere date next month, most likely on April 26th, with new episodes coming out every Tuesday.

So, from Dallas, I hitchhiked to see my friend Liz in rural Texas where she'd recently moved to live on a wedding/event venue helping out the couple that runs it. I split my time there between catching up, editing for Hopping, and filming some content for their business. We also recorded my first ever podcast with video.

This individual is an absolute animal. Yeah you are.

Next up I hitchhiked to where I'm writing this now: Austin. A buddy of mine had seen I was in Texas and reminded me that South by Southwest was happening, so I spent a couple weeks at his place either behind my video editing software or out in town hitting breweries and every free event we could find.

He left town a few days ago, and I moved to another spot, now staying with a new friend of mine who lives and breathes in the film industry. It's been inspiring learning his tips and tricks when it comes to filming, editing, and managing YouTube channels.

Alas, the cruise! I found a friend stoked on the idea and willing to take advantage of the two vouchers with me. The ship sets sail in just over two weeks, leaving from New Orleans and taking a week to jump to various islands in the Caribbean. Unlimited buffet access, open bar, snorkeling, some ruin hopping I believe, and who knows what else is in store.

Somewhere in the coming days, I'll jump out of Austin, directly or indirectly making my way to New Orleans. My beer show has dominated my days and even dreams as it excitedly comes together, but I'm very much in need of some more rambling, more chaos, and more random travel-stance.

I hope you're pumped because I am pumped. Let's get after it.

Hitchhiking Statistics 2021

2022-01-24T14:27:00.000-05:00

Where each hitchhiking day began, and how many rides I got that day.

In 2021 there were 53 days that I hitchhiked within the United States and the Bahamas. I got a total of 156 rides that carried me 7,040 miles.

As in 2019 and 2020, I compiled statistics on these rides collecting data points like distances, genders of drivers, police interactions, and even how often I was offered things like food, beer, and weed.

This was one of my lightest years of hitchhiking, and as you can see from the map, mostly only involved the United States (a day of hitchhiking in The Bahamas isn't shown). Covid is partially to blame for the lack of international travel. However, only one person asked me to wear a mask of the 156 people who picked me up. Not a big deal, and essentially a non-factor in my hitching.

The chart above shows how many rides and how far I got on the days I hitchhiked in 2021. The first gap in the year around April and May involved watching a friend's dogs and road-tripping with friends, so no hitchhiking. There's also the gap in August where I was helping out on a pot farm, so again, no hitchhiking during that time.

The most rides I got in a single day this year was 8, which happened twice. The furthest I got in a day was from Reno to Palm Springs, which was 814 kilometers, or ~506 miles. That was a single ride as well from a girl traveling with her cat.

I hitchhiked on 68 days in 2019, 69 days in 2020, and only 53 in 2021.

I caught 269 rides in 2019, 200 in 2020, and down to 156 in 2021.

I very well might have traveled more miles this year than last year, but a lot was via road trips with friends, planes, and methods other than hitchhiking. As far as hitchhiking is concerned, I covered:

10,122 miles in 2019

11,111 miles in 2020

7,040 miles in 2021

The average length per ride I hitched was:

37.63 miles per ride in 2019

55.56 miles per ride in 2020

45.13 miles per ride in 2021

The average number of rides per day of hitchhiking in 2021 was 2.94.

Like previous years, getting picked up by a lone male still accounted for the vast majority of rides. It dropped from 74.7% in 2020, however, to just 60.9% in 2021, while solo females increased from 9.6% to 14.7% of my rides.

"Mixed Group" refers to getting picked up by a man and a woman, like a couple, or even getting picked up by a man and his daughter, for example.

Multiple females, like last year, is still the rarest gender combination to offer a ride. You could read from these and previous years' statistics that a woman by herself is ten times more likely to pick up a hitchhiker than if she is with a female friend.

While not necessarily relevant to the day of hitchhiking itself, this pie chart shows what my sleeping situation was on the nights after a day of hitchhiking.

You'll notice I spent half the time catching up with friends and family, a third of the time stealth camping, and we can mostly attribute the chunk of hotel nights to free rooms at casinos around the country. Something I did a lot of in 2021.

Absent from the pie chart this year is "invites," which is when someone who gave me a ride then offered me a place to stay for the night. Also missing is "couch surfing." And while I did some of that in 2021, mostly through TrustRoots.org, apparently that never landed after a day of hitchhiking. It's worth noting that a decent chunk of "friends" are people that I indeed initially met through TrustRoots or Couchsurfing in previous years, and well, became friends.

Come to think of it, at least one person did invite me to stay after a day of hitchhiking in Missoula. My hitchhiking partner during that stretch, Nick, indeed took him up on the offer, but I had a cousin in town that I instead stayed with.

Amazingly, I had only 6 interactions with police, 2 that resulted in a positive ride. An "interaction" can be anything from them shouting at me on their bullhorn to "get off the highway" as they drive by, to actually stopping and checking me out, or even giving me a ride.

Almost a quarter of the rides I got in 2021 were from pickup trucks, sometimes riding in the open-air bed of the pickup. If I was nerdier, maybe I'd keep track of SUVs, convertibles, and further breakdown vehicle types, but for now, these select types are all I keep track of. I was kinda surprised trucks (18-wheelers) weren't a little higher this year.

Here's a fun one. This chart shows that about 10% of the days that I hitchhiked, at least one of the people who picked me up gave me a beer, a shot of whiskey, or offered me some weed. Far more common still is being offered a bite to eat, whether it be a bag of Cheetos, a run through the drive-thru, or even a stop at a fancy restaurant. And once in a while, someone insists you take their money. In 2021 the most I was handed was fifty dollars, which is pretty incredible.

There you have it, my 2021 hitchhiking statistics. Anything else you think I could keep track of? Do you have stats of your own? Feel free to comment and let me know what you think. One of these days I swear I'll get around to rounding up my statistics from 2007 to 2018. One day.

The Return of Weed and Casino Chaos

2022-01-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

In the last half of 2021, I ping-ponged within the United States as far west as California, as eastern as Delaware, north as far as Michigan, and as south as Austin, Texas.

My last post left off with arriving at a pot farm in California, so we'll begin there before diving into all the casinos, a wedding, more weed, and the general travel chaos that's kept me hooked to this indefinite rambling lifestyle of mine.

Somewhere near Ukiah, California: My old travel buddy scooped me up with her dog just north of San Francisco, whisking me on up to an enormous property hosting four marijuana gardens, four greenhouses, and disparate spots scattered on the property for trimmers, buckers, and cloning.

What does that look like? Well, I pulled out the camera and even the drone to make a short video showing off the experience. Just a heads up, because the video highlights the super-sinful marijuana plant, YouTube only lets you watch this video if you're logged in and over 21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pf1vhjcIlI

I spent a few weeks watering and nurturing plants, making new friends, and earning a little money to donate to casinos around the country. I'm a very charitable person.

I caught a ride with one of those new friends to familiar stomping grounds in Chico, where I spent a week making the rounds. Chico is a college town where I have plenty of friends and is also home to Sierra Nevada and a growing amount of other start-up breweries.

I hitchhiked a hundred miles south to Sacramento afterward, catching up with more friends.

On my mind was a cousin's wedding across the country in Delaware, just a few weeks away. This allowed me more time to wander, but was close enough that I had to think of angling in that direction.

It took five rides to hitchhike to Reno where I was once again getting comped rooms. What better place to go than a casino town when you've just earned a pile of cash? Don't answer that.

I only spent a couple nights there, losing big, then chasing my losses and actually pulling off a recovery win.

I knew I wanted to go to Phoenix to see a friend, but hadn't decided on a route. Luckily, whichever way I wanted to go would have to start the same way: hitchhiking on the westbound I-80 on-ramp, just a few blocks away.

I have another video that picks up right here if you feel like watching rather than reading:

A girl picked me up going to Palm Springs, California. After an hour of riding with her I decided, screw it, that's the way I'd go. By the time she dropped me off, it was dark in the desert, but I found a single spot barely hidden away enough to stealth camp for the night.

The morning proved easy for hitchhiking; I netted one ride across town and a second from an 18-wheeler going all the way to Phoenix.

Phoenix was great, and not because I care much for Phoenix, but because I have a great friend there. We caught up, drank world-class beers, and I used his sewing machine to make some alterations and repairs on my latest BivyPack prototype I've been traveling with. I also pulled the trigger on a ~$40 flight from Las Vegas to Raleigh, North Carolina - a boost towards Delaware that would save me as much as a week of hitchhiking.

Seeing as I now manufactured some time for myself, I hitchhiked to northern Arizona to see some friends who'd bought some land up there, then hitched the final stretch to Vegas after some days with them.

The room was free, but this time the city got me, as I donated a chunk of my trim money to the blackjack tables. I walked to the airport with slimmer pockets, but my spirit remained high.

The obligatory stop at Able Baker Brewery in Vegas.

Once landing in Raleigh, I caught up with a childhood friend for a night, then started thumbing towards Delaware. I got as far as Ocean City that day, only ten or twenty miles from the wedding and a day early. The last guy to give me a ride rolled back up on me only a minute after dropping me off.

"Here, take a few if you'd like," he said, pushing a bag of gummy worms out the window. "Random," I thought, as I reached in and grabbed a few. I'm not big on these sorts of sweets, but here I was with a handful, so I crammed them all in my mouth as opposed to putting loose gummy worms in my pockets.

Only when I swallowed them did I realize: no grown man gives another grown man gummy worms. These were clearly pot-gummies, and I'd just ingested a whole mess of them at once. Oh well, sometimes you gotta roll with the punches.

I made it through the night without incident, and come morning, I was prepared to simply walk the remainder of the miles. The rain came dumping, however, but along with the rain came a car pulling over, offering a dry ride.

I tracked down the Air BnB some of my family had rented, and before long, they arrived as well, coming in from Wyoming, New York, and North Carolina. The wedding and the surrounding festivities went on without a hitch, good times had by all and I enjoyed catching up with so much family at once.

Drinking some of the best Delaware has to offer.

It took me several days to hitchhike to western North Carolina after the wedding. By this time I'd agreed to help yet another friend (a friend of a friend actually) to trim his weed back in California. I wasn't in a huge hurry, however, and I discovered that the free rooms I'd been getting in Reno and Vegas also translated to casinos in other parts of the country.

So, I first stayed at a casino in Murphy, North Carolina, for several nights, then hitched a short way to a much bigger casino in Cherokee. Thanks to a poker tournament on my last night, I'd be up money for the trip. Besides the casino aspect, these free rooms were a rare bit of luxurious privacy in my line of living.

I decided next to see my buddy in Indianapolis, which wasn't all that far away in my mind, and would also put my momentum towards Michigan, where I could see yet another friend I hadn't seen in a while.

My favorite from my friend's houseplant shop in Lansing.

It took a couple days to hitchhike to Indy where I caught up indeed, then just one full day of hitching to get up to Lansing in Michigan. After a day or two with my friend there, I found yet another inexpensive flight. This involved a flight from Chicago to Vegas, a multi-day layover, then a flight to Sacramento. I'd then have to hitch from the airport to Chico where I'd do some more trimming.

I yet again had a free room to stay in during my nights in Vegas, where I yet again donated money to the casinos. I placed 27th in a poker tournament that started with 165 people. However, only the top 26 places got paid. Bummer.

No matter, I landed in Sacramento and hitched four rides from the airport on my way to Chico. I spent just shy of a month there helping out a new friend with his weed, all the while catching up with friends, enjoying Halloween, and otherwise having a great old time.

By this time, a friend of mine had been concocting a plan to start a YouTube channel he'd maintain on his latest travels and wanted me to lend a hand. I had plans to see family in Wyoming for Thanksgiving, so he bought me a plane ticket to see him and his producer in Austin, Texas for a few days, then fly me straight to Wyoming before Turkey Day.

Once in Austin, I met his guy out there and went over the project he was putting together. In between, we smashed world-class brisket, went kayaking, and bopped all around Austin getting our kicks.

Straight fire.

Thanksgiving was brief, but as always, it was good to catch up with family. The secondary reason I was there was to help drive with my sister, as she was moving out of Wyoming and back down to Los Angeles, where she'd lived previously. What's on the way to LA from Wyoming? Freaking Vegas.

At least this time in Vegas I had a more legitimate reason to be there: my old buddy Walter was flying in from the Netherlands for a conference. This would be just about the longest straight Nevada casino run I've made to date.

For the first week, I gambled, spent as much time with Walter as possible, and went up and down money like the typical roller-coaster ride that is Vegas. When Walter left, I too left, but I hitchhiked just down to Laughlin where I could get another free room for several nights.

It was my first time in Laughlin and not a place I'd recommend to anyone. Unlike Vegas, there was no real people-watching value or non-stop action to surround you. Just an isolated casino. I took my biggest hit there, probably due to the lack of other things to distract myself with. Oh well.

I hitched just one ride back on up to Vegas once I was able to book another room there. A day or two later I was joined by my friend who I'd just seen in Austin; he'd drove his camper to this part of the country. We kicked it in my free room, I then got some free nights at a separate casino off the strip, but there would be one night without.

We hopped in the camper to drive into the desert for a night, but along the way, my friend got word that he had a free place to stay in Big Bear, California. Off we went.

We spent the night hitting a couple of breweries, then crashed out in the little cabin they had offered him. Then, just like that, we turned right back up to Vegas. A couple nights in the casino off the strip, then checked into the Flamingo where I had yet another five nights.

My friend had girls set up here and there, coming and going. I had a friend in town, a guy I'd met earlier in the year on one of the pot farms. I filled the days with Irish coffees, poker, and bouncing around the strip.

Before I knew it, nearly a month had flown by, and I'd be flying back on up to Wyoming for Christmas.

Melvin Brewing, a critical stop in Wyoming.

Seeing my family, yet again, felt great. My mom had just published a book, and that got my creative writing juices flowing again, rekindling my interest in a screenplay I'd been rolling around in my head.

While I was there, I actually got some words on paper and felt in the zone. I wanted to continue. I posted on Facebook to see if anyone knew a place I could hunker down for a few weeks and pour my attention into the screenplay. I got a hit from a friend in Vermont and decided that was the move.

Once again, I scoured flight deals (to avoid a freezing January hitch to Vermont), and once again, Vegas was involved. Flights in and out of Vegas are always the cheapest, and for somewhat obvious reasons. In this case, I could get down to Vegas just in time for New Years Eve, fly to Orlando (random, I know), and have a day-long layover before flying up to Burlington. My ninja skills for finding cheap flights often require a tolerance for such inconveniences.

This five-day stretch in Vegas involved many all-nighters, as I had friends in town again. I arrived just as the midnight fireworks were going off, then tracked down some friends for a long night and morning that involved off-kilter girls, poker, and partying between the casino and quick trips to their room at Caesars.

At one point in the trip, I spent a solid thirty hours in the poker room. It was all pretty ridiculous. In the final hours before heading to the airport, I heroically (also read: foolishly luckily) turned $40 into $1,500, making up for some of the previous damages.

So yes, the latter part of 2021 and the entry into 2022 involved quite a bit of casino shenanigans. Here I sit now, in central Vermont, chipping away at that screenplay.

Vegas is smart, however. Recent emails have dangled a free 7-day cruise and other such goodies enticing me back. And I'll be back. For the past couple of weeks, though, I've been enjoying productivity (along with brewery visits and the like) here in Vermont. All that changes in a week. On to the next adventure.

Hitchhiking Accident and Coast-to-Coast Plane-Pong

2021-08-10T18:00:00.002-04:00

After six weeks of filming season two of my Hopping show (the backpacking beer adventure), I was ready to leave Portland for the next trip. My older brother was retiring in North Carolina after twenty years in the Marine Corps, and my friend Christian was looking to scoop me up in his RV shortly after to spark off an unknown adventure.

Being that the retirement ceremony was just six days away, hitchhiking was far too risky. Sure, it's possible to hitch three thousand miles in that time, but that's fairly optimistic, and my brother's retirement was too important to roll the dice on.

The only sub-hundred-dollar flight was on July 4th (retirement was on the 9th), so I arrived in Raleigh with the reverse situation — with time to spare. Hitching the remaining hundred and fifty miles would only require a single easy-going afternoon, but I didn't want to arrive to early.

I spent my Raleigh days getting things done in coffee shops and finding wooded areas to camp in by night. When the day came to hitch, I wound up needing just one ride to get to my brother's. The guy who'd done fishing trips all over the world in remote locations told me his stories from around the world while listening to stories of my own travels. We picked up his daughter's friend in Wilmington, then he dropped me off directly in my brother's town near Camp Lejeune. He even ordered one of my BivyPacks before dropping me off.

I spent the next few days with family and going to the retirement ceremony for my brother and his wife. It was wild thinking that he'd spent twenty years in the Marines; he was in boot camp when the towers came down on September 11th. I used to drop in on him in southern California where he was based out of when my traveling life began in 2007.

Family time was solid, and the first time I had all my disparate siblings in the same room ever.

My next move, which I thought would be rambling in Christian's RV to the unknown, took just a slight turn. I came to find out that he was holed up in Virginia, and still down to pick me up, but we'd be going right back to his girlfriend's family place.

I was still down, and as it turned out I had to hitchhike in an attempt to meet him half-way. I started by getting a couple rides, but things slowed down as I got to some country roads. I did my share of walking, and finally got a ride to the next busier highway.

I stood in the "V" where the on-ramp meets the highway to thumb traffic from people getting on and cars that were already on their way, as I've done hundreds of times. Someone on the highway saw my thumb and started sliding to the right to pull over in the shoulder, but he never saw the van he was cutting off joining the highway from the on-ramp.

The van swerved right and he bumped them, sending them driving down the embankment and into a ditch as my run towards my ride turned into a sprint towards an accident. Luckily, both the guy pulling over for me and the EMS woman he hit were OK, but the van was unable to drive and he just had some mostly cosmetic side damage.

The guy seemed more interested in me and my story than he did the accident, instantly launching into the familiar line of curious questions about my traveling story. We waited over an hour as her EMS friends came to check on her, and eventually, a cop came to assess the situation and whatnot, but finally got on our way.

We drove about forty minutes to the interstate where he waited for the last fifteen to turn the conversation into a Jesus pitch, but at last, dropped me off at a fast-food joint where Christian had just arrived for our rendezvous. I hopped in the RV where his girlfriend and kids were as well and we started catching up as we drove a few hours back to the Virginia spot.

Her family was pretty chill and they lived in a quiet spot in the woods south of Washington DC, but as the days dragged on I itched for the road. Just a couple days in I got word from a friend that she would be working at a cannabis farm in northern California — one I'd worked with her at before — and they could use some more help.

Christian would be driving through Nashville which was also the cheapest place to fly out of. These flights were popping up more and more, but knowing that I'd be making some good coin had me less concerned — I'd make my flight money back in less than half a day on the farm.

The last days with Christian had elements of drama, turmoil, and uneventful boredom that aren't worth getting into, but ended with some Nashville hot chicken and a mad dash through the airport and to the gate to be the last person aboard the plane.

I landed in Vegas just after midnight where I'd have a thirty-hour layover. I amazingly still got free room comps, so I took the hour walk to the Bally's on the strip to lay my head down for the night.

I spent a full day in Vegas winning and ultimately losing money in craps table sessions, but also got some beers in at Able Baker, which is one of my favorite breweries that I featured on the first episode of my Hopping show.

I was dragging by night, trying to stay up for a 7am flight. I did what I could to stay moving and eventually dragged to the airport to get some sitting-up sleep until security opened, then got to my gate for the same until sleeping on the whole flight to San Francisco.

I public-transitted as far up as San Rafael where I waited it out at a coffee shop until meeting up with my friend who was driving all the way up to Ukiah where the farm was. It was good to see her, and her new puppy.

The pot farm would be an adventure of its own, but I was ready for it to get started.

My Hopping Beer Adventure Became a Saga

2021-07-20T00:39:00.006-04:00

For over five weeks I hitchhiked from Denver to Portland filming the second season of my show, "Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure." As expected, the beer was amazing, the road was generous, and the northwestern scenery heightened the experience.

There were, however, elements of drama I didn't foresee, a strained friendship, and a nearly cataclysmic ending.

Heads up, you can also listen to me talk about this experience on my show. Search for "Freestyle Travel Show" in your podcast app or listen via Sound Cloud.

The show starts in Denver, but this story starts on the road to New York City. I caught a ride with a friend of mine who'd been recently living out of his RV with a new girlfriend; we rode the thing from Mississippi all the way to NYC with just a few stops along the route. Footnote: There are kicks to be had in Shreveport.

My reason for going to New York was to show Nick how to use the new camera equipment that a very generous friend had recently gotten me; I wanted to make sure he had a head start to get familiar with everything before we started filming.

I've known Nick since the fourth grade, and like the first season of the show, he agreed to hitchhike alongside me to film the adventure. I stayed with him for a few nights in the city, showing him the basics of how the new camera operated along with the peripherals. All this between beer and watching old movies.

After more time and more catch-up with friends and family in the city, I got down to Philadelphia where, besides catching up with another old friend, I caught a $40 flight to Denver.

After a couple nights, Nick flew in as well. We spent the first evening bouncing between breweries and then staying with the Trustroots host I'd been staying with the night before. The next day, the true brewery adventure began.

After some time in the park, filming and lounging, we marched on over to Burns Family Ales. It was truly fantastic, a brewery that specialized in high ABV beers ran simply by a husband and wife. We did our typical routine, this being Nick following me and them in a walk-and-talk around the brewery, followed by us setting up a couple more cameras for a sitdown tasting.

By sunset, we were meandering towards downtown, full of delicious beer and unsure where we'd be staying for the night.

The first chink in the armor came on the walk, as I rather bluntly reminded Nick that he had to make an effort to film more of the travel and between-brewery parts of our trip, the "backpacking" and "adventure" in "The Backpacking Beer Adventure." This lack of footage in the first season had been an issue and one that we'd addressed in a call together with our editor in the weeks leading up to this trip.

He didn't love my delivery, and I made a point of recognizing that and agreeing to soften my critique, but also that it wouldn't be an issue at all as long as he indeed kept filming when needed.

My Trustroots host had left town, which is why we were unsure where we'd be sleeping, so I guided us on my familiar path in this sort of situation: towards a brewery.

I always figure I can get a beer, scan a satellite view of my surroundings for stealth camping spots, search for potential hosts, and leave myself open to travel magic in the form of someone in the brewery offering a couch or yard or otherwise.

After a beer or three I'd scouted out a few stealth camping options, but only one night in and Nick vetoed those options. While I'd been searching for spots, he'd been comparing hotel rooms. I tried to show him my spots and explain how we'd be fine, but he had a tendency to disregard my advice once he'd made up his mind on something. Explaining the nuances would only frustrate him.

I had to learn to let it go. Once the Kickstarter money ran out we'd be going off his money and he wasn't shy about throwing it around or burning it.

After a cushy night in the hotel, it was off to brewery number two: Woods Boss. It wasn't far away, and once again we went through our filming routine of tour and tasting, followed by both of us getting b-roll for an hour or so.

Public transit got us up to Boulder in a hurry. Nick had left his laptop charger in the hotel, so wanted to get a new one at Best Buy on the northern side of town. Knowing this was his first trip to Boulder (and everywhere else we'd be going) I suggested we go a block over to walk up Pearl Street, which is the popular pedestrian street in the city.

"No, the charger is the important thing," he scoffed at me.

"I gotcha," I assured him, "Pearl is kinda the heart of Boulder and it runs parallel to this street. Best Buy doesn't close for a couple hours anyway. It'll be much more interesting and we'll be heading in the same direction, just a block over this way." I explained.

He grumbled something dissenting and picked up his pace the way he'd been going.

"OK, I'll meet you up there," I shouted to him, a bit bewildered and also worried that we were only a couple days in and "Misery Nick" was already making an appearance. While filming the first season the travel wore on him, he was up-and-down the entire trip and increasingly more down by the end. It seemed he was already riding a down. Once he got in these moods, there was no amount of articulate logic to turn him around. I just had to wait it out and not talk to him too much.

I brushed it off and went on over to Pearl Street myself, taking a walk down and back up, people watching, digging the street musicians and fire jugglers before heading on up to Best Buy. When I arrived he was just walking out the door with his new mac charger.

We were filming at Avery on the northeast corner of town the next day. I'd already scoped out a hiking trail on the way where it looked easy to camp. I suggested hitting a brewery on the walk there, half-expecting a "no," but to my surprise, the quieting Nick agreed. We sat in near silence on the patio of the brewery sipping our beers, then marched on up through the streets at sunset, and down the hiking trail until we found a place to tuck away for him to set up his tent and me my bivy.

I'd laugh silently later in the trip when he'd talk about how much he liked Boulder, the city he knew for a few hours at Best Buy, and a drink on a patio.

Adam Avery himself came out to be on the show the next day. He and I powered through our respective hangovers like God damned professionals, touring around his brewery and having a hair-of-the-dog tasting session with their spectacular beers.

Somewhere amid filming b-roll the moment hit me. The beers were epic. I'd met a brewing legend who simply loved beer, adventure, and good vibes. I'd somehow created a show that simply highlighted a part of my normal life — traveling and visiting breweries — yet allowed me extra access and the ability to share the whole adventure to inspire, or at least entertain, countless others who would watch. Times were good.

Our next pair of breweries awaited in Salt Lake City, so with the sun on the way down, we walked on towards the road. We hitched our first ride of the trip together, Nick in the bed of the pickup truck and me in the front with the driver heading to the south side of Longmont.

In-town hitchhiking, particularly with sidewalks (no shoulder to pull over in) and most folks usually just going a few blocks, has typically proven to be fruitless. There have been exceptions, but with the impending subtraction of sunlight, I once again defaulted to a tried-and-true standby: time to find a beer.

I found us a beer bar, and after an hour we indeed got the travel-magic invite I'd put us in position for. The only issue was that the kitchen guy who'd offered us a place to stay didn't get off until midnight or so (a few hours later) and the offer would be contingent on agreement from roommates that he wouldn't get until he got off.

It was tempting to bar-hop around the direct area for a few hours and await the likely positive outcome, rather than walk the hour or two north of town to find a place to camp. On the flip-side, if he wasn't able to host us, then we'd still have to take that walk and be tired as hell doing so, or risk Nick burning more of his dollars on a hotel. He was back to Chipper Nick. I wanted to keep that going.

I pushed us forward, figuring that if we camped, we'd also be directly on the road in the morning, ready to keep moving towards Utah. Walk we did, and even more than expected as I tried to find any kind of suitable hiding spot in the lack of treed areas.

We at last found shelter under the road where it crossed a small river, some two hours of walking up the road. The overpass kept us dry as the rain swept in, but come morning we had to crawl into it to hit the road.

Our first ride of the day got us to the south of Fort Collins, and once again we had a two-hour walk to get through the sidewalked town, but this time in the pouring rain. I kept my thumb out as we walked forward but to no avail.

Once we reached the north of town and found a spot with a shoulder, we got a ride quickly. The friendly woman got us on up into blue-skied Wyoming to Interstate 80 near a truck stop, and within minutes an eighteen-wheeler let us aboard. The driver was all good vibes, blasting James Brown as his pet bunny-rabbit cowered behind a seat until warming up to us.

We rode with him for around five hours until our roads split, then we caught a ride in the back of a pickup truck for the last hour into Salt Lake City. From our vantage point, we saw blue skies, storm clouds, rainbows, fluffy clouds, streaking clouds, and a setting sun streaking through all of it, and all at once.

We walked on over to my buddy Cam's place and let Salt Lake set in. We hiked up to a view of the city the next day and caught up with some more friends. The day after we filmed at Epic Brewing, and Bewilder Brewing the day after that. Everything was clicking.

Cam dropped us off just outside the city, east on Interstate 80 to begin our hitch to Wyoming. I was excited for this, as my mom and sister lived up in the Jackson Hole area where we'd be filming at two more great breweries.

We got a short pickup truck ride, then an aimless road tripper scooped us and decided that he'd just take us to Jackson for lack of a better idea; perhaps he'd continue on to Yellowstone, he pondered aloud.

He got us clear to Evanston where we turned off the interstate, and halfway up he got tired and wanted to sleep. Nick and I got back to the road to keep thumbing and hitched nearly a half-dozen short little jumps to get to Alpine.

My sister was outside on the patio when we arrived, and my mom arrived later. The house was my mom's, but she was spending six nights a week as a campground host for the summer just north of Jackson.

A chill session on the beach before filming at Melvin.

We had dinner at Melvin Brewing and then properly filmed an episode there the next day. The day after, we headed up to the mountain resort where my sister worked. Nick and I spent the afternoon playing disc golf on the mountain, then hitched a ride into Jackson to do some brewery hopping and whatnot.

A day later we joined my mom and her boyfriend up at their campsite to get a magnificent view of the Tetons and see how they'd been living, and in the morning we took my sister's Jeep to town to film our episode with Roadhouse Brewing.

The view of the Tetons from my mom's campsite.

The next morning we hitched back to Jackson and attempted to film an episode with Snake River Brewing, but they were under construction so not all that much other than a small drinking session came of it.

Breweries in Bozeman, Montana were our next destination. Nick claimed to not care about Yellowstone, which was the slower route, but I took us that way anyhow. Sometimes you have to drag people to happiness.

We wound up getting a ride from a medic who lived in a dorm directly at the Old Faithful geyser and even shared the beers in his camper-van fridge with me on the way.

Being that we were at the most famous attraction in the most well-known national park in the United States, it still surprised me I had to do any convincing at all for Nick. I'd seen it several times, I figured he'd enjoy it.

"It's literally right there," I told Nick, whose disinterest in nearly everything was becoming a drag. If it wasn't obscure or contrary, then it wasn't an opinion he wanted as his own or a sight he wanted to see. I talked him into it, and we watched the old geyser blast off along with the hundreds of others who'd traveled for it.

We got rides in the back of pickup trucks the rest of the way through Yellowstone, which couldn't have been better. In the town of West Yellowstone, just outside the park, a philanthropic couple gave us a ride to Big Sky while telling us about the work they'd done getting clean water to parts of Ethiopia. A car full of people gave us another ride to Bozeman, dropping us about seven miles from downtown where we were headed.

Being so close, yet two hours walking, I decided to try to hitch one last ride, and it couldn't have worked out better.

Rodrigo was the laid-back guy who picked us up, and upon telling him about our beer-adventure filming, he let us know he knew just about every brewer in town.

"My girlfriend is following behind me, we just spent the day by the water and are going to stop at Nordic Brewing for dinner and a beer," he told us a couple minutes into the ride, "You're welcome to join us and I'll give you a ride downtown after, or you can just take my truck downtown now and park it somewhere and I'll grab it later," he offered.

As long as I've been on the road and experienced such trust and generosity, I'm still taken aback at times like these. I appreciate the road.

We joined him with his girlfriend for dinner, which turned out to be the better move. We all became friendly and after dinner, we hit the store for beer and firewood, then drove a little out of town to have a big bonfire while sharing stories and laughs. Somewhere after midnight, we headed back to town.

My uncle has a rental property near downtown with a barn in the back of the lot that I'd stayed in the summer prior. Rodrigo dropped us off there and we carved out a couple of spots to crash for the night. There's no running water there, but a roof and electricity were all we needed.

Rodrigo's girlfriend took us around on bicycles to some breweries the next day, and by the evening we went to Bozeman Brewing where Rodrigo was helping with a 5K beer run. More beers, a dinner together, and back to the barn to pass out.

We filmed at Mountains Walking the following day, another great brewery along the trip. Earlier in the day, my cousin had spotted me at a coffee shop. She was traveling from Missoula with a friend, so we met up with her and my uncle (her dad) for some beers. Afterward, Nick and I found a dive bar near the barn and had a late night playing shuffleboard.

I grabbed a much-needed shower over at Rodrigo's place to aid my hangover and powered on over to Map Brewing for another episode. The filming went well and, like many other breweries, they sent us off with plenty of to-go beer and even some shirts.

We dipped back to Mountains Walking so I could get some drone footage that I couldn't have gotten on the previous windy day, then bopped around downtown to enjoy the last night in Bozeman.

Nick was digging the town, and his wheels were continuing to spin. The trip was forcing him to reassess his New York life and contemplate other paths he could take. The more he talked about his job in the film industry, the more I realized how little it had to do with the creative or technical side of filming. It didn't sound all that rewarding, and our travel was working its medicinal magic to expose a plethora of opportunities outside his bubble.

Our next brewery was in Missoula, but I found out a friend of mine was living halfway in Helena, so we pointed our thumbs that way and spent a night catching up with him. We easily hitched to Missoula the next day, and our last ride came from a guy who offered to let us camp in his backyard.

Nick dropped his backpack off in the house. Then we headed to town to check out some breweries. After a couple beers at our third brewery, Nick was ready to tap out and head back to the guy's place. He went off without me, as I was looking to try one more pint. I'd met a local brewer who was hanging out with another brewer from Kansas City and getting along with the bartender as well.

On the walk back to the house there was a KettleHouse taproom, which was an offshoot of the bigger brewery just outside of town we'd be filming at the next day. I popped in there for a beer and found my new brewer friends had done the same. While I was sharing some pints and laughs with them, I got a text from my cousin offering to let me crash at her place for the night.

This worked out for Nick as well, as he got upgraded from the guy's backyard to his couch while I was some ten blocks away, catching up with my cousin and then crashing in her living room. If possible, I try to have my backpack on me at all times for pivots like this, which is another reason I make an effort to keep it as light as possible.

I wandered around Missoula in the morning, strolling along the river, watching people surfing a standing wave, and taking in the little city. I got word from Nick that he'd hitchhiked to the brewery, five hours early for some reason, so I imagined he was sitting around or getting some footage until they opened.

There was a free bus that headed over there. I'm guessing he didn't know about it, but I was taking my time to enjoy the city some more. I headed on over to Cranky Sam Brewery, as this was where the brewer I'd met the night before was working. He was there and quick to pour me samples of just about everything. After a couple pints, I wandered to the bus stop, and twenty minutes later I was hopping out near the remote KettleHouse brewery location.

Nick was at a table in the corner, proud of his hitchhiking endeavor. He'd hitched two quick rides from near downtown, and albeit short, it was his first solo-hitching experience. I'd thought he was pretty silly for getting there so early with nothing else around, but now I was pretty stoked for him.

Once again, I toured around with a brewer, had our tasting session, and got to filming b-roll. It was a great spot for the drone, as they had a big beautiful music venue next to the brewery that people kept telling me was the premiere venue in all of Montana. The river ran right below us and was easily one of the most scenic breweries of the trip.

We hitched a good ride from a woman who took us to the south side of Missoula where we met up with Ed, a guy I'd met the previous summer on Trustroots. We went to his beautiful property south of the city and I stayed up for an hour or so catching up with him before passing out.

We got an early start the next day, catching a ride with Ed south on his way to work. Boise was our destination, a seven-hour drive away. It was a solid day of hitchhiking, ignited with a good long first ride from a woman heading south to pick up a new puppy. Ride after ride kept coming, and the scenery kept improving, right through the Sawtooths as we got dropped off and picked up again in Stanley.

A river guide gave us our last ride to downtown Boise, and after a snack, we headed to my friend's house. She was a girl who'd picked me up hitchhiking several years earlier, we'd stayed in touch and would usually hook up whenever I was back in town.

We filmed at Barbarian Brewery the next day, another success. Nick caught a ride from one of the owners to go film at their old location they were shutting down, and I stuck around to try some more beers. My friend we were staying with met me there, and we went down to the river to meet up with some of her friends.

Later we were jumping around town to different bars and Nick came and met back up with us. Eventually, we headed back to the house, and a new friend had offered us a ride out of town in the morning.

He dropped us off the next day at Mill 95, which was a great ride as it not only got us out of the city but the full forty-five minutes to this hop processor we were filming. They took us on a brief tour and we got our b-roll footage, then started walking down the country road with Bend on the mind.

A hop grower gave us a ride, then another couple of decent rides got us well on our way. We waited at one particular junction for several hours, our longest wait of the trip, but just before the sunset we scored a ride from a guy going right through Bend.

We sat at a bar when we got there, sipping a beer and contemplating where we'd stay for the night. I had a friend in town I'd stayed with before, but he had a habit of disappearing from contact when I arrived, and this time was no different.

Once again, while I was searching the satellite map view for camping spots, Nick was searching for hotel rooms. I'd found a good remote wooded area close to the brewery we were filming in the morning, but Nick was set on a hotel.

He had a common prejudice against homeless people and assumed they all wanted to rob us. Rather than argue against that notion, I explained that the spot I'd found was far from downtown and away from the "sketchy folk." I always predicated my stealth camp spots on being hidden from absolutely everybody.

He didn't care for my advice, and in fact, he used it as fuel to settle into his stubborn persona. I knew how to handle this side of him by now, but it didn't mean I enjoyed or even always executed the proper handling. The situation soon became comical, but I did my best to restrain my smiles and offering of advice.

We walked to a budget motel he'd found. He rang the buzzer, and the hotel clerk told him it was full. Nick started arguing with the guy, pointing to a half-full parking lot and insisting there must be a room available. He went back and forth with the guy several times. The guy stayed calm and matter-of-fact while I slowly distanced myself from the embarrassing display.

Nick turned back up the dark sidewalk in a haste, picking up his pace as he pecked at his phone with determined frustration. Several blocks later we reached another hotel. The guy was outside smoking a cigarette and was quick to tell us that they too were booked up for the night.

Nick kept walking up the street with his phone in hand, stewing. He eventually halted in a clump to sit and focus on his phone.

"We're actually getting closer to the camp spot I'd found," I threw out there. He ignored me. Having already gone into his stubborn mode, and after a couple failures, there was no way in hell he'd "admit defeat."

In fact, he went all-in and booked not one, but two nights at a fancy downtown hotel that set him back five-hundred dollars. Two nights, unbelievable. He left no room for travel magic or the odd opportunity that may have arisen the next day. No hope that my friend would get in touch or we'd make another friend. It was at this point that I fully understood how willing he was to spite himself, even if to just "win" an intangible or inconsequential argument that he himself had manufactured.

I followed his march to the downtown hotel in a silence that would continue through the night, as he would even let the elevator close between us while I asked the clerk for the WiFi password, forcing me to rush up the stairs to follow him to the room and watch as he crawled under the covers in an aggressive pout.

I awoke to an email from the brewery we were supposed to film at in just a couple hours; they'd canceled. The day was a federal holiday, but they'd waited until now to realize and relay that to me. Truth be told, I'd already been having second thoughts about this brewery that was owned by a conglomerate and widely distrusted in the craft beer community. It's also worth noting that my "friend," the one who stopped responding to my messages when we arrived in Bend, was also a brewer at this brewery. The universe was sending me a message.

When Nick stirred awake, I told him the news. He seemed relieved, yet still maintained his grumpiness from the night before, and wandered to the bathroom before crawling back into bed.

I decided I'd spend the day going to as many breweries as I could, seeing as Bend is a bit of a legendary brewery town. I left Nick to his luxurious zero-day and stepped into the daylight to begin my tour.

I did just what I set out to, hitting eight breweries throughout the day, having a beer or two at each before stumbling back to the hotel that night.

We filmed at Bevel Brewing the next day in the early afternoon. The place was owned by some disc golf champions and was one of my favorite stops of the trip. The beer was great, and the people were all exceptional.

One of our wireless mic transmitters had busted a week or two earlier, and I'd suggested getting a temporary replacement from Best Buy. There was one on the north side of Bend, which was the direction we had to head at this point onto our next brewery in Yakima, Washington. To walk there would take about ninety minutes, but we were close to the highway where I suggested we could more quickly hitch from.

I took one last video of the brewery from the parking lot and turned to see Nick walking the wrong way. I shouted this to him and he ignored me and just started walking faster. I texted him at that point to discover that he was walking there despite my suggestion that we could hitch quicker.

Knowing it would take him ninety minutes just to get there, I figured I had time to stop at another brewery by the highway, grab a beer, and hitch a ride on up to him as he was finishing. Seeing that he was acting kinda flighty, I made sure he knew exactly where we were going around Yakima in case we got split up — which is exactly what happened.

I swallowed down a great beer and hitched a ride as fast as I figured and got dropped off in the north of Bend. I texted Nick to let him know I'd gotten a ride, but Nick sent me a middle finger emoji and then stopped responding to my texts altogether. It wasn't clear why he was pissed off, if he was intentionally not responding to me, or if he'd lost phone service.

I waited around for an hour or so continuing to text him, then decided I may as well just start hitching north before dark, and assumed Nick had done the same. I got one ride just a little way before having to find a place to camp for the night.

I woke up around 5am knowing that I had three hours of road to travel and only about six hours to hitch there if I wanted to be on time for the brewery. Still no word from Nick. I hitched a fast first ride, then got a great second ride to Biggs Junction, only an hour from the brewery.

I finally got a response from Nick. After much of his vitriol, I discovered that he'd misunderstood my messages and thought I'd gotten a ride up out of Bend and "ditched" him. I went back and reread my messages, including the last one which read "You may have lost service, if you don't get this until tomorrow then meet me at the brewery, if you get this right away and haven't gotten a ride I'll meet you near Best Buy."

Seemed pretty clear to me. He hadn't lost service, he'd just chosen to ghost me. I'd felt bad at first, but after rereading the messages I couldn't help but wonder why he was portraying such misery towards me and dragging himself down in the process.

He wouldn't tell me where he was despite my asking, just that he was on the way to the brewery. Later I'd find out he was at the exact same junction I was at while we were texting, just inside the truck stop. Some people can't be helped.

I caught another couple of rides to the brewery and met the owner, who arrived just after me, but was once again not getting any updates from Nick. After a little while, I decided I would just film the walk-around and tasting on my own so the owner could get back to his Father's day plans, but just as I got my makeshift setup together, Nick arrived.

We filmed the typical routine, and all went well. The brewery was Wandering Hop, inspired by great travels, and even had a cartoon hop logo similar to the Hopping logo. The owner was fun times, and the beers were all happy. After the initial filming, I could actually talk to Nick and further clear up the mishap, and luckily he was in good spirits after having caught a pleasant ride from a generous preacher who'd gone out of his way to drop him directly at this brewery in the countryside. I think he'd realized he'd fucked up and his happy vibes indeed did well to smooth things over.

Our next brewery destination was DogHaus in Leavenworth, a two-hour drive away. We hitched a couple rides to the south of Yakima, and that's where we got tripped up for a bit. The sun was beating down hard, so after waiting fruitlessly at an on-ramp, we took a walk to get some shade and water. I decided we might as well walk clear to the north of town to a better on-ramp.

A short ride got us out of Yakima, but we waited another couple of hours on the side of the highway until finally getting a ride to the junction heading north to Leavenworth. We were now just an hour's drive from town, but the sun had gone down, and only fading residual light remained for us while the stars started to pierce through one by one.

My eyes defaulted to scanning the distance for potential camp spots, but as one might predict by now, Nick's eyes scanned his phone for hotel deals. He lit up when he saw the price for an Econo Lodge, something around seventy bucks or thereabouts. After dropping five hundred in Bend, this price made him absolutely giddy.

"If we don't get a ride by 10pm, we're staying at the Econo Lodge," he announced with glee.

In the wake of his fancy hotel misery and the Bend-to-Yakima disconnect, there was no way I was gonna blow his buzz with suggestions of camping or walking or anything else. His morale was fragile, a bi-polar sort of thing that I needed to keep positive when possible.

From time to time, he'd bring up that we were eventually spending his money (once the Kickstarter funds I gave him ran out) as a way of putting me down in a sense. Being that he ignored much of my advice — advice that would have saved him around a thousand dollars — I couldn't let that get to me. He also had no idea how much money I'd personally spent on equipment and other things, as I kept those details to myself — it wasn't about that.

I'd organized the trip, corresponded with the breweries, had most of the friends and family we stayed with, done the research for the equipment, and countless other factors from the fundraising to simply having the travel and beer savvy to make it all work. All I wanted from him was to stay happy and keep the camera rolling.

He soaked in his glorious Econo Lodge, and I was pleased to have Happy Nick by my side again. We parlayed those good vibes into good rides on up to Leavenworth the next day, arriving with time to spare.

While Nick got coffee, I grabbed a pre-game pint at a different brewery in town and ran into the owner of Wandering Hop I'd interviewed the day before. We'd run into him again later.

The filming at DogHaus went well; it was a tiny place and even claimed to be the "smallest bar in Washington." Afterwards we went to a bar nearby and met up with a friend I'd made in town nearly a decade earlier when I'd first traveled to this Bavarian-themed town.

At another bar, we ran into the Wandering Hop owner again who got us a round of beers, and by this point, my friend had offered to let us crash at the house she was watching in town.

I got coffee and breakfast with her in town in the morning, then she dropped Nick and me off on the far side to hitch a ride. We got a lift from a friendly couple visiting for the weekend from Seattle. They went out of their way to get us just north of the junction on Interstate 5.

We got an excellent ride from there from a real estate guy who was heading to Bellingham, just south of Ferndale. He knew many brewery owners and good spots around the city. He offered to take us to his office in Bellingham and hang out for an hour or so until he was done working, and then give us a lift to Ferndale. We gladly accepted, had a beer at his office, and then another at a nearby brewery while we waited for him.

He dropped us off, as promised, directly at my friend Scot's brewery "Fringe" up in Ferndale, where we'd be filming next. I was stoked to see Scot; I'd first met him at Sierra Nevada Beer Camp in 2013 when he was just home-brewing. Now he had a full-fledged brewery of his own.

We barbequed at his house for the night, then headed back to the brewery in the morning. A friend of his, who also owned a brewery, was using his keg washer when we arrived. Suddenly we decided to do an episode with him as well, so caught a ride to his farm just a mile and a half from the Canadian border. His brewery was Atwood, and while he didn't have a taproom, he happily showed us his brewery, the family farm, and we filmed a tasting of his excellent brews.

On his way to the farmer's market to sell his beers, he dropped us off at Fringe where we filmed the episode with Scot. We wound up spending a couple more days in town, as we reached out to a Bellingham brewery called Stemma and filmed an episode with them as well.

At last, we began our southern descent, aiming for a brewery just north of Seattle called 5 Rights. Coincidentally, a couple we'd met a few days earlier saw us on the road and gave us a ride. They were some beer bloggers that focused on Washington breweries and events. Really, it was the perfect ride.

The filming at 5 Rights went perfectly, and a friend of mine who lived nearby (and had suggested it) turned up with his family while we were filming. We wound up staying with him for the night, which turned out to be a great hang all around.

Seattle was our goal the next day, and while we wouldn't be featuring any breweries there, I wanted to check out a couple spots and Nick had a friend living there who was apparently down to grab a beer. We hitched just one easy ride to the city and rendezvoused with that friend at a brewery.

By the time we were at the second brewery and a few beers in, his friend offered to put us up for the night, so we hit yet another brewery before getting down to his house to meet his wife and kid.

Portland is where the show would end. We had three breweries lined up, a record-setting brewery-hopping tour, and one of those breweries had designed a beer and label to feature the show along with a release party scheduled to cap off the Hopping season.

Nick's friend gave us a ride to the highway in the morning, but rather than hitch directly to Portland, I guided us towards the coast. We were a couple days ahead of schedule, and Portland was also experiencing a record high of 115 degrees. Going to the (hopefully) cooler coast for a night or so seemed like a decent plan.

We got rides at a decent pace in between sun-baking waits. As we got closer to the coast, the traffic was thinning out and the sun was beating extra heavy. I looked at the map to see there was a river crossing just a mile up the road. I figured a dip in the water and a change of location could do us well.

We walked on up to the spot and waded through the cool water in the shade of the big bridge. A guy and his girlfriend had done the same, briefly, and as he was driving out, he paused and said he had some beer in the bed of his pickup truck if we wanted one. I grabbed myself one and took the opportunity to ask if he happened to be driving down to Raymond. He was, and let us hop in the back for the ride.

There was a brewery called Wild Man Brewing in Raymond, which, besides being on the way to the coast, seemed like a good enough excuse to me as something to check out on the way. We walked on over, and although they were just about to close, the bartender said we could hang out as long as we wanted while she cleaned up. Nick chugged water while I sipped a few beers in between waters myself.

As we walked from the brewery to the main road, there was no definitive plan. I'd dotted a couple potential brewery stops on the map, eyeballed a few interesting towns and potential cool places to camp, but it's often great to just let the road do what it does best.

We got a quick ride from an interesting guy who used to hop trains all around the country. He was living up in Seattle doing construction now, but they got a couple days off because of the record heatwave so he'd hopped in his van for a ramble. I told him we were basically on a similar ramble so we just started driving south and chatting it up, both unsure of our precise path.

After a while, he suggested he may just aim for Portland that night, and without any real convictions on the route, I decided we might as well just take the ride we had and roll all the way to the city now ourselves.

Knowing hitchhiking himself, he knew the value of dropping us directly at my friend's house once we hit the city, which was greatly appreciated.

We stayed at my friend Stephanie's house, also someone I'd met at Sierra Nevada Beer Camp. The next day was also 115 degrees, mostly a good day to stay air-conditioned inside. Stephanie and I motivated outward eventually anyhow, making a beer run, going to a beer bar to catch up some more, then hit the grocery store before heading back to Nick at the house to have a good taco night and sample some beers together.

A friend of mine flew into Portland the next day. I went and met her at the park and grabbed a beer with her, and Stephanie offered to host her as well. Stephanie and Nick picked us up and dropped us off at Breakside, the first brewery in Portland we were to film at.

Yet again, things went extremely well and I was blown away by all the beers they poured. My friend John met up with us there by the end. He's another guy I'd met at Beer Camp. I'd joined him once on a mission to hit sixty-one Portland breweries in a single day (he'd once been to seventy-seven himself), and he'd also connected me with all the breweries we'd film at in town now.

We all headed back to Stephanie's after filming and started sipping some more beers, as Breakside had set me off with a whole crate of greatness. It was in this session that things took an unredeemable turn.

After Stephanie had gone to bed, and Liz had faded into the couch, John was asking me about the show and the trip and how the filming had been going. I told him how everything had gone so far, and mentioned that Nick hadn't been filming much of the travel and between-brewery action as I'd expected, so we'd be filming a sitdown recap in order to give our editor some more ammunition to give each episode some narrative context.

I'd expressed this to Nick several times throughout the trip, encouraging him to film more and criticized him when he didn't. At this moment, he snapped, attempting to defend himself while feeling offended, embarrassed, or both. His explanation wasn't much of one, and even John teased in a joke or two, pointing to several outlets when Nick mentioned something about not being able to charge batteries.

Frustrated and certainly embarrassed by this point in an un-winnable argument, he stormed outside, returning after several minutes to grab his sleeping bag, then rushed out to the backyard again. John and I kept chatting for another beer or so before he took off.

I'd seen Stubborn Nick and Misery Nick, but I hadn't seen him completely storm off like that yet. It actually crossed my mind to stash the camera equipment somewhere in case he did something rash, but I didn't actually believe things would go that far. I was wrong.

I woke up in the morning and came out of the office room I'd been sleeping in and immediately noticed his backpack and the camera equipment bag were gone. I peeked out to the backyard and saw no sign of him.

"Did Nick leave?" I asked my sleepy friend on the couch. She'd seen him leave, but he hadn't said anything and for all she knew he'd gone to grab coffee. But he wouldn't have brought all that gear with him.

I texted him and tried calling, then texted a mutual friend to discover he was catching a flight to his sister's in Chicago. Finally, he responded, refusing to even meet me to return my camera gear. Instead, he inexplicably said he'd mail it to my friend who'd gotten it for me and made a sarcastic comment about leaving me high-and-dry to film with a selfie stick.

I messaged that friend, who was unsure why Nick was putting him in an awkward spot, and wanted nothing to do with being in the middle of it. He agreed to tell Nick to mail the gear to my brother, where I'd be in a week, as Nick had stopped responding to me altogether. This didn't help the current situation, that of still being scheduled to film the walking brewery tour, two more breweries, and the release party with our specially labeled beer for the season finale.

It was hard to believe. Nick had joined me to film a documentary about beer and travel, so my continued suggestion that he actually film the travel was obvious. I surely didn't go about it gently at all times, but when he dropped the ball early, often, and increasingly so, it was tricky to be anything other than blunt.

More shocking was that there were a great deal more people other than myself involved in the show. I didn't realize he was capable of such a brazenly selfish maneuver. Over thirty people had contributed money to our Kickstarter to fund it. Our editor was already paid and ready to roll. Twenty-odd breweries had carved out time to film with us and share their beer. Two of those breweries still hadn't been filmed, and one had even gone out of their way to make a beer with Hopping labels and organize a release party.

I was caught up between confusion, a hint of anger, a sense of sadness watching a twenty-year friendship be cast aside, and running through the logistics of how to finish up the season above the needed quality threshold. Thankfully, the next brewery feature wasn't until the next day.

I headed to downtown Portland with my other friend who'd never been. I figured it would be good to clear my head, sort things out, and simply have a good day. Funnily enough, she was excited about filming, so we captured some moments throughout the day for the show to explain what had happened and what was about to happen — the type of footage I'd been wanting Nick to get more of.

I powered through the day and worked out how I'd film the breweries. The cinema camera Nick had stolen was the primary loss, but I still had a couple lav mics on my own, the B and C phone cams we'd been using for the tastings, and I had a GoPro that would have to take the place of the cinema camera for the tour and primary tasting angle.

The next day my friend took Nick's place, following me around for the tour at Gigantic Brewing and helping during the tasting. I got the b-roll on my own, and by that point, I was in great spirits. I got word that Nick was actually going to return the gear to my brother's address, and I felt good knowing that the brewery filming went as smooth as ever despite the loss.

The next day was jam-packed. I met John in the city early, when the first brewery was set to open. The goal was to set an unofficial record of visiting the most breweries in one day without a vehicle, just walking.

Off we went brewery after brewery, having at least a sample at each and sometimes more. We walked, and walked, and drank, and walked until we'd totaled twenty-eight breweries in the end. I filmed the whole way, primarily with the GoPro, which actually seemed pretty fitting. It seemed like the kind of day of filming Nick would have hated anyhow, but John and I reveled in it.

The next day was the final day of filming, starting with labeling the collaboration beer at Pono Brewing. It felt great to see the label in person and read the blurb about my Hopping show on the can, and it felt even better to crack one open to enjoy a fantastic summer IPA.

After the labeling, John played the role of camera operator to do the typical tour and tasting with Pono Brewing, then we had to rush on over to another venue for the release party. The same beer was on tap, and the release had been written about in some of Oregon's biggest beer blogs and social media pages.

I sipped pint after pint as beer geeks trickled in, sharing stories and glass clinks for several hours taking it all in. John had to leave, but I stayed a while longer, eventually meeting a beer podcaster who gave me a lift back to Stephanie's.

And with that, the show was over. The blemish with Nick's departure, and the sinking feeling that I may have actually lost a friend, was certainly a sad ending, but there was enough positivity that came in those final days as well to not be an absolute bummer. And in the end, as far as the show is concerned, I believe the season will be a winner.

Without a chance to take a breath, very early the next morning I had to fly on out of Portland. My brother was set to have his retirement ceremony from the Marine Corps in less than a week in North Carolina, and that 4th of July morning ticket was the cheapest I could find.

With a multi-week hazy hangover and very little sleep, I powered through onto the plane, up and away to the next adventure. Always going, always Hopping.

What happened with me between 2017 and 2021

2021-07-08T15:53:00.001-04:00

Keeping up with my writing while amid my adventures has slipped as my regular readers have seen over the years.

I began my nomadic lifestyle in 2007, and for the first four years I'd write and post about my adventures as they happened. Slowly my posts slipped to writing about things that happened weeks ago, months ago, years ago, and then... it seemed daunting to catch up.

I still keep personal notes — cliff notes, if you will — but I miss the periodic coffee shop sessions where I'd delve into my stories while they were fresh in my mind.

My last post wrapped up all of 2016 — a step towards catching up — and now I'll summarize everything from then through to the very near present. It won't be as detailed as my normal posts, but it will allow me to get back in the habit of posting regularly.

Eventually (don't ask when) I'll release a comprehensive book of all my travels, and that's where I'll flesh out all the great highlights from these past years and all the years on the go.

I started my Freestyle Travel Show podcast — conveniently in 2017 — where I do in fact share my stories audibly and regularly, so I'll provide FTS (Freestyle Travel Show) links throughout this post if you'd like to dig deeper into some of the specific stories, as well as some YouTube links.

Let's get crazy and sum up all the miles, smiles, and craziness from the past several years.

2017 - Sierra Nevada Sparks an Adventure

I won a photo contest with Sierra Nevada Brewery which resulted in a free adventure tour trip of my choosing. I had many options, but seeing as they were going to send me the money for airfare as well, I chose a two-week package in Nepal as it was about as far as I could get.

We booked the tour for May of that year, and they sent me an overly generous Visa gift card to cover the airfare. That gave me four or five months to get there, the Freestyle way.

After making a brand new BivyPack prototype at my friend's place in Phoenix, I hitched on up to Las Vegas and caught a January flight to Hawaii for less than a hundred bucks. I spent a few weeks hitching around a couple islands, hiding from a helicopter while on a sketchy hike, finding beautiful campsites, and finding more reasons to want to come back to explore.

From there I caught the cheapest flight to Melbourne I could find. I spent just shy of a month hitching around Australia, catching up with friends, and making new ones all the way up to Darwin for the next cheap flight.

I think it was about $60 to get to Bali, where I hadn't been before. I dug into Bali for a while before hitching across Indonesia, couchsurfing from city to city on my way to Jakarta for yet another flight. Indonesia was dirty as hell, but the food was good and I met some interesting enough people along the way.

Next up was Cambodia, where Phnom Penh berated me with hookers, masseuses, taxi drivers, and everyone else on the streets trying to sell me something. I happily hitched to the coast where there was still some of this going on, but far more chill. Beers cost anywhere from twenty-five cents to a buck and a quarter in the rip-off areas.

I kept up the hitchhiking up to and through Thailand, hitting some familiar spots like Bangkok and some new places on the coast. I got my fill of deliciously affordable food as I made my way down to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the actual flight to Nepal.

Kathmandu was dusty in the wake of earthquakes and road construction, but I enjoyed some of the bustle and also had a local friend there I'd met in California to show me the ropes. Then, the actual adventure tour began.

The funny thing about it was that it was a package for two people, but you'd be surprised how hard it is to give away a free trip to Nepal. People are all into their jobs and their lives and junk. Luckily, after posting a mysterious "event" on Couchsurfing.com, I got a response from one person.

I talked with an English girl who'd been on the road for about a year herself; she was currently at the San Francisco airport waiting on a flight to Kathmandu.

"So, I won this trip," I told her "it's a two-week adventure tour with rafting, paragliding, elephants, and all this other kinda stuff. Apparently the hotels and lodging are all covered and I think a bunch of the food too... at least I hope so. Kinda crazy, but if you're in then you can meet me at the first hotel in Kathmandu."

She was shocked, stoked, and suddenly I had a travel buddy for this random journey. It was a good thing too, as I'd expected there to be as many as a dozen other people all involved in this travel package, but it was just the two of us and a guide who'd pass us off here and again.

FTS: India Jane

We toured around Kathmandu, then went around the country whitewater rafting, paragliding, riding an elephant, bungee jumping, and all kinds of ridiculousness as I ate cheap and delicious momos (like dumplings) for the few meals that weren't provided in the whole package.

By the end, she joined me in Kathmandu at my friend's place and we hitchhiked around the north in a little loop before parting ways.

From there I spent several weeks hitching across the border and down the middle of India. I ate spectacular food, couchsurfed from city to city, got forced onto a train by police, had my laptop stolen by a truck driver, and ultimately flew out to Dubai.

FTS: Trucker Steals my Stuff

Dubai only lasted a couple days, couchsurfing by myself in a fancy highrise in the expensive city. Effectively, this was a long layover in the cheapest way I could find to land in Europe.

Instantly I fell in love with the little city of Sofia as I launched into another adventure on the European continent. I visited friends aiding refugees in Greece and hiked out to peninsulas I later found out was completely illegal. I skipped my way through country after country until meeting a new friend in Budapest who would guide us through a drunken mission to find his roots in Slovakia before just calling it a party all the way to Poland.

YouTube: Hitchhiking from Bulgaria to remote beaches in Greece

I got my kicks in Berlin and then hitched bit by bit to Portugal to take part in the HitchFest gathering. More running around through Spain and France and seeing a great friend in the Netherlands, and then great beer in Belgium before hitching through the UK onto Ireland for Flannery bars and the rest.

A flight back to the Northeast of the US set me off my typical hitching and North American rambling. I went on down the east coast, along the south through Biloxi and New Orleans, on up the middle of the country, and eventually to Wyoming, where I'd agreed to watch over someone's animals and cabins for several weeks.

By Thanksgiving, I was seeing some family in another part of Wyoming, and by mid-December I'd been through Vegas and San Diego and targeting North Carolina for Christmas. An incredible ride came in Phoenix with a guy who insisted on buying me a plane ticket, which made the skip across the country as easy as it gets.

FTS: Happy New Year

2018 - Blowing up the BivyPack

After North Carolina I made my way to see my increasingly better friend in Biloxi. It was there that I made the crazy idea of doing yet another Kickstarter for my BivyPack, but this time I wound up being tasked to make about a hundred of them.

I spent the first part of the year in and out of Mississippi wondering why I'd ever decided to do such a thing. Sewing, sewing, and more sewing as I tried to escape the mechanical doldrums I'd become responsible for. I loved making BivyPack prototypes, but being in debt to dozens of people who'd already paid the money for the same one was driving me bonkers.

FTS: Fabric & Sanity

Eventually I escaped and got to my typical zigzagging around the US, highlighted by visiting sixty-one Portland breweries in a single day, hitching to NYC just for a fantasy football draft, and getting loaded in Tijuana.

By December I'd hoped on over to Spain where I visited the buddy I'd made in Budapest and then dropped in on a house of hackers working away on Trustroots — the hospitality site that has replaced Couchsurfing. Then, it was off to Africa for the first time.

FTS: Jumping to Spain

2019 - Egyptian prison won't slow me down

I spent New Year's Eve with a new friend in Morrocco. I hitched all around the country before chaining a couple flights together to see my grandma at her home in Cyprus. In between, I made the nessecary stop to once again see my friend in the Netherlands.

My grandma's was peaceful, and I happily dug in for some weeks to see how she was living and enjoy the productive serenity.

It was off to Israel next. Hitchhiking there seemed common and easy, and the scenery was above my expectations. Crossing the border into Egypt, however, was a whole other matter.

It's quite the story and one covered in depth in what became one of my more popular podcast episodes, but let me sum it up real quick. They don't like people hitchhiking there. I had problems leaving the border with police, and there were checkpoints I had to pass and ran into issues throughout my first week inching through the country.

Eventually, a checkpoint collapsed on me, sending me into the bureaucratic system of police that landed me in one holding cell after another, confused and lacking the Arabic language to figure things out as my conditions worsened to the point of being in a packed room with other inmates fighting on top of each other.

Good times.

FTS: Held Captive in Egypt for Six Days

Listen to the podcast episode and you'll see I miraculously wound up on a plane for South Africa finally feeling free again. I got my kicks across that country as well, spending the bulk of my time cat-sitting in Cape Town making friends, and finishing my book, "A Six-Pack of Hitchhiking Stories."

Another promised house-sitting gig in Sacramento had me scrambling for the cheapest flight back. This resulted in a flight up to Germany and a hitchhike down to Spain to catch another flight to Boston and make my way from there. This makes perfect sense, of course.

After the gig at my friend's in Sacramento, my west coast rambling mode engaged, hitting my favorite spots like nearby Chico and getting down to San Diego.

FTS: Kicks in California

I transported a friend's car from there to New Orleans, swung through Biloxi again, then did a looping hitchhiking maneuver to North Carolina and up to Michigan and back just for kicks. I put together some more BivyPacks as long as I was in Biloxi, then hitched on over to Florida to catch a Puerto Rico flight.

My buddy in Mississippi had easily talked me into joining the several-week trip over there with his family for Thanksgiving. I spent most of my time with them on beaches and in caves, and part of the time hitching around on my own for even more beaches and to explore if there was any kind of beer scene on the island.

YouTube: Hitching to beaches and caves in Puerto Rico

From there it was back to the western US. By this point, I'd concocted an idea for a beer and travel show, and had my childhood friend on board with the idea.

FTS: Crowdfunding Success and Puerto Rico

2020 - The Backpacking Beer Adventure Begins

Just a few days before New Year 2020 I'd linked up with my friend in Las Vegas, armed with camera gear and the idea for a show I'd call "Hopping: The Backpacking Beer Adventure" where we'd hitchhike to breweries to interview them while drinking up.

We went from Vegas to Flagstaff and Phoenix, onward to San Diego, and north through California to Sacramento doing just that. He was pretty burned out by the end, but we had just enough footage to make it work.

FTS: Filming the Hopping Adventure

He flew on back to New York and I hitched up to Chico where I heard the word "coronavirus" the first time and thought very little of it. I hitched on to the coast to see some other friends and wound up getting a week's work with the marijuana harvest.

FTS: Marijuana Harvest for Travel Money

My idea was to jump out of the US again, most likely to South America, so I figured I'd go to Biloxi to make another few BivyPacks to cash up and be closer to the cheaper flights. Having just made a pile of money trimming weed, I opted to catch a cheap flight rather than hitching, figuring every day I could be sewing in the south would mean more travel money, so no reason to spend a week or two by thumb instead.

As luck would have it, I landed in New Orleans in the thick of Mardi gras. I got my kicks, thoroughly, and skipped to Biloxi to make three or four BivyPacks before leaving the country. That's what I thought, anyhow.

Instead, the world started shutting down. I recall murmurs about China, then the NBA canceling games, San Francisco locking down, and finally even my buddy's tattoo shop right there in Biloxi was forced to close. South America was no longer an option, and it didn't seem like hitching around even in the States was going to go over so well immediately.

So, instead of three or four BivyPacks, I made about another twenty as I let a couple months pass going stir crazy, but happy that I was at least with good friends in a place where I could be productive. My editor for Hopping, who was working for free, also happened to suddenly have the time on his hands to start putting episodes together.

FTS: Nomadic in a Pandemic

By the end of May, my buddy's tattoo shop had reopened and things seemed to be getting better. Meanwhile, my sister (in Wyoming) had bought my brother's car (in Connecticut) but hadn't been able to fly out and get it with everything being locked down, so I decided I'd hitch on up there and drive it out west for her.

I wasn't sure how hitching would go given everything that had just gone down, but I got up to New York just as easily as ever. I was pleased to see that the city was not littered with body bags as the news had been eluding to. I hadn't been used to isolation in one place, relying on the internet for information rather than just being out and about and hearing from everyone.

The parks were full of cheerful people, open container laws were being ignored, the sun was shining and the city was alive. I didn't stay long, however. Soon enough I was zipping my sister's "new" Jeep clear over to her in Wyoming.

I relaxed with family over there as the last of the Hopping episodes were released on YouTube, making sure everything went smoothly.

Shortly after the 4th of July, I got moving again. There didn't seem to be an end in sight as far as many other countries allowing travel, so assuming the worst, I decided I'd spend as much of these coming warmer months in all the northern states suspecting that I'd be relegated to the south come winter — and I'd be right.

I hitched throughout Montana seeing friends, hitting up Glacier National Park, and even accidentally breaking into an old women's house I thought I'd been in the night before, only to leave a note and then have to deal with the police. Again, there's a podcast and even a video to dig into that story.

I slipped through Washington to Idaho getting increasingly familiar kicks in Boise. I visited a good friend in Salt Lake, another in Denver, and scored excellent rides through Nebraska and Iowa to go see yet another great friend in Minneapolis. I went out of my way to see great breweries like Toppling Goliath, and ping-ponged from Madison, Wisconsin, on over to Kansas City.

FTS: Mystery Solved Hitchhiking to Midwest

I caught up with a friend there to see what kind of ludicrous shenanigans she was getting into, and by then it was September and I could sense the seasons preparing to shift.

YouTube: Hitchhiking in the USA summer of 2020

I scampered through Arkansas, my thumb in full effect, and dipped my toes into Biloxi yet again. I bounced off North Carolina to my brother and all for Thanksgiving, then hitched the southern route through Texas to Phoenix before cutting up through Vegas for a night on route to a Wyoming Christmas and 2021 New Year's Eve.

2021 - The Adventure is Still Unfolding

My friend in Kansas City got me a ticket there, saving a cold and lengthy hitchhike. By this time she was in a new spot with new tricks, still digging into life and working her angles.

I made a jump to Florida from there, happy to have hobo warmth in January. I was in Tampa when their team won the Superbowl and figured I'd be slow-hitching my way through the state as I waited out warmer months and for southern countries to open their borders.

YouTube: It's easy being a hobo in Florida

Meanwhile, the next season of Hopping was being discussed, and some funding was being secured to make it happen. With all these documentary thoughts in my mind, it reminded me of a friend I hadn't chatted with in some months and sent her a catch-up text just to see how she was.

She told me she was in the Bahamas, indeed filming a documentary herself. When I told her I was in Florida, she instantly suggested that I go to Orlando to pick up a camera and she'd fly me on over since it would be just as cheap or even cheaper than if she had it shipped.

I didn't hesitate on this offer and was over to her in less than a week. I spent a little time in Nassau, for the first time, taking in the mostly empty beaches and embracing the spontaneous magic that had occurred. Another flight had me back in Miami and I instantly got myself down to the Keys.

I hit all the breweries while I was down there and then started hitching and walking my way up the east coast of the state. I was hitting a brewery a day, sometimes five or six or seven. I was staying with friends some nights, camping most others. Some days I just walked, pausing only at breweries to drink and coffee shops to be productive. Sip and repeat.

FTS: Beer Travel in Florida

I spent about a week in Jacksonville with a girl I'd initially met at a nomad base in Amsterdam some ten years ago. From that point I hitched clear to Pensacola in a day, by far the biggest day-jump in a month compared to my little walks and fifteen mile mini-hitches up the coast. I continued the brewery hopping for a day or so until walking over the border into Alabama after a pleasant sleep on an empty stretch of beach.

I jumped on over to Biloxi, where my friend was making some significant life changes. He and his wife were independently figuring out what was next for themselves. They were dealing with a rift between themselves, what that actually meant, and what might be next. There was talk of the house being sold, and action involving a camper that my friend intended to start roaming the country with.

FTS: Hopping and Dogsitting

And indeed the roaming began. He planned to go up to Maine, and conveniently, I was aiming for New York myself to hand-deliver the new camera equipment to my friend up there so he could learn how to use it before the next season of my Hopping show.

And now, this nearly brings us up to date (May 2021). I'll leave you with that for now. We did it!

Next up, I'll write about getting to New York and the epic yet dramatic and unexpected journey that was the filming of season two of Hopping that ended in Portland less than a week ago. And hopefully, from now on, I'll stay on top of writing about my adventures as they happen again.

Cheers everybody, I'll see you down the road.

Crowdfunding Season 2 Of Hopping, My Backpacking Beer Adventure Show

2021-04-05T11:29:00.000-04:00

"Hopping" is the show I started in 2019 where we filmed an adventure of hitchhiking and freestyle traveling from brewery to brewery and sitting down with them to taste their beers and hear their stories. Now we're getting back out there again!

You can be a part of the adventure by backing the Kickstarter we just launched to fund Season 2: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kennyflannery/hopping-the-backpacking-beer-adventure-continues?ref=78zttw

Click on through to check out our video and hear more about what we'll be doing, where we'll be doing it, and what the funds will be used for. My life is one constant journey and often filled with beer and breweries, but taking it to this next level — and filming it — has been an amazing life choice.

Thanks in advance to anyone who backs this project or shares it around. Cheers!

I hitched to 75 Florida breweries in early 2021

2021-04-03T15:09:00.002-04:00

I spent early 2021 in Florida going to seventy-five breweries while walking, hitchhiking, stealth camping, and visiting friends all along the way.

It was a hell of a trip. You can listen to me talk about the journey by searching for my podcast on your favorite app, "Freestyle Travel Show." I've also embedded a player to that episode and an additional YouTube video I made talking about the whole journey below.

If you like travel and beer, I highly suggest you subscribe to my Hopping channel on YouTube.

Freestyle Travel Show · #67 - Beer Travel in Florida

Breweries I visited include:

1) The Bear and Peacock Brewery (Winter Park)

2) Brew Theory (Orlando)

3) Angry Chair Brewing (Tampa)

4) Southern Brewing & Winery (Tampa)

5) 7venth Sun Brewery

6) Rapp Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

7) Overflow Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

8) Bayboro Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

9) Green Bench Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

10) Mastry's Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

11) Pinellas Ale Works Brewery (Saint Petersburg)

12) 3 Daughters Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

13) Flying Boat Brewing (Saint Petersburg)

14) Big Top Brewing (Sarasota)

15) Calusa Brewing (Sarasota)

16) Brew Life Brewing (Sarasota)

17) Ellipsis Brewing (Orlando)

18) Unseen Creatures Brewing (Miami)

19) Lincoln's Beard Brewing (Miami)

20) Islamorada Brewery and Distillery (Islamorada)

21) Florida Keys Brewing (Islamorada)

22) The Waterfront Brewery (Key West)

23) First Flight Island Restaurant and Brewery (Key West)

24) Funky Buddha (Fort Lauderdale)

25) Barrel of Monks Brewing (Boca Raton)

26) NOBO Brewing (Boynton Beach)

27) Due South Brewing (Boynton Beach)

28) Copperpoint Brewing (Boynton Beach)

29) Mathews Brewing (Lake Worth)

30) Dixie Grill and Brewery (West Palm Beach)

31) Civil Society (West Palm Beach)

32) Steam Horse Brewing (West Palm Beach)

33) Accomplice Brewery and Ciderworks (West Palm Beach)

34) Skunkworts Brewing (West Palm Beach)

35) American Craft Aleworks (West Palm Beach)

36) The Brewhouse Gallery / Kelsey City Brewing (Lake Worth)

37) Coastal Karma Brewing (Lake Worth)

38) Twisted Trunk Brewing (Palm Beach Gardens)

39) Civil Society Brewing (Jupiter)

40) Taquesta Brewing (Jupiter)

41) Ocean Republic (Stuart)

42) Side Door Brewing (Port Saint Lucie)

43) Sailfish Brewing (Fort Pierce)

44) Pierced Ciderworks (Fort Pierce)

45) American Icon Brewery (Vero Beach)

46) Walking Tree Brewery (Vero Beach)

47) Mash Monkeys Brewing (Sebastian)

48) Pareidolia Brewing (Sebastian)

49) Hell n' Blazes Brewing (Melbourne)

50) Intracoastal Brewing (Melbourne)

51) Charlie and Jake's Brewery Grille (Melbourne)

52) Dirty Oar Beer Company (Cocoa)

53) Bugnutty Brewing (Cocoa)

54) Playalinda Brewing - Brix Project (Titusville)

55) Playalinda Brewing - Hardware Store (Titusville)

56) Half Wall Brewery (New Smyrna Beach)

57) New Smyrna Beach Brewing (New Smyrna Beach)

58) Tomoka Brewing (Port Orange)

59) World's Most Famous Brewery (Daytona)

60) Old Coast Ales (Saint Augustine)

61) Dog Rose Brewing (Saint Augustine)

62) Ancient City Brewing (Saint Augustine)

63) Pinglehead Brewing (Jacksonville)

64) Engine 15 Brewing (Jacksonville Beach)

65) Southern Swells Brewing (Jacksonville Beach)

66) King Maker Brewing (Jacksonville)

67) Bold City Brewery (Jacksonville)

68) A Little Madness Brewing (Pensacola)

69) Goat Lips Chew and Brew House (Pensacola)

70) Coastal County (Pensacola)

71) Odd Colony Brewing (Pensacola)

72) Perfect Plain Brewing (Pensacola)

73) The 5 Barrel (Pensacola)

74) Big Top Brewing (Pensacola)

75) Emerald Republic (Pensacola)

Drink good beer and be happy. Cheers!