From East to West and Back

When I started this entry we had just returned from a whirlwind trip to California and were in Vero Beach. When I say "we" I mean two of the three of us. Little Breezy went to camp. If you asked her she would tell you that it was prison camp. She has been a guest of several kennels since we adopted her and we have only approved one as completely acceptable. She has approved none of them. Actually a major part of the reason we are traveling by coach is because of Breezy. John refers to Queen Mary as a 42 foot dog house on wheels. So we took Breezy to this new kennel in Vero Beach and the moment we got through the door she turned and jammed her head between my knees. It was reminiscent of my first day at nursery school. I glued myself to my mother's leg and looked up at her as though she was going to abandon me to gypsies. I know Breezy feels the same way. She pleads with me in her Border Collie way and we have to hand her over to some Gestapo person of undetermined gender who leads her away with her head down and her tail between her legs while our hearts break. We drive back home feeling like two big amoebas, terrible parents who abandoned their baby to gypsies.

When we arrived back to Sea Mist Court the reality of impending air travel hit us. We slogged into the bedroom, dragged out our suitcases and commenced packing. We had a reservation to stay the night at Holiday Inn Express in Orlando because we had an early flight on Thursday morning. So we counted out socks and underwear, switched this top with those pants with that jacket, matched shoes, and compared notes as each of us bumped into the other one, grumbling about how we both hate to pack. And fly. It is a scene that has repeated itself without fail every time we get ready to fly. Next we loaded the Camry and headed north to Orlando. The amoebas.

On the way to Orlando we were attempting to avoid a crisis. We have been trying to sort out the paper work on the coach since we bought it and for some reason the planets conjured up some voodoo and zapped our titling/licensing procedure and everything went awry. Poor Tim Arcuri has spent more time than any human being should be required to in an entire lifetime at the DMV in Oregon and John has been haunting Monaco and the tax collector in Florida. And I have at least a thousand more gray hairs. As of our drive to Orlando to the Holiday Inn Express things got worse. There is no truth in Holiday Inn Express advertising. It was so bad that we thought we would have to park Mary for six weeks and cancel our trip to Phoenix (our loyal blog followers would never have forgiven us) but Tim's persistence paid off and things are fine now. But on the way to Orlando things were looking bleak for the two ameobas.

We checked into the hotel, had dinner and set the alarm for 4:30AM. It wasn't a successful sleeping experience. Too hot, too cold, rubber pillows, cement slab mattress, room located at the end of a runway, and cardboard walls. We stumbled out of bed and stacked shower on shower then dragged ourselves down to the shuttle that was scheduled to take us to the airport at 5:30. Problem number one: there are ten people waiting to get into an eight seat van and everyone (except us) has three bags each (giant suitcases, golf bags, and bulging duffles). I stood and watched while the driver struggled to accomodate everyone. John was struggling more just standing there. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. The camp director in him, who resides just below the surface at all times, rose to the top and he jumped in, organizing the luggage and passengers until we all fit...tightly into the van. Once at the airport the driver opened the doors and we exploded out of the van, luggage, bodies and golf clubs...all onto the pavement like a giant overstuffed suitcase that burst its zippers.

I will save space and time on how we got through security. Just reread the last post "On Flying" about passing through security and you will have the exact description...times two. At least this time I had someone to whine to about the dehumanizing experience of flying.

The purpose of our trip was to accompany the Shatners and two of their good friends to the Napa Valley for a wine tasting trip, a package that they bought at a charity auction. Once we were on the ground in sunny Burbank our attitudes picked up and we were off on our adventure. On Friday morning we went to the set of Boston Legal and watched the taping. It was really interesting and fun. Everyone was so nice and we had a very pleasant day. On Saturday morning we got up early and were escorted in a stretch limo to the Van Nuys airport where we boarded a seven seat lear jet and took off for Napa.

Now THIS is flying. The six of us were driven to the door of the of the jet, had our luggage taken from the limo and put on the plane (no scanners, no ex-ray machines, no lines, no rude people, no stripping to our shorts, no boarding passes, seat assignments, sneezing diseased passengers, no unhappy children, no emergency landing lectures, no instructions on how to fasten my seat belt, no tray tables/seat backs or luggage storage lectures, no nasty flight attendants pushed past their limits by miserable passengers, no crappy airline food or microscopic bags of pretzels, no old tattered jets that take a year to board and deplane and no waiting to use the toilet). We were greeted by two very pleasant smiling individuals who piloted us to Napa at wicked speed. Inside it looked like the interior of a luxury sedan. The seats were beautiful soft leather, the accents were polished wood. There were newspapers from all parts of the country to choose from, soft drinks, beer, wine, water, snacks, and a perfect view to the world from every seat. And when someone eventually ventured into the territory of what it would cost if we were to pay for this flight out of our pockets (it came as part of the package) the number stunned me into a moment of silence. But it didn't stop me from elevating a share in Flexjet to the tip top of my wish list.

We touched down at the Napa airport and when we stepped off of the plane there was another limo waiting to pick us up. I realized after we got settled in the seat that I had no idea if our luggage was with us or not. Didn't care either! We were whisked off to The Culinary Institute for our first wine tasting and lunch. When we arrived they dropped us at the door and left us with a phone number to call Edward, our limo driver. This was our first official wine tasting so as inexperienced tasters we didn't quite know what to expect. Both of us drink wine and have preferences but we were looking forward to learning more about the actual process of wine making.

Our first tasting was a crash course. We were ushered into a huge room full of winemakers, with at least a hundred vineyards represented. It was a Cab-fest. Each vineyard had an inverted wine barrel with a bottle or bottles of their wares to share and a plastic bucket in which to dump what you didn't drink all sitting atop the barrels. We stopped briefly to taste some unbelievably delicious cheeses then we were each handed a wine glass and proceeded to jump into the flow of human bodies that were tasting, dumping (some actually spitting...yuuuuuck) and moving to the next inverted barrel for another splash of wine. We used the same glass to taste every wine and it was hard to see over the crowds so we didn't understand quite how many wines there were to taste. Somehow I had visualized wine tasting as something you did slowly, while sitting down, with someone describing the subtlties of each and instructing on what wines go with what foods. You know what I mean? Well it was more like wine tasting in the Orlando airport. And by the time we were half way around the room my palate was dead. Being as I had not eaten since breakfast I was on my way to slight drunkeness so I was relieved to leave my wine glass on a tray by the door as we exited the room. Later that night I learned that all of the wines that we tasted were going to be auctioned that weekend so they were very young wines, very tannic and raw. People who buy wine in large quantities understand what they are tasting when they taste young wines. We were wine tasting neophytes.

From the giant wine tasting room we were ushered into the humongous kitchen of The Institute where all of the chefs had their special culinary delights on display. It was a similar experience to the wine tasting...grab a dish, fill it with little bits of this and that (and that and this and this and that...), lean up against a counter in the kitchen and wolf down lunch. After we finished and were herded out of the kitchen we decided we had experienced enough of The Culinary Institute and it was time to call Edward and head for the hotel. As we pulled up to a breathtaking resort called Meadowood the skies opened up and it never stopped raining for the entire evening, night and into the following morning. We stayed in a three bedroom suite with a common living area. Each room had a perfect view of something perfectly beautiful and a wood burning fireplace in every room. We were scheduled for two more wine tastings before dinner but instead opted to build a fire, open a nice bottle of aged wine and hang out all afternoon visiting and listening to the rain. We found that we were spending a weekend with a nicely blended and interesting group of people. The conversation was as wide ranging as it was stimulating and cemented friendships that will last many years to come. It was a wonderful time.

The rest of our weekend was great fun and we actually did go to vineyards and experience the cultured, instructive wine tasting that we had all hoped for. We ate lovely meals and met nice people and enjoyed good conversation. And then we flew on that wonderful little jet back to Van Nuys. We had a 100 mile an hour tail wind and at one point we reached 600 miles per hour! It was great!

On Monday evening we checked into a hotel close to the Burbank so that we could catch our very early morning flight on Tuesday morning. Lately I've been using my Blackberry as an alarm clock, amongst many other things. I love the little chimes on it. It gently eases me out of sleep and into wakefulness. We were tired from our busy trip so we got to bed early and I set the alarm for 4:15AM and fell into a deep, dream-laden sleep. As scheduled the alarm began chiming at 4:15. I reached for the Blackberry and turned off the alarm, dragged my very groggy self out of a wild dream and stepped into the shower. About the time I got my hair lathered up with shampoo the door of the bathroom opened and John came in. I heard him say, "Sweetie I think there's something wrong." I stuck my head out of the shower and he said, "It's 1:25 in the morning." It was like he was speaking Japanese or something. I just stood there and tried to understand what he was saying and checking to be sure that he was really there and I wasn't still dreaming. "No. I looked at my watch when I got up and it matched the clock. It's 4:25," I say. As he was leaving the bathroom I heard him say, "It's 4:25 in Kentucky." The door closed and I realized that I had forgotten that the PDA doesn't change time when I change time zones like my cell phone used to and I almost never change my watch when we make short trips. I stood in the shower with soap on my head at 1:25 in the morning and laughed my ass off. Then I finished showering, dried my hair and went back to bed for another few hours of sleep.

I haven't heard the end of it since.

You will be happy to know that we are back in Wildwood (not at the KOA!) and I'm sitting at the kitchen table in Queen Mary finishing this entry. We left Vero this morning looking like the Beverly Hillbillies...the Camry stuffed to the gills with suitcases, food, bicycles on the back of the car and Breezy wedged into a tiny space in the back of the car between an ice chest and a set of golf clubs. She knew she was traveling because her bed was tucked into the little space. She was one happy Border Collie.

Tomorrow we will finish up with the technicians here at the Monaco Service Center and begin our journey to the west. We hope to be in Tampa tomorrow evening for the first few days of the Tampa Charity Show and then we will head for Scottsdale to the Carousel Charity Horse Show. I will be logging our adventures and blogging regularly again. So stay tuned and wish us luck!