We traveled together for a while, my wife and I, and once you've sat on the side of the road in rural Laos waiting hours for a truck that may or may not turn up to take you to the Vietnamese border, and then sat on a stationary bus at the Laos-Vietnam border for two hours while people argued over the price to get to Hanoi, and then been kicked off the bus in a town half-way to Hanoi late at night with no idea where you are, you kind of learn to suck it up and wait. And you have to know, really know, that things will be alright.
And you learn that things will happen at their own pace after you get engaged in a jungle treehouse in the north of Laos and it takes a week-and-a-half before you find a working phone to call your family and tell them the good news. It's one of the more valuable things you can learn from traveling through developing countries, that they have their own time. Nepali-time, I wish I could invoke that here in Australia sometimes.
But it's not something that comes easily, patience, and for that reason, amongst many others, I'm not sure that its value can be overestimated. There's a reward that's not immediately obvious from waiting patiently; a certain pleasure that can be derived from the confidence you need to believe in something that hasn't arrived yet.
Brendan wrote a nice post over at The New Timer the other day, about slowing down and enjoying things as you go, rather than chasing after that ultimate goal as fast as you can. And he's right, in that waiting feels pretty damn good.
That slowing down of time is one of the great things beer, and especially home brewed beer, has going for it, and why the beer store in Richmond, Slow Beer, is one of the best named small businesses I could ever think of. Waiting for that bottled beer to carbonate, anticipating the punchy hop aroma when you flip off the bottle cap, and looking forward to sharing your beer with your mates, there's something special in that. Strangley, that approach is completely opposite to how a lot of folks (well, me) start drinking beer; as a teenager, when all you want to do is get loaded and forget things, and you'll drink anything that helps you get there.
The first brew that Luke and I put together has been in the bottle now for a month. Once we'd bottled those 27 long necks, we penciled in this Friday night as the time to crack them open over a few pizzas and with the Tigers game on the telly. In the meantime, we planned our second brew. Another pale ale, but this time using a light malt extract, steeping our own grains and doing a full hour-long hop boil, rather than throwing together a kit as we did for the first batch.
Ingredients were bought weeks ago, but then my 2-year old copped a broken nose and a bout of gastro on the same day, while my three month old fought a cold. So we postponed for a few days and rescheduled. Tuesday night, after work, we said. Which was all fine, until Luke texted me at 9pm Tuesday night to say he was still stuck at the office. The weekend after was out, while we journeyed home to Echuca for a family get together. Which brings us to this week, where brewing plans have once again been put on hold while Luke's wife fights a nasty bout of the flu. And I don't mean one of those colds when someone sitting next to you at work coughs and then moans, "Oh, I've got the flu". I mean the FLU, where you can't get out of bed for days. To add to the woe, her ear drums have both burst, and she's 27 weeks pregnant. So Luke and I have postponed again, indefinitely, while he looks after his wife and two-year-old.
Having to wait to make your own beer seems pretty darn easy, given the circumstances.
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