Beer tasting festivals and a case of mistaken identity.

December 6, 2003

I was told at one point in my life that I looked like an Alex and not an Andrew. I thought that was humorous, so when I needed an alter-ego at several times I said my name was Alex. That little nugget in the back of my head had a two-fold joke, however, as I was informed by my Mom at one point that one of the names that my parents had been considering for me was Alexander, apparently, and so I wasn’tt oo far off the mark. Or they weren’t too far off the mark, according to the person who told me which name I looked like. The other joke was that in high school I ended up dating a girl named Alexandra–Alex for short–so I had a good chuckle every now and then how “both” of us were Alex. I guess that’s not as bad as my best friend all throughout elementary school named Andy, though. Andrew and Andy. How weird was that? I never went by Andy and he never went by Andrew, though, so there was no danger of mixing the two of us up in school.

Apparently, however, I’m a dead ringer for a Craig. Craig Patterson, more specifically. According to the Lake Oswego Police department, at least. I took the bus downtown yesterday to go to the Winter Ale Festival with my Dad (more on that in a bit), and as I stood at the transit center in Lake Oswego, a car pulled in behind me and out of my peripheral vision I could tell it was a police car–just by the light outside the driver’s window. Let me stop the story right there, however, to make one little note. What the City of Lake Oswego (or Tri-Met, the Portland-area public transportation company) generously calls a “transit center” are four bus stops outside a Safeway. No parfking is available for the “transit center”, and Safeway is anal about parking in their lot so that it doesn’t become a Park and Ride. I had parked in a spot directly behind one of the stops, right next a sign that clearly stated “Safeway Customer Parking Only”, but since I wasn’t going to be gone for more than a couple of hours and I never use that “transit center”, I figured it was OK.

So anyhow, I’m standing there waiting for the bus and I see the police car pull up behind me. I thought maybe he had seen me pull in to the spot, get out, and wait at the stop, and he coming to tell me I had to move my car or else. The Lake Oswego Police probably don’t care too much about things like that, but you never know. Sometime you get a boy scout. I got busted (well, lectured) about riding my bike on the wrong side of the street–on the sidewalk, no less–when I was a kid, even though I had crossed the street to get to something on the other side! Anyhow, I saw the door open and a voice said “Mr. Patterson, can I speak with you for a moment?” I let two beats go by before I turned and saw the the policeman was talking to ME. I announced that I wasn’t Mr. Patterson, but he seemed doubtful that I wasn’t Craig Patterson. Apparently a Mr. Craig Patterson was supposed to be wearing a red hat (I was wearing my red Portland Beavers baseball hat), waiting at the bus stop, and I was a dead ringer for him looks-wise, too.

Naturally he asked me what MY name was eventually after bantering back and forth for a second about how I really wasn’t Craig, and for a split second I wanted to tell him my name was George Kaplan. Or Roger O. Thornhill. Honestly. For those that don’t recognize the names, in the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest (one of my favorite movies of all time), Roger O. Thornhill, as played by Carey Grant, is mistaken for a government agent by the name of George Kaplan–who doesn’t exist. He was created to throw the film’s antagonist off the track, but through a misunderstanding Mr. Thornhill was taken to be the fictional Mr. Kaplan and ends up running for his life from both the police who want him for a murder and the lackeys of the antagonist, who just want him.

So for that split second, I wanted to become the fictional George Kaplan, but I knew that the police officer wasn’t going to just take my word for it that I wasn’t Craig Patterson and I’d have to show my ID. That might create an uncomfortable situation, telling him my name was one thing while my ID said another as he mistook me for a third individual. Or I could have taken off running the second he started talking to me. That would be an interesting experiment, no? I mean what’s he going to do? I guess hypothetically he could shoot me as I ran away if Mr. Patterson had done something naughty enough, and that’s something I would like avoid. I can think of better ways to start the weekend than a bullet hole in the small of my back, really.

Once I showed my ID, though, the cop expressed one more moment of puzzlement and took off. So ended my mistaken identity as Craig Patterson. I got to thinking about it later, though, and the whole situation seemed a little odd. First of all, I don’t understand what situation there could be where a police officer could not know what a person looked like enough to differentiate them from someone else–particularly someone they were supposed to meet. That was weird. And why was he meeting (he didn’t say picking up, though I guess that’s possible) this Mr. Patterson at a bus stop of all places? There was a suggestions from my stepmother that maybe he was a snitch, but first of all, I doubt there are a whole lot of snitches in Lake Oswego, and secondly, any cop is going to know what his snitch looks like on the off-chance that there IS a snitch in Lake Oswego. There’s also the chance that Mr. Patterson WAS waiting there at the bus stop for whatever reason and had phoned in my description as his own as a diversionary tactic.

None of those really make sense, though. In any case, that was my case of mistaken identity yesterday afternoon. I got on the bus right after that, though, and met my Dad downtown at the Winter Ale Festival. They had to check both our ID’s on the way in, reminded us to carry them at all times, and then stamped our hands. To get beer, however, you had to pay $3 to get a “souvenier mug” (plastic) and then pay another $3 per mug of beer you wanted to try or $1 for a taster, about half a cup or so. So we just had tasters of a two kinds of local brews, including Bridgeport’s Ebeneezer Brew and Widmer’s own version of a Belgian Tripel ale. I think it was called the “Widmer Belgian-style Tripel Play”, but my Dad disagrees. Either way, that was some potent stuff. I mentioned Belgian Tripel ales earlier in my blog a couple months ago, but to recap, it’s extremely alcoholic. Like wine level, about 10-12% alcohol. The other brews there would have been fun to try and all had clever names like “Ichabod’s Head Winter Warmer”, “Wassail-Ale”, “Jubel-Ale”, etc. We decided that instead of spending dollar after dollar on tasters, we’d just jaunt on over to Whole Foods on Burnside and pick up a few bottles of special imported brews from their generous selection. $29 and about six bottles later, we were on our way back to catch a bus home. I don’t remember all the kinds we bought, but I’m sure that once we drink them I’ll write about them. The one that we DID drink last night was “Monty Python’s Holy Grail Ale”. Not great, just sort of a generic ale, but I asked for it mostly for the name and bottle.

And thus concluded my Winter Ale Festival. We came home and had dinner, and then I watched TV for the rest of the night. The fun never stops. Today is going to be beer tasting day #2 for the men of the Self household from our purchased fare, and then I’ll probably work on my Dad’s other computer at some point today, get everything up and running so he has access to his second computer. Like me, though, his second desktop computer does little more than run a program that uses spare CPU cycles to crunch data. And so that’s what I’ll do today. Have a good Saturday.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General