Abstract Thursday : : Ballast Point Brewing

Fallbrook, where My brother and Meg live, is a bit of a time warp, uneasily nudging the edge of a huge Marine Corps base.  Huge Blackhawk helicopters  whump whump over my brother's house, and on some occasions, munitions testing on the other side of the hills rattles the crockery. On the other hand, packs of coyotes can often be heard howling at night and the desert sky is clear and brimming with stars.

In contrast to Fallbrook, Temecula, where we decided to go for lunch, is an expanding community, the pseudo-Spanish tiled roof homes spreading over the adjacent hills like pink fungus. Queues of cars back up on to the highway headed for the Pechanga Casino.  One of the largest casinos in California, it is built on the Pechanga Reservation by the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. It always strikes me as an odd contrast, that because of various referenda over the years in California, the local, often marginalized, Indian tribes have been permitted to build casinos on tribal land. Many of them have become quite wealthy as a result.

I'm probably the only one who goes to a brewery restaurant and orders water. I don't like beer, although I had a sip of OilMan's and considered ordering it. I was pretty sure I wouldn't finish it, so I stuck with water. We had lunch and sat outside.  By the time we finished eating we were happy to go inside, and no wonder...when we got to the car, the thermometer told us it was 93 degrees. Regardless of the outside temperature, we have had a good couple of days chilling with Rick and Meg.

My Blip for today is a wood and glass room divider inside Ballast Point. The circles inside the triangles are the bottoms of beer bottles, and there are some interesting reflections of the windows and the street outside.