Consumer Escapes - Classic Cars and a Cold Beer

At the end of vacation last week in Merrimack, New Hampshire my wife discovered the Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour. We took the 10:35 am tour which winds its way from the hot of the fermenting process, to the cold of the lagering and filtering (beechwood!) process to the hyper-speed of the packaging process. Of course the highlight of the complimentary tour is the Hospitality Room. Here adult visitors are treated to a cold Budweiser and a choice of another A-B InBev product. Barely noon and enjoying pretzels, a Bud and a Stella Artois, now that's vacation.

After the brewery tour we were able to visit the stables of the world-famous Budweiser Clydesdales. That's the closest I've ever been to the majestic Clydesdales and it's like standing by Shaq. All you can say is, "wow."

Our tour was culminated by the 35th annual "Show and Shine" car event in the parking lot. Hundreds of mint classic cars were on display. I hope a few make the trek out for the Woodward Dream Cruise in a few weeks. Cold beer and hot cars. The perfect capper to a nice week on the road.

Consumer Escapes - College Visits

This blog has been dark for awhile. Why? The key escape, vacation. But as we've all come to learn you have to jam in a bunch of work before vacation. Try to escape when on vacation. And then pay the price in emails/mail/voice mails when you return. Unfortunately my blog got shoved aside in the process.

So what was this vacation? I billed it as an epic college tour. A chance to expose our two high-school daughters to some great schools and great settings. On day one we left our home in Michigan and drove to Ithaca, NY with a brief stop on the way to ride the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls. The next day we took the student tour of Cornell University. More than just naturally beautiful Cornell comes across as a friendly and approachable place to be tested academically.

Next we were off to Saratoga Springs, NY one of my favorite places for a true "daily double." We had effectively a private tour of Skidmore College followed by a day at the races. Skidmore presents itself under the banner "Creative Thought Matters." I love that theme and how it intersects with today's world of media arts. We put our theories into practice at the track and proudly lost every race.


Back roads took us across the Berkshires to bucolic Williamstown and Williams College. Here the old (1793) is beautifully integrated with the new (see Paresky Student Center.) Williams was a great representative of a classic small, New England liberal arts college.

Just when I'd though I'd never seen so much purple, a short drive on Friday took us to Amherst College. Oh my lucky daughters as they got to take in another premier institution on a picture-perfect day. I will let the words of an Amherst past president paint a picture:

“The college is called liberal… because the instruction is dominated by no special interest, is limited to no single human task, but is intended to take human activity as a whole, to understand human endeavors not in their isolation but in their relations to one another and to the total experience which we call the life of our people.” 

— Alexander Meiklejohn, President, 1912-1924

 My portion of the tour ended on Saturday in Hanover, New Hampshire at yet another world-class institution, Dartmouth College. Dartmouth's noon tour drew so many students that the walking tour was students-only. I'm a proud Penn grad but have to admit that the Dartmouth environment and facilities were very attractive.

What a week. I was able to relive my youth a little bit while watching my daughters take in the possibilities of where they might go to college. I say possibilities as my daughters found delight in every one of these schools while calmly recognizing that only a small fraction (say 10%) of applicants are admitted. For a year now I've been blogging about great escapes. Add a big one to the list and go visit a nearby or far away college campus. For those who graduated decades ago - even the food is great.

Consumer Escapes - A Good Meal at CPK

In Detroit it's Woodward Dream Cruise Season. A '67 GTO needs quality fuel and so do the drivers and spectators. The fine folks at California Pizza Kitchen have provided a "tasty" offer.


Just bring in the special flyer on August 17, 18, 19, 22 and/or 23; present it to your server when ordering; and 20% of the total will go to support the Woodward Dream Cruise, a 501(c)(3) organization.

This offer is good at all Michigan California Pizza Kitchens:
Somerset Mall, Troy
Hunters Square, Farmington Hills
Laurel Park Place – Livonia
Twelve Oaks Mall – Novi
Briarwood Mall – Ann Arbor
Partridge Creek Mall – Clinton Township

Consumer Escapes - QR Codes

My contact information in QR code

I remember when we were kids riding our bikes and someone would yell out, "I know a shortcut." When the shortcut worked out it was great. Sometimes we ended up on a dead-end street and had to double back.


Today's technology is much the same. Many digital shortcuts are true time-savers. For instance knowing the commands to cut, copy, paste, close and my personal favorite "force quit." And some technology shortcuts are dead-ends. Like sometimes clicking on this blog.


One that holds great promise is the QR code, or Quick Response code. Often I receive a business card and have to type all of the data into my phone's address book. (Beaming on a Palm Pilot, now that was a shortcut.) Now with a QR code reader all of the data can be captured and transferred in a blink. Give it a whirl.

Consumer Escapes - Grabbing the Remote

Last week I was hopped up on DQ Blizzards. Now I'm excited about an online promotion from Klondike Bars.

The Klondike Everyman Challenge states that since the dawn of time, mankind has worked unflaggingly to expend as little energy as possible. Innovations such as the lazy susan and the moving sidewalk — the inventors of which are now both, of course, household names — are proof that an enduring legacy is only earned through a lasting contribution to one's own lethargy and the lethargy of future generations.

In their "Grab the Remote" video contest, can you reach the remote control without getting off your duff? The site says, watch Adam Corrolla show you how to harness your man-genuity. 

While I'm not a huge fan of user generated content (UGC) when home alone I've been guilty of watching something unwanted on television 'cause I was too lazy to get up and find the remote. Guess I've got about a week to experiment with duct tape, a AAA battery, and a small fishing rod. Enjoy ...

Consumer Escapes - DQ

In our SMZ Consumer E-scape research study fewer than 13% of respondents said they considered their diet to be very healthy. I work hard to make my diet be healthy. With my family away the past few weeks I've eaten ridiculously healthy. (Little choice when there's no one else around to help do the shopping.) Last night I hit a great escape, the new DQ on Orchard Lake Road for a Blizzard®. I had the small Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Boy, that less-than-healthy stuff really tastes great on a 93 degree summer night. Considering that there was a line out the door, I'm not the only one who felt that way. So ignore the research and do "something different" as DQ's themeline urges. Maybe I'll see you there.

Consumer Escapes - Digital Disconnect

Yesterday I helped my sister activate her new Blackberry. Bye-bye to her pink Razr phone. Just after taking some responsibility for placing her in the "always on" mode I happened to read in the Wall Street Journal David Harsanyi's review of Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. I'll let his review and the one from Publisher's Weekly be screen reading for you. Me, I have to escape from the digital devices to find time to read the book. Or I should say, "the rest is silence."

From Publishers Weekly

Our discombobulated Internet Age could learn important new tricks from some very old thinkers, according to this incisive critique of online life and its discontents. Journalist Powers bemoans the reigning dogma of digital maximalism that requires us to divide our attention between ever more e-mails, text messages, cellphone calls, video streams, and blinking banners, resulting, he argues, in lowered productivity and a distracted life devoid of meaning and depth. In a nifty and refreshing turn, he looks to ideas of the past for remedies to this hyper-modern predicament: to Plato, who analyzed the transition from the ancient technology of talking to the cutting-edge gadgetry of written scrolls; to Shakespeare, who gave Hamlet the latest in Elizabethan information apps, an erasable notebook; to Thoreau, who carved out solitary spaces amid the press of telegraphs and railroads. The author sometimes lapses into mysticism—In solitude we meet not just ourselves but all other selves—and his solutions, like the weekend-long Internet Sabbaths he and his wife decreed for their family, are small-bore. But Powers deftly blends an appreciation of the advantages of information technology and a shrewd assessment of its pitfalls into a compelling call to disconnect. (July)
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