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The Bermondsey Beer Mile

When I was growing up in North Carolina, our state was probably best known for tobacco and basketball. Turkey and sweet potatoes were also a big deal, but that’s not typically as sexy to people. It probably wouldn’t surprise you that we had some pretty old-timey laws related to alcohol until the 70s and 80s—but eventually, we got around to legalizing brewpubs. After all, if we aren’t pairing beer with our basketball and cigarettes, what are we even doing? By the early to mid-90s, we had microbreweries popping up all over the state , particularly in the mountains of Asheville. As most beer tours will tell you, excellent water quality makes Asheville a prime location for brewing. Meanwhile, beautiful summer scenery and frigid winter temperatures make it a fantastic place to get drunk. From these key elements, an "if you brew it, they will come" situation evolved. Highland Brewing grew from the basement of a local taproom into a sprawling operation just outside of town, inspiri
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Jet Lag

The first time we visited London was before kids. We flew into London on a red-eye, each toting a giant travel backpack the weight of an average 6th gr ader. It was the type of bag you might use to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail and looked like the chrysalis of a new human being hunched over your spine. It was too large not to check on a commercial flight, but had been universally recommended by all the travel sites for getting on and off trains during a trip that would take us through four countries in two weeks. Of course, both straps on a bag that size have to be in working order, unless you plan to bear-hug it like a bag of mulch or drag it by a single strap like a dead dog through the street. Unfortunately, those were essentially the options recommended by customer service when Ray’s bag arrived at the London airport, brutalized and missing a strap. After a heated debate with airline staff over who should pay for the bag’s replacement, we eventually left with a credit to

Blue Backpack Adventures: Our Typical Day in London

  The blue backpack, packed for a visit to Piccadilly Circus It's been a little over a month now since we got home from London, and some days it feels like it never even happened. Other days, I find myself wishing I was packing up the blue backpack and heading out on another adventure with Ray and the boys. The major advantage of an extended stay in a single city is the luxury of time; the opportunity to establish a routine and develop some sense of a normal day. So before I forget too much about what that means, I'll go ahead and share... Foyer of Melbourne House on Collingham Road On a typical day at our flat on Collingham Road, I’d get up before everyone else and shower or freshen up while the bathroom was empty. I’d almost always set an alarm to make this happen as the blinds in our flat were surprisingly effective. Our “bedroom” was an enclosed corridor off the main room and didn’t have any windows to the outside. Instead, it had a long rectangular screen above a set of do