Now up at LouisvilleBeer.com: "Get Back to Where I Once Belonged."

There wasn’t going to be enough time, energy or sufficient money – really, had there ever been an actual desire? – to learn a foreign language, fill a shipping container, wade through reams of paperwork, start all over, and be an American expatriate in Europe, consciously emanating Ernest Hemingway a full century after Papa drank it all in France and Spain. Damned if life hadn’t actually happened while I was busy making other plans.

Get Back to Where I Once Belonged

The Jeopardy category today is Time Passages, and the answer (for a whole sawbuck) is this:

“The years 1982, 1983 and 1984.”

Did you guess the question? It’s a fairly tough one:

“What were the last three consecutive years prior to 2010, 2011 and 2012, when Roger did NOT set foot on the European continent?”

Seeing as 1985 was my very first trip to Europe, it’s a reminder of just how invigorating a run it was, while it lasted. No one ever has been more fortunate for so long, and I’m grateful every single day for the sights, experiences, history and people. There were more than 30-plus excursions over a quarter of a century, and enough beer was consumed to float a ramshackle dinghy from Calais all the way back to Cape Cod, but as we’re constantly reminded, all good things inevitably come to an end.