Fort Collins CO - #1

Seems (if you buy into the results of this type of analysis) in the great expanse of America theres no better small city to live in than Fort Collins CO - basking in the shadow of the Horsetooth. Looking back to the spring of '99 I have memories of a pleasant place with a cute old town, microbreweries churning out bottles of Fat Tire and some Mexican joint selling tasty fish tacos a long, long way from the sea. Truth is though it wasn't getting any prettier with places such as the Foothills Mall and its surrounding fast food joints casting their nets of concrete carparks far and wide in the newer parts of town. The people there were friendly folk - well apart from the prick who punched a hole through the snowboard I had just bought off him while trying to fix a crossed thread and then tried to say it was my fault. "Yeah well think again mojumbo!" I wasn't walking out of there without a good verbal stouch and my money back.

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In '99 we were living about a two kilometres away from the Carlton United Brewery in Abbotsford, Melbourne. When the hot nor-wester blew through in the summer months the scent of malt would fill the air and the City of Yarra would smell like biscuits - yummy! Get too close to the source though and the smell was more like a stinking wet dog - the scent became stench. I ordered a bottle of Fat Tire on the '05 trip to the States remembering my month in Fort Collins while in an Italian restaurant in San Luis Obispo CA the team was dining in as a last resort - I even encouraged others to do the same. But what a disappointment - mouthful after mouthful of musty mutt - this ale was far from fresh and barely drinkable. I guess that what I should have expected from a random pizzeria serving microbrewed beer from half a continent away - a cocked leg on a lamppost spoiling my walk down memory lane...