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Starkweather Beer Company

 When I moved back to Madison to attend law school in 1987, we moved to a crappy little apartment near the banks of Starkweather Creek on the unfashionable east side.  Today, the east side is booming, and one of the newer brewpubs is called Starkweather Beer Company. It was Saint Pat's Day.  While Guinness is a decent light-bodied stout, I opted for Starkweather's dry Irish Stout, named "Jamestown Jackdaw." Coming in at 5.9 ABV, it had a malty chewable backbone.  It's a new favorite stout for me.  Julia had Late Winter Haze, a New England IPA that didn't have as much fruitiness as she likes in a hazy.  It was still well-executed. We walked down the street to the Harmony Bar, where Julia enjoyed a complete corn beef and cabbage dinner.  I opted for the Reuben sandwich.  Mine was washed down with an Edmund Fitzgerald porter from Great Lakes Brewing.  Julia enjoyed her Chaos Pattern IPA from 3 Sheeps Brewing.  Both are great beers. Justin update:   After a long h

Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras

 We left San Antonio at about 10:30 a.m., driving south on I-35 and then heading west on Hwy 57 to Eagle Pass, Texas.  

We arrived at about 1 p.m. and had sandwiches at the Silver Spoon.  

Our check-in at the Piedras Negras Airbnb wasn't supposed to be until 4 p.m., so we ate a leisurely lunch and then walked up and down the downtown streets of Eagle Pass and down to the Rio Grande and the bridge we would cross.  

Eagle Pass is an interesting city--in some ways, it reminds me of the Mexican border towns even though it's still Texas.  Many of the store signs are in Spanish.  Most of the people that we observed walking around were Hispanic.



We didn't want to cross the bridge until we had the lock-box combination to get into the Airbnb.  The host said that he was going to send it to us right away, but it was a good lesson in Mexican time-keeping.  Right away means sometime still today as opposed to tomorrow/manana which means sometime in the future.  

Around 2:45 p.m., we had the combination and started the process to cross the border..  We thought that it would take awhile to go through customs and that we would arrive right around 4 p.m.




Traffic was fairly light going to Mexico but quite heavy coming back to the U.S.  


When we arrived at Mexican customs, we entered the lane for "nothing to declare"  (nada de declarar).  From my research, I knew that there was still a high likelihood of getting pulled over and searched, especially when entering with a pickup truck.  But we didn't see any customs' employees and drove directly into Piedras Negras.  

Navigating the streets of the city was more difficult than I expected with Google Maps. A little jog right or left was treated as a turn, and that's not the way to get to where we were going. We made a couple of wrong turns, but we eventually figured out how to get to the neighborhood of the Airbnb.  At that point, our host's instructions were to ignore google maps and follow his written instructions, which were directly on point and easy to understand.  The neighborhood was gated, and security verified our reservation before letting us enter.  

It was only 3:15 p.m, and the place was still getting cleaned.  We apologized for our early arrival, and he apologized that things weren't quite ready yet.  His English was limited; my Spanish is far from fluent.  We figured things out, and the place was ready a short time later.  The accommodation was lovely:  a two story townhouse with fully equipped kitchen, wifi, nice bedroom and bathroom, a comfortable living room, and pet friendly.  So much better than a hotel room in Eagle Pass and at a better price.  

After getting comfortable, we headed out to H.E.B, a chain of grocery stores which also has a location in Piedras Negras.  We bought supplies for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow morning.    It's not quite 7 p.m., and there's still some light from sunset.  A pretty good day with no unpleasant surprises.

I'm hoping for the same tomorrow.  We will need to stop in Allende for our temporary visa and temporary auto import permit.  And then it will be a long drive to our next stop.


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