The day we hit the road for the last time was the Monday after the City of Paso Robles ended a weekend wine festival, an event hallmarked by a program in the city’s main park where visitors are charged a flat fee of $50 and turned loose in a carnival of exhibits and tasting tents to drink as much wine as they want.
Apparently, it’s gaining in notoriety. The previous evening when we had toured San Simeon, immediately after our bus unloaded its 40-odd passengers at the estate to start the tour, the first question we were asked was, “OK, how many of you spent the afternoon at the festival in Paso Robles?” The slurred affirmatives were then assembled into their own tour, presumably to be placed under the control of a bigger, stronger guide whose mere appearance projected a visible priority on security. Our guide’s first asset, on the other hand, was his ability to impart endlessly fascinating information. But I digress.
At the Olallieberry breakfast table, we heard that one of the nicer road diversions in the Paso Robles region is a scenic drive called, appropriately enough, Vineyard Drive. We got there about the time the lunch hour clock was striking noon and, after passing several vineyard gates, entered one that offered a beautiful visual panorama of hillside vines, as well as the real lure: “Wine tasting and BBQ today”.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen this place, if only out of curiosity. But even though they have a website and are furiously selling promotional merchandise, the actual vineyard is not yet open to the public. But how can you not love a winery that came into being when its creators decided to “do something crazy and chase [their] dreams”, and which calls its wine club the “Crisis Management Team”?
The Opolo Vineyard
has its own illustrated website here, so I’ll skip the inventory description. I discovered that an automatic adjunct to a barbecue in California is a vast bowl of homemade salsa that, in this case, was an astonishing combination of light and tangy and herb-rich. You could have parked me in front of that keg-sized condiment bowl with a wooden ladle and I would have called it a fully satisfying barbecue.
But for me the highlight came as a set: a fantastic Zinfandel – an award winner, in fact – that was served to us by a very pleasant host who was, in this most unlikely of places, not only a fan of NHL hockey, but who knew that just days before, the Ottawa Senators had earned a berth in the Stanley Cup final round.
Up until that moment*, “Zin” had only ever been for me a breezy innocuous little summer wine that was a quick thirst quencher when you required only a “nice” glass of wine and things like full-body and aroma just didn’t need to enter the experience.
*“That moment” was when host Tom Hogan served me this.
And all of those little tasting notes in the upper right are just bang on with what we experienced.
As my conversation with tasting table host Tom turned to hockey and whether the Anaheim Ducks (his passion) would be able to beat the Sens to claim the Stanley Cup, the “tastes” he sent back with me to our table became 4 oz glasses of wine, somewhat to the chagrin of other tasters at adjacent tables who had to content themselves with the one-ounce shots they were being poured.
And of course we brought a bottle of the 2005 home.
The PS to the story is that, before we left the vineyard, Tom and I made a bet whereby a Sens Cup win would earn me yet another bottle, as well as an Opolo vineyard t-shirt. The Cup final, of course, is now history and suffice to say that Tom finds himself the happy owner of a bottle of Henry of Pelham Cabernet Sauvignon icewine, an official Ottawa Senators NHL-brand t-shirt and, as a bonus, a bottle of Quebec-produced maple syrup.
(Or at least he will just as soon as I can find a way to have a bottle of wine shipped across the border without changing the entire continent’s travel threat advisory warning colour. FedEx: “Are you kidding? If we shipped wine, we’d be bootleggers!”)
= = =
At the end of our last day in California, we stayed at an airport hotel in San Jose because we had an early morning flight out and being nearby just made a whole lot of sense. To further minimize the complications, we had also decided to return the rental car the evening before, because the hotel offered a complimentary shuttle right to the terminal, and also because the car rental return is itself a short shuttle hop from the departure terminal. Getting the car back the evening before we flew out would take that concern right off travel-day schedule entirely.
After we dropped the car, we climbed aboard the shuttle bus back to the hotel and wound up sitting next to a couple of burly guys who were clearly dressed in a “We’re on vacation” mode. So being my usual affable self, I asked them if they were just starting or ending their trip.
“Just getting home,” said one. “Had a great time in Texas.”
Ah Texas… the Lone Star State. A State steeped in the rich frontier history of the almighty U-S of A.
Home of the remains of this continent’s best-known icon of triumph and tragedy in the face of overwhelming odds.
(Remember that?... Sorry.)
Home of the world’s finest collection of flying versions of WWII aircraft.
Home of the world’s other city of canals.
Home of… well, take your pick.
“That’s great,” I echoed. “So what were you doing?”
“Shooting pigs.”
…
(That’s the sound of me being rendered speechless.)
…
Finally, after a few seconds… “Really?”
“Yep.”
(Think think think…) “Uhh… on your own or was this an organized tour?”
(Meanwhile, what I’m thinking is, “You guys are Californians, dammit! You don’t shoot things for sport!! They do that in… well, in Texas.”)
“Man, it was an all-included tour. Fly in to the camp, spend the day out shooting… Here, I’ve got some pictures,” he said pulling out his digital camera. Then, noticing my other half sitting beside me within easy viewing distance, he added in a surprising display of sensitivity, “but there might be some in here you … probably wouldn’t want to see.”
Mercifully, he limited his show-and-tell to a few shots of the cabin-style hotel, he and his buddy kneeling in front of a long, three foot tall pile of thousands of whitened bones stretched across the hotel’s verandah…
Then even more mercifully, after two or three more scenic shots of “really fine pig-shootin’ country”, the shuttle arrived at the hotel and he hit the camera’s off switch before the tiny viewing frame could begin to display red as its dominant colour.
“Well, enjoy the rest of your trip,” I said in parting.
“You betcha.”
= = =
And finally in the California Tales (Echoes of “Thank the Lord! You’ve spent more time talking about this trip than Sir Francis Drake spent in the State before there were even any roads!):
California Quirking… a few random bits and pieces from the trip in no particular order:
I suspect it’s because California is home to, at last count, 54 trillion or thereabouts personal injury lawyers (give or take an LL.B), but the state seems to have a great many public warning signs, a situation to suggest that either the liability of local businesses or the belief among all those same lawyers that almost pathological stupidity is the dominant IQ of the State's population -- at a level unmatched anywhere else in the country, if not the entire world.
Admittedly, some of them seem to make at least some sense. This one,
for example, advises that here on the Pacific shores, whose opposite edge rolls up on beaches in Asia, you are standing in a “Tsunami Hazard Zone -- In case of earthquake, go to high ground or inland”. Which actually is quite a logical warning to put on the coast of the State that straddles this. (Why are there never any tsunamis on the Atlantic coast, he wondered as an aside?)
And along the same stretches of beach you are also regularly warned that this is, after all, the ocean and that if you clamber over slippery rocks down by the waterline
you should not be surprised if a wave the size of Mount Hood suddenly rolls over you and abruptly sends you one of two new directions: either 1. smashed backward into the more jagged rocks higher up, which will result in your being featured on that same evening’s marine buffet as “freshly brined peopleburger” or 2. sucked forward into the water, next stop Japan. By the way, if you click on any of these photos, they'll open much larger.
But others seem to be just a little too top-heavy in the extent of their warnings, or just plain unnecessary. Here, for example, is a sign
at the end of a short bit of road (about 10 yards long in total) where you turn off a quiet residential street in Cambria that is right beside the coast – that’d be the whole damned Pacific Ocean coast. Given the presence of a heavy-gauge steel guardrail and nothing but Pacific Ocean immediately beyond, I couldn’t help but wonder if an actual sign at this point to tell you (very succinctly, I will admit) that you’ve suddenly run out of road was perhaps a tad redundant.
Apparently not.
The B&B where we stayed in Carmel was clearly caught up in the spirit. Here is what greeted us at the front door.
And if you can believe it, a hazard warning sign was posted directly above a hammock slung in the garden space just off the verandah. (The hammock is visible in the far back right in this photo
and the sign is that white rectangle on the fence just beyond.) Here’s a close-up.
To save you the trouble of seeking a magnification function on your screen, here – verbatim – is its text:
“DISCLAIMER / WARNING: Please do not leave children unattended around this product. Not to be used by people unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their actions. This product requires good balance and coordination during use. Improper use may result in serious injury. User assumes all risk when using this product. Do not use under the influence of drugs or alcohol. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!”
= = =
Stellar jays, they’re called. And despite all sorts of posted warnings (more signs) asking visitors not to feed the wildlife, one gets the feeling that they’re frequently ignored. How do I know this? Well, for starters, by how close they get when you’re traipsing about their territory…
And second, during one walk into a redwood grove we stopped for a picnic and were startled when, just a few minutes after we sat down, at least three of the friendly (and obviously hungry) birds swooped in, in turn, to perch right on the end of the table at which we were seated.
So did we feed the sociable little featherbearers? Well, fortunately, this was the United States, home of the Fifth Amendment:
“Mr. Chairman, I respectfully decline to answer the question based on my right under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution not to be a witness against myself.”
(Besides, the fresh rolls we bought were only available in bags of six, far too much food for just two people.)
Until la prochaine.
No comments:
Post a Comment