Yes that title is no joke. Brew Fest was a fucking nightmare. Overall, however, the trip was good! It was an adventure. I have some pictures to help me explain! Hold onto your seats!
*Saturday, May 17th 2008*
We get on the road at about 9:15 AM. We stop at A’s mom’s house to pick up her phone charger. After that, we go to the local Weight Watchers so A can weigh in. She is down .2 lbs. Not her best weigh in ever, but she is happy that she lost. Doesn’t she look thrilled?
I am also thrilled, because I was down 1.5 for the week. I weigh in at home though, but I was still happy, see?
I picked up some Strawberries and cream oatmeal cups (2 points per cup) and Peanut Butter Bliss bars (1 point per bar) They are both FANTASTIC, thank god! Next we went to Walgreens and I picked up some $5.99 flip flops. They are cute! (You will have to trust me on that one.. I didn’t take THAT many pics!)
We arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn at about 12:30, we made great time! We got up to the room and it was really nice! There were bright white sheets and the whole place was really clean. Thanks to her friend N for hooking that up. I have a pic of that but neither of us would be happy to post it. Just pretend there is a picture of us standing in a hotel room and we look skinny and cute.
Then we went to Brew Fest. We took a cab. The nightmare begins! The cab dropped us off at the bottom of a big-ass hill. The road up to the fairgrounds this was being held at was apparently blocked off. We figure that this sucks but we will have so much fun inside it will be worth the trek. Lets remember it is like 100+ degrees outside, we were still in ok spirits. However we were already starting to bitch, which is what A & I do best. We get to the place and see a line like a mile long. It is coiling around itself like a tapeworm. (lol) We find what we think is the end of the line, and coil around with the rest of the cattle that are here for 30 dollar unlimited beer tasting.
We waited in the line for 15 minutes or so, until a guy handing out wrist bands said that if we bought tickets online, we need to go to will call to get them. We look over at will call and see that there is no line! Great! Once we get our tickets, we are told to get back in the tapeworm line. :*(
We see that it is no longer a coiling line, but a straight line, and we probably walk 10 minutes to get to the end of it. Ok we have been at Brew Fest for an hour now and we are not even inside yet! We wait in line for 40 minutes in the sun. A mentions she wants to turn around and leave. I said fuck that, dude, I paid 30 bucks for this shit and we are getting in there and having fun. A, why do I never listen to you? I am sorry. Ok we get into brew fest and we run for water and food, wanting to get that out of the way before we drink. A had Tri tip and I had a hot link. The day is looking up!
I repeat, it is a hot link, get your mind out of the gutter, I am not even done with my story.
Ok so we finished lunch and we were ready to drink! It is a Brew Fest, so yes we had every intention of getting smashed. I pretend here for the sake of this post that the intention of getting smashed is rare to me, so play along, k? Oh, don’t bother, it turns out that you can not get smashed at Brew Fest. I repeat, you can not get smashed at Brew Fest. They give you 5 oz cups (normal for a brew fest) to store your beer and since it is unlimited tastings, one would expect you have many, many, many, many, many tastings. Not at Brew Fest! We waited in more lines. Approximately 10-20 minutes per beer, to be exact. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH BREW FEST?
We waited for 2 beers, then we were feeling dizzy and hot, and bad. We decided to leave. It was really disappointing. We called for the cab to pick us up but of course, they told us we had to meet them at the bottom of the big-ass hill. The road was still blocked. We started to make the walk back to the bottom of the hill. About halfway down my friend was starting to cry, and was saying she was going to faint. The weird part was I was feeling the same way. We are walking on hot concrete and I just want to look for a shady spot of some kind to rest in for 2 seconds but there was nothing. There was also no one around. I have to say it was seriously unsafe. I was starting to feel really faint and felt my brain “tingle” which was something I had not felt before. Inside I was kind of panicking because I knew if I fainted or whatever no one could help us as we were basically alone. We kept walking. It sounds like we were walking through the Sahara but it was seriously insane. I was surprised to not hear that someone died out there because it was fucking dangerous in my opinion.
Well we made it to the cab eventually, and we were just so relieved to be “rescued” if you want to call it that. We went back to the room to relax. Before I finish the story just know that this is not normal at a Beer Festival at all. I have been to many, and they are all very accommodating, have plenty of places to relax and you can get your fill of new beers which is what you are there for I should hope.
So… We get back to the room, and we chat for a bit and A takes a little nap. We then get up and get dressed and start exploring the area. We decided earlier we were going to Chilis for our dinner. She was very Weight Watchers-good, she had shrimp & chicken fajitas. I was “bad” and i am still proud of it. I had a bacon burger. It was DELICIOUS ! I ate only half
Me with my Big margarita:
After we hung out there, we enjoyed the *very* local scenery: We had a nice fountain in front, and we saw a restaurant chain we don’t have in the bay.
We then decided we were going to the Hooters that we passed by on the road for a drink after dinner. Did you know that Hooters sucks ass? Well, we didn’t either, but it does, folks…..trust me, it does. We ducked in, and looked at the gift shop, they serve only bottled beer and it has no atmosphere at all. A & I expected we could at least get a photo-op with a Hooters girl. Not so much. We left after browsing the gift shop.
.
We then went to the Shell station and asked “Where is the closest dive bar?” The worker told us the directions to “Crawdads Bar & Cantina on the River”. It was only a few blocks up. We got there, and sat outside because there was room. OMG this was heaven! We loved this place, the weather was like 75 warm degrees outside, on a river, shared with a few big boats. We got a decent picture of the view, we tried.
We met this interesting “couple” while there, and they had been to Brew Fest earlier as well. They had a more positive story than we did, they found a way to drink there, apparently! In any event, they were more drunk than we were, so we thought they were retarded of course. The guy was a complete dickhead….. he was talkin’ shit to the girl all night, calling her a drunk, wow that was fun! Not. We were entertained at least..
We stayed at Crawdad’s until about 11 PM. We had a great time, but we were so zonked! We crashed at like midnight. We tried to drink more beer but… it was a no go. We kept them for later.
Ok so Sunday: We got on the road at about……….10:00? We were very hungry so we stopped as soon and it seemed right.. I was hell-bent on getting to a new diner so we stopped at Orchard in Tracy.
A had a hot dog, I had the soup & salad bar. BTW: This soup was extremely salty! It was also delicious. One-bowl goodness, let me tell you.
After lunch we got back on the road and stopped at Southland Mall in Hayward to check out Steve & Barry’s. I got myself a brown My Little Pony t-shirt… Cute as hell, only $8.98. We got on the road and I got home at about 2:00 PM. Turns out, there was a murder at that mall about 1 hr later! I escaped death many times this weekend you see! 
It was a very action-packed weekend, we had lots of fun! Thanks for reading!