What’s better than a beer? Free beer? How about a surprise free beer? Like there you are, minding your own business. You might be a little hot, a little thirsty. Suddenly, without warning, you are presented with a beer. Maybe you are at a friend or relative’s house. Maybe it is some random event. “Wait, there’s beer?!” Suddenly everything is looking a little brighter.
The other night Savannah and I are at the weigh in for a weeknight bass league. I’ve fished in these things before, it is a good group of guys. We had no complaints this night; we weighed in a decent bag of bass. But then I noticed a cooler conspicuously placed in front of the weigh in table. Someone opened it, and like the Arc of the Covenant or the briefcase from Pulp Fiction a heavenly glow was cast over the surrounding area as the contents were revealed: a full load of ice and Coors Light Tall Boys. I don’t regularly consume light beer, but you know when you’re a little thirsty on a hot day, a heavy craft beer doesn’t work as well as an ice cold light lager. Beer never tasted so good. There’s never been a magic cooler at weigh in other years. I don’t even know who provided the beer, but I hope I can look forward to this at future events. Savannah is too young to drink, I’ll be sure to have a Dr. Pepper for her at the next one.
This is in contrast to a recent night at Target Field to watch a Twins game. 
I expect to get beer here, and I also expect to get bent over when I pay for one. Their trick now is they ask you to select the tip amount before they tell you how much the beer is going to be. I had a Lift Bridge Farm Girl and then later a Summit Saga. Both were delish, and while I caught a glimpse of how much I was being charged, I blocked it from my memory.
Another memorable surprise beer happened in Mexico. It was about 20 years ago near Los Barilles in the Baja. Sarah and I rented an ATV and we took it up an arroyo that led to a small canyon with a stream. We go as far as we can and here is a guy next to his ATV that has a cooler on the back of it. In broken English he asks me if I want a beer. “Yes I do!” I replied. “These guys don’t miss a chance to make money off us gringos”, I thought as I was reaching for my wallet, ready to pay any dollar or peso amount the guy said. In more broken English “No—no money.”
Pacificos are pretty good no matter what, this was the best one ever!
He opened the cooler and handed me a Pacifico. It was then I realized this guy was a tourist like me, and his wife and kid were playing in the waterfall just around the corner. “Mucho Gracias!”
In the late 90s, the early Wisconsin Trout Season was new, it started on March 1. 
In those days I started to get twitchy for fishing by the end of February, so even though the season wasn’t open yet, I headed over to the Rush River on a Saturday the week before it opened. Just to have a look around, check things out, see how the river was looking for the upcoming opener. So I looked off all the bridges, thought about all the fish I would catch next week. I drive down the dead end below El Paso and there’s a few pickups parked there. This is a popular camping and hangout spot. The people from the trucks were Wisconsin’s version of cowboys, youngish local farm types, looked to be doing some steak grilling and beer drinking. 
I wave as I go by, and when I circled back a few minutes later one of the cowboys help up his beer with one hand and pointed at it with the other while looking right at me. The universal sign for “you want a beer?” If you go over there today you can probably still find traces of the skid marks I made when I hit the brakes. I joined the group for a few, and it turns out I had hung out with some of them the year before when I was camping with some friends for the May trout opener. I don’t remember much more about them except that one of the gal’s name was Rhiannon, I bet her mom is a big Stevie Nicks fan. Pretty cool for them to let me join them, what with my Minnesota plates and all.
I’ve been known to be the giver of a surprise beer. For a number of years I lived in a crappy apartment in Mounds View. I was out in the parking lot working on something on a blistering hot summer evening. Is there anywhere more depressing than the parking lot at crap apartments on a hot day? Doubt it. I don’t remember what I was working on, probably something on the jon boat or its trailer and I needed a big wrench. There was some other guy working on something in his garage, he looked like he would have tools. I went over and asked if he had a big crescent wrench I could borrow. Without a word he handed me what I needed. After I completed whatever task was at hand I went inside and got a cold beer out of my fridge. Went back to where the guy was working and handed him his wrench back along with the cold beer. He looked at me like I had handed him a thousand dollars. He only nodded at me as he cracked it open. Not sure to this day if the guy could talk.
Another time I was at the Brule with my Frenchman friend name Michelle. This was back in the 80s and I was still trying to figure out how to catch fish there. We were at the McNeil’s parking lot, planning our next move and a couple of guys show up that may have been as clueless as us. It was an unusually warm day for October, and these guys had parked down by The Horseshoe and ended up at McNeil’s. Michelle offered to give them a ride back to their truck. These guys were surprised by the generosity, even more surprised when he gave them each a beer for the trip. “Are you guys for real?’ one of the guys said before he took the first big swig.