Complex Numbers

Wait for It...

PROMPT November 3rd

Write about a time when you waited a long time for something. Did you end up getting what you wanted? Was it worth it?

Well, there was the time I went to the DMV one morning, and left three years later with a driver's license...

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but it felt like three years.

There's a brewery in Richmond, VA called Hardywood. They've since expanded into other locations, including one right here in my town, but at one point they just had the one location in an industrial park about an hour's drive from me.

Now, there are breweries all over Virginia, but this particular brewery made a gingerbread stout that was, at the time, the only beer to ever get a perfect 10/10 score on a popular beer rating site. Not only that, but I'd had the opportunity to sample it and it was, indeed, delicious. So, naturally, I had to have some. Also naturally, so did every other drunk in Virginia, and let me tell you, we are fucking legion.

To further set the scene, this particular beer is a seasonal offering, not available year-round. As you might be able to tell from the name, it's winter-holiday-themed. That means it came out in November. If you don't know anything about November in Virginia, I can sum it up in two words: it sucks. Cold, but usually not cold enough to snow. Often rainy. Rainy is fine. Cold is fine, to a certain extent; at least, I'm used to it. Cold and rainy... it sucks.

So it was that on the cold and rainy November release day for Gingerbread Stout one year - I dunno, maybe 2013? It's been a while - I found myself and a friend standing in line outside the enormous Hardywood brewery in Richmond, waiting to claim my allotment of just two bottles (albeit 1L bottles) of sweet nectar of the winter gods. Along with every other drunk in Virginia. The line snaked from the brewery door, out to the street, and around the block. As a reminder, this is an industrial park block. In the rain. In the cold rain. In the nasty Virginia November cold goddamn rain.

We waited. The line inched forward. It rained. It colded. The line inched forward. The day stretched on into eternity.

(insert elevator musak here)

(pause for effect)

Finally we got our bottles and booked out of there.

Was it worth it? Oh, definitely. Since then they've increased production and one can often find this paragon of beer in local stores, so there's no need to go through that again. At the same time, however, it's not quite as good as it was the first few years. Delicious, yes, worth buying, certainly, but I wouldn't wait in the - did I mention cold rain yet? Because it was cold and rainy - cold rain in an industrial park for it again.

Now, it may seem strange that when prompted for something I had to wait a "long time" for, I pick something that I had to wait, max, a few hours for. This is because I don't wait. I'm not a patient person. If I do find myself waiting for something, I distract myself - games, reading a book, whatever. Can't do that in a cold, rainy, outdoors queue. So, say, waiting for my passport or tax refund or the latest Brandon Sanderson book that I preordered from Amazon months before it's due to come out - well, I don't count those as waiting, because I'm doing other stuff.

Also, beer is important.