Operation: Surprise, Part 2 (The Beginning)

Monday, May 5, 2008, St. Louis, MO

I’m lucky enough to be traveling around the Midwest on site visits again. You may recall me doing this last fall in TN, KY, MO and KS. Good times. Well, turns out they need me for a couple more weeks’ worth of visits this month, also.

I started this morning at 6:45AM flying from Orange County to St. Louis, Missouri. Since my first appointment isn’t until tomorrow, I had the rest of the day to do some sightseeing. Most people who are sent out on these trips spend their evenings in the hotel watching tv. Me? I see it as a chance to see things I may have never went to see on my own and/or may never get the chance to see again.

Since I arrived in St. Louis at 2PM, I had to find a couple of things to do to fill the afternoon. St. Louis = Anheuser-Busch = Budweiser = tour of the plant = free beer!

I penciled the tour in for 3PM, well, after waiting 25 minutes for my luggage and 30 minutes for my rental car, I was running behind schedule. Side note: I reserved a mid-size sedan but was offered an upgrade to a Dodge Caravan since they were out of mid-sized. No. I said no. I’m not tooling around for 1000 miles in a minivan. She ended up getting me a Suzuki XL-7 SUV, one I’ve had before. Not bad. Oh, and she’s all, it’s going to be $0.40 a mile. WHAT? No. I need unlimited. I’m returning the car in MINNEAPOLIS!! That will cost way too much. Well, in the end it’s still going to cost almost $600 for the week. Sick.

Anyways, after the whole rental car rigmarole, I felt like Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, although I didn’t cuss out the Avis lady. For those of you in the know, Steve Martin’s character in said movie was at the airport in St. Louis also (I think?). So anyways…

I arrived at the Anheuser-Busch plant to find free parking. Yes! I walked in and the man-ceptionist said the next tour was in five minutes and handed me a card. I was waiting for him to tell me how much the tour was…but he didn’t. Free tour!!

The tour was pretty awesome. The whole complex sort of reminded me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in English-speaking Germany (you saw the movie…it was obviously in Germany, with no accents. Or maybe it was London? Cause wasn’t Augustus from Germany? Someone needs to confirm this…) All of the buildings were pretty old and similar looking. I was waiting for an Ooompa Loompa to pass by at any moment riding a Clydesdale, hand me a beer and say, “This Bud’s for you.” But, as you can imagine, that didn’t happen.

Some fun facts from the tour are this: they have all these huuuuge monster kegs, but not really kegs, that the beer sits in to do the proprietary “Beechwood Aged” thing. Well, they have 30 some of these things and each one holds the equivalent of 200,000 six-packs. Turns out, you’d have to drink one beer every hour of every day for 127 some years to finish that tank off. Whoa. They wouldn’t let us take pictures in there. Some secret. Did they think I was going to hand them over to Slugworth (see: Willy Wonka)?

I think the whole bottling plant was the most interesting part. They have this machine that fills 1300 bottles per second. I think he said per second. Per minute’s not as impressive. Well, yes it is. So either way, quick. No pictures in there either.

This plant bottles enough beer per day that if you lined them up end-to-end they would stretch from NYC to Miami. I heard so many more fun facts today, but I can’t remember anymore. All of them were impressive.

Obviously, the best part of the tour was the end. The “Hospitality Room.” Each person gets not one, but two free 12 oz. samples. Oh, wow! Freshest Budweiser ever!

The next thing on my list was to visit the Gateway Arch, or, more commonly known as the Arch. And no, not the McDonald’s one. Der. I’ve been to the Arch before when I was 12 or 13 or something, but I don’t remember it much, and I didn’t have a digital camera then, so I had to go back. Unfortunately, I missed the last elevator to the top. Sucks. I’d still like to do that some day. I hear it’s all claustrophobic-y but offers great views.

To end the evening, I headed over to Schlafly Brewery, the only (I think) other brewery in St. Louis. It’s pretty small time but it’s supposed to be good. There weren’t a whole lot of people at the bar, they were mostly in the dining room and outside on the patio. I sort of felt out of place when all of the guys coming and going from the bar knew the barkeep on a first-name basis and vice versa. I ordered my first beer and planned on heading out after that. It was kind of awkward. Well, then things started to be okay for some reason and I decided to just stay and order some food. I got this bison stew and a buffalo burger. Each were awful. The stew was just, something, and the burger was too well done and was falling apart. Nasty.

Well, then people started talking to me. It was actually kind of fun talking to the locals. I decided to try another beer. Then the guy next to me left, but apparently the barkeep overheard us talking and then proceeds to say to me, “so you’re from California? I lived in North Hollywood for five years…” That led to loads of convo. Which led to me finding out he doesn’t even drink, but only serves. Which leads to him saying how amazing the beer is they brew there at Schlafly (which he only tastes). Which leads to him giving me a sample of 4 more beers (on the house!). Which leads to be feeling obligated to drinking them (even the nasty dark stout which I knew would taste like fireplace and definitely did). Which led to me feeling kind of nasty. After all the conversation apparently this guy was my new buddy. He didn’t charge me for the second beer I ordered, he gave me a growler to go at the “regulars price” and each of the three times he thought I was leaving, he shook my hand and told me how nice it was to meet me and wished me safe travels. Nice guy. For some reason we bonded over a short period of time. I felt like Cliff to his Woody (see: Cheers).