33 in Napa Valley! Day three [part 1]

AKA Napa Valley day!

So, we started our day out bright and early, because mother, I mean Deborah, had us on a tight schedule. We were told we had to leave early so we had enough time to drive up to Napa from our hotel--apparently traffic was supposed to be horrendous, plus there was road construction. Thankfully the Claremont had a T.V. in the bathroom for us, so we had the morning shows on in both the living room area and bathroom---no excuses to not get ready quickly!

We stopped at a lovely little café near the hotel for Sony's coffee (she needs a morning boost) and to get Deb a spoon for her cereal. Now, as you may remember from my day 1 posting, my life was flashing before my eyes with Deb behind the wheel on the way back from the airport. I would like to retract that statement: my life truly didn't flash before my eyes until Deb drove us up to Napa whilst eating a bowl of Kashi and milk. I mean, suri-ously! Suri Cruise! Talk about death wish!

Anyhoo...so, we made our way up to Napa in record time---suri-ously, we had over an hour to spare. Actually, it was more like an hour-and-a-half, but Sony had to stop and go pee and load up on more Diet Coke once we were in Napa County. It suri-ously took her a half an hour! I thought she had fallen in! Or made new friends...there were a few bra-bra's going in and out of the gas station. You know how much the bra-bra's heart Sony! Luckily there was a McDonald's attached, and since I had forgotten to bring with my baguette, cheese, and grape tomatoes that I bought the night before at Whole Foods, I had a cheeseburger for breakfast. I am not usually a breakfast eater, no matter what kind of food it is, but I was starving and needed to get a good base going in case there was a lot of vino to be had! Better safe than sorry!

We continued on our way into Napa County, and eventually started to see all of the vineyards and restaurants that are associated with the region. After consulting the handy "San Francisco for Dummies" book that Deb brought along, we reached our first vineyard: Robert Mondavi. It was very pretty, sitting at the base of a mountain, with a good sized visitor's center and many fields full of all sorts of varieties of grapes. It was just me, Deb, and Sony at this point---Betsi had to stay behind and help with unloading the moving van full of beer and wine for the BBQ on Saturday before the big game, so she drove up separately later in the day. SIDE NOTE: when Betsi picked up her rental car on Wednesday afternoon, the employee at the Enterprise booth ran after her and gave her his business card so she could [hypothetically] bring her friends to a frat party some guys he knew were throwing! Betsi did keep the card to give to Sony---after all, he fit her mold! (See above!)

Okay, so onward with the vineyard tour. After we got our little tin lapel pins, to indicate we were on the 11:30AM tour, we were rounded up in the courtyard by our tour guide, Kurt. Or Kirk. I can't remember which. He had extremely ruddy red cheeks and was wearing one of those Greg Norman-like golf hats--you know, the one made of straw with the bandana-like thing tied around it? Anyhoo, this guy was a complete tool. Or a 'cork dork,' as he liked to refer to himself as. Kind of like the main guy in Sideways, you know, the one who knows everything about everything about wine? Here's my rendition of him, courtesy of the South Park character website:

Just imagine the spooky looking trees are really rows of grape vines. This is exactly what he looks like!

So, Corky starts us out on our tour by giving us the most anal-retentive description of rainfall I've ever heard. He kept saying, "I'll bet you $1,000 it won't rain in Napa Valley on September 25, because it's only ever rained here one time on Sept. 25 in recorded history." What a dope! But he quickly had a teacher's pet---some chick who was about 22 years old was with her parents, and they were firing questions off left and right. They kept talking about going to the vineyards in New Zealand, and how the daughter was looking to do an internship at a vineyard in Napa Valley. I could practically hear her nose squeaking, she was so far up his ass.

Then there was a couple of married couples that looked to betravelingg together, and one of the wives kept exclaiming, "Wow!" with every factoid that Corky shared with us. Then, when it was time for the wine tasting, she slammed down all of her samples (which were really half-full glasses) and finished her husband's off too! Meow! Another young couple sat across the table from us at the wine tastings, and they were very smart. How do I know this? Well, they kept laughing at my jokes and snide remarks that I made everytime Corky said something lame. I was en fuego once again! Deb kept saying I was the funniest person there. Well, compared to the Kiwi brown-nosers and retired boozehounds, I'm not sure how stiff the competition would have been anyways, but never-the-less, I'm still #1!

Best part of the tour: the power went off during our wine tastings. Did that speed Corky up? NOPE! Our one-and-a-half hour tour quickly turned into a two-and-a-half hour tour, thanks to all the lame questions and Corky'snever-endingg stories. By the time we finished, we had to scramble because we wanted to hit up another vineyard or two before going to our final scheduled tour at 5:00 PM. So it was off to the gift shop...which, without the magic of electricity, was nothing more than a storage room with three retarded shopkeepers trying to figure out how to use a calculator to calculate tax. Sonja and I used our cell phones to calculate our totals with tax, and we apparently were like gods to these people. They tried to get us to stay and calculate the totals for everyone in the store, and wanted to pay us off in free wine! We said, "Suri cruise!" and left. We had to get to the Coppola vineyard down the road! Auf weidersehn!

Part 2 of day 3 still to come....