Wine country is paradise. It’s true. Beautiful landscapes, hot days, cool evenings, and more indulgences than you have time for. As you can tell from the sign post, in just this one corner of Sanoma, there were more wineries than would could have visited in the two short days we had. And of course we hand to make time for delicious restaurants, olive oil factories, gourmet cheese shops, and chocolate shops. Heaven.
Considering the overwhelming array of options, I think we somehow managed a perfect two days in wine country. We started off with an opulent lunch overlooking Napa Vally, and a bit of wine tasting, and went straight into a delicious dinner. The next day started with a huge breakfast, which provided a solid base for a day with a couple of wine tastings. Though apparently not a solid enough base to prevent us from splurging on a couple of bottles of very nice wine. We also stumbled across an magnificent strip mall that consisted entirely of an olive oil store (mmm), a chocolate store (double mmm!), and a cheese shop with an eccentric owner who insisted that all his cheeses be made of fresh milk from single grass herds. Hard to argue with the cheese man though, as his cheeses were delicious and he made us try just about each one of them.
It was a perfect little getaway, one that I plan to emulate in French wine country sometime soon. While the food was good everywhere we ate and the wine delicious everywhere we tasted it, we didn’t get to try even the smallest fraction of the wineries or restaurants. From what we did though, my biggest recommendation goes to Benzinger Winery. They practice sustainable horticulture, have a great tour of the estate, and the wines were delicious. Thankfully I took some pictures, because I sadly no longer have any of the wine to stir my memory.
Red grapes just begging to be picked. They were about a week or two from harvesting
The gently rolling hills with nice shady trees just put a song in my heart and a silly smile on my face.
The caves where the wine is stored to age were cool (as in temperature) and peaceful. A perfect break from the hot August sun
With a price tag of $10k I’m not the target audience for this adventure, but I’ve very tempted to make my own Global Scavenger Hunt. In their game, you are given a travel itinerary and a set of tasks to complete in each location. I imagine that for a couple in their 40s-50s who are looking for a brief taste of backpacker style adventure it is just about right.
The basic idea of a scavenger hunt is great, I think it’s just the way they play that isn’t right. How about this for a set of rules:
There are 100 different tasks with a variable number of points for perceived difficulty (ie: visit the highest and lowest points on a continent within 72 hours – 50 points, sail across an ocean – 75 points, visit as many countries as possible in 24 hours – 1 point per country)
No flights longer than 1 hour.
You have 365 days to gather as many points as possible at meet back at the starting point.
Each team has $10,000 per member starting money, but you can spend any other money that you earn during the year.
Teams can have any number of members, but all members must be present for every activity for points to count.
If you ask me, that would make for a hell of a year of adventure. I bet you could even make a pretty wicked show out of it, which might help pay for prizes for the winning team. And it would certainly be a better way to spend $10k traveling if you ask me.
This weekend I was back in Amsterdam for the fourth time in a year to run the Amsterdam Marathon. The only problem was that I hadn’t trained. At all. I ran a lot in June, but then I spent the summer on the road. And though I wore out a pair of running shoes walking around stadiums, I hadn’t run more than 5-6 times with friends or just to see some of the towns. I am reasonably active though, so with a little help from my friend willpower (though he abandoned me for a stretch between 35 and 40 km) I pulled it off in a bit under five hours. Not an impressive time, but something I’m happy with considering the amount of preparation I put in.
Returning to work on Monday I was told just how foolhardy I was since three people had dropped dead running the Detroit Marathon the same day that I was pounding the pavement in Amsterdam. Of course at that fatality rate, the last 15 years of the Detroit Marathon has a lower fatality rate than commuting in the UK. The point is that much like you need to commute, you need to go out and enjoy life – which will always come with some risk. And personally, I’d much rather take that small risk than the risk of having a dull life. So if you’re thinking of doing something fairly ridiculous, might I recommend a major physical challenge. That’s adventure.
Despite being the most photographed event in the world, I feel that pictures always fail to capture the majesty of the Balloon Fiesta. Willy Kaemena’s panorama of the special shapes rodeo starts to give you a sense of just how cool it is.
The world’s best current comment (Far Side RIP), XKCD, uses humour to make a good point about airline security: it’s a farce. As the Atlantic clearly demonstrated, with a little level of effort, you can get around security measures. Sometimes it wouldn’t even take effort – once this year I even cruised through and airport without a single person looking at my photo ID. But even more basic than that is that what security measures there are (take off shoes, liquids in a little bag) are simply in place because there were major news stories around people using either liquids or shoes to cause trouble. It seems that if airport security were actually interested in safety, the world would follow Isreal’s controversial model. But in the mean time, can you knock it off with the shoe thing and preventing us from carrying our own water. It’s just silly.
