Sales call

I took a business trip to Sacramento (Los Molinos actually) the other day. The plan was to fly into SAC get picked up by one of my companies outside sales reps who is from the area and drive several hours to the plant to give a presentation to the owner, board of directors and plant personal. We get there and are greeted by the plant manager who walks us past the conference room but yet ducks in the room for just a second and then leads us into his office. Mmmkay. He was obviously considering if the conference room is appropiate. I'm thinking well maybe he thinks we are all going to try and gather in his small office. The sales rep and I gave each other a look of wtf and got our presentation stuff out anyway. I barely got my laptop turned on before he started talking about changing the layout and the need to go out and look at the area. So we go out to the production area where the equipment would go, discussed a few options and the subtle changes we needed to make, then walked back to his office to hopefully discuss the project in more detail or at least learn what happened to giving a presentation to erveryone. Nope. "I need to get a new drawing and proposal from you". That was it. We did get him to say we were "right in there" on price which means we are cheaper in sales lingo. (Otherwise he would have said we are a " little high") That was the extent of the meeting a whopping 40 minutes to have traveled several hours by airplane and car and many more hours before I got home. Crazy.

Luckily we had one more stop to make on our way back. The mighty Sierra Nevada Brewery. The sales rep had promised me we would stop to try a few if we had a good meeting. The meeting definitely did not go well but we stopped anyway because a beer was needed, and it was Sierra Nevada afterall. The brewery was much bigger then I was expecting and very industrial looking on one side more like a large commercial brewery. (I guess it kind of is) and more of your typical brew pub restaurant look on the other sides with the exception of everything was very upscale for a brewpub.


Here is a pic of the parking lot with solar panels above that also pivot with the angle of the sun. This covers the entire parking lot and it is a large parking lot. This should be a requirement for all parking lots and roofs of most commercial buildings (at least in warm climate areas). Along with the landscaping design this fits in nicely with the environment, looks cool, free energy, and a great use of space. There is also some benefit by parking there as you get some shade from the panels. The steel structure holding up the panels is not elaborate and would be inexpensive to build. The expense of the solar panels is another matter.




This is what all the ashtrays look like at each entrance.

The company logo is CNC milled into the side of the brushed stainless steel housing. As we went inside we noticed the huge polished copper brew kettles which is pretty common for brew pubs but these were a beaut. Even the HVAC ducts throughout the bar and restaurant were made out of copper. Those must have cost a fortune.

We sat down at the bar and ordered a pint. I started with there IPA which was really good but not into my top 10 list for IPA's. He had a Scotch Ale which was a seasonal and quite good. Next up was a toss up between the 20th St. Greenhop and their flagship Pale Ale. I couldn’t recall if I ever had there pale on draft before so the bartender gave us a couple samples of each. The 20th St. was delicious but was just another dry hopped IPA to me. The pale on the other hand is much better (and fresher) on draft then out of the bottle which carries a lingering but subtle bottle taste to it. We sat at the bar and rapped about what had happened earlier with the sales call; going through all the scenarios. Did they buy from someone else? Was there just a mix-up in scheduling? when we noticed this guy carrying a tap and hose with a clamping style mounting apparatus and clamped it to the side of the bar and disappeared. Then a while later he comes back rolling in a keg we find out to be special keg of Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale they have been aging for six months. We could barely contain our excitement as we ordered two pints. The bartender later told us that we shouldn't have gotten full pints because of the high ABV. I told her we can keep her mistake a secret, oh and you should probably only charge us for 1/2 pints then. This is a BIG hoppy beer and needless say we were all smiles. Better eat something.

After finishing our pints and an order of wings which btw were not even close to the mighty goodness of FOTM back in P-town we headed out to get me back to the airport. He had satellite radio in his car so I took over the controls and landed a classic punk rock station as we blasted down the road.




Oh, one more stop to empty my bladder. We whipped into this bankrupted prune farm to water the prunes.

He dropped me off at the airport with an hour left before my flight departed. Perfect timing. The flight was on time since Southwest rules and made it safely home by 8:30. Today was not entirely a waste.