In a previous life, I fancied myself a group tour operator, and for a while it worked out fairly well.
To no one’s great surprise, my bus and bicycle jaunts centered entirely on Europe and beer, two topics very close to my heart ever since the deciding moment, just before Christmas in fifth grade, when I realized I’d been duped.
No, not misled about Santa Claus.
I’m speaking of the drunken stork who mistook New Albany on the Ohio for Neuburg an der Donau, and deposited me on the wrong damn continent.
Eventually there was a fork in the road, and I was compelled to make a choice between two fermentable possibilities: either ramping up the beer tourism trade or expanding NABC’s brewing operation. I opted for the latter.
So much for coin flips.
Bank Street Brewhouse proved to be both aesthetic victory and fiscal Waterloo, and given the less than salutary outcome (the business no longer exists, and neither does my ownership share), periodically I question my sanity in choosing as I did, given that leading a tour group to the original Waterloo battlefield in Belgium with cool Witbier in hand would have been far less stressful, …
