California Recap

Okay, so I’m REALLY behind.  I don’t even remember the last time I actually sat down and wrote something so I’ve got a lot to catch up on.  And to deviate from my regular format, I’m going to TRY to keep things short.  We’ll see how that goes.  ;)

When Simon and I were living out in California, it’s safe to say that we were living near some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.  Now I’m not getting up on a high horse and saying that California is more beautiful than other places in the country...I didn’t turn into one of those people who thinks that there’s California, and then there’s everywhere else.  In fact, as I was leaving Minnesota for the California assignment, my mom said to me, “Don’t turn into one of those California girls.”  She could have meant a number of things, but I think what she meant was “Don’t forget where you came from.”  And I’ll be honest, my opinion of California, prior to actually living there, was very poor.  I thought California was nothing but a materialistic cesspool filled with nothing but plastic surgery, fast cars, designer handbags, bumper to bumper traffic, and celebrities thinking their poo doesn’t stink.  That is still my opinion of LA.  Again, having never spent more time than a few hours in LA, I’m probably way off base, but maybe not as far as I think.  As I’ve put in other posts, the San Francisco Bay area is chill, unassuming, and humble.  I loved it.  *Getting off the soapbox*  Okay, so back to the scenery.  So while we were in California, we had the pleasure of visiting Yosemite National Park, which was hands-down one of the coolest places I’ve ever been.  In my entire life.  I could have spent a whole week there rather than just an overnight.  From the giant sequoias to the waterfalls, there was just so much to see.  We also went to the Big Sur area, which I learned is not actually a national or state park, but is an area of the coastline.  The hiking trails here were harder to find because they‘re not marked very well.  Basically you just drive along the Pacific Coast Highway until you see a bunch of cars pulled over on the side of the road.  Usually you’ll find yourself a trail-head.  The water along the coast is so beautiful.  I used to think that the color seafoam green was something made up in a color lab, but I saw that exact color in the water along the California coast.  As the waves were breaking along the rocky shore, the water color ranged from deep deep blue to caribbean blue to seafoam green.  Gorgeous.  And mesmerizing.  To the north of where we were living was Muir Woods, home to some of the giant coastal redwoods.  Trees just don’t grow like that back home.  Tall and straight and multiple feet in diameter.  It’s easy to see why these trees were practically logged into extinction...the amount of lumber you could get from one tree has to be multitudes to what you get from your average oak or pine in Minnesota.  So those were a few of the places we visited while we were out in California.  

Going that direction, we had a coworker at Stanford who was picking our brains one night while we were at work.  At that point, we had only been to Muir Woods and San Francisco.  He sat there expectantly as I told him those places, and then waited a beat before he realized I was done.  “That’s it?  Those places aren’t even an hour away.  You haven’t been to LA or Yosemite or or or...” The list of places we apparently should have visited by then went on and on.  And it got me to thinking.  Simon and I travel across the country multiple times a year for work, and usually we end up living in some pretty cool places.  But when it comes to taking a trip for the sake of taking a trip...we don’t really do that.  Our trips consist of visiting places that usually fall within a 100 mile radius of where we live.  The last “trip” we took for the sake of taking a trip was our shortie cruise to the Bahamas...we were gone all of four days, and only had to drive 2 hours from where we lived to catch the boat.  And I don’t even really count that.  Had we not been living in Florida at the time, we would never have taken that cruise.  With us, it all seems to be about proximity.  And I’m okay with that, I just had never thought about it before.

I was once told by a friend in Minnesota that if a person ever lives in California, it would be irresponsible for them not to learn about wine (he was born and raised in California).  And prior to going out to California, my palate for wine was very small.  I knew that I liked reds better than whites, but the reds vary so much from bottle to bottle that I frequently was left with a ‘take it or leave it‘ opinion on it.  So, since we were out in California, where they grow tons of grapes for wine, I figured we should probably learn a little bit about wine.  And that learning mostly consisted of trying different glasses of wine at the restaurants that we frequented.  It was there that I found the red wine for me.  It is called Pinot Noir, and some might recognize it as the wine that Paul Giatmatti’s character was obsessed with in the movie Sideways.  Pinot Noir (sometimes just referred to as Pinot, which can be confusing because there’s also Pino Griggio, which is a sweet white wine) is a smooth red with very little dryness, making it perfect for me because I hate dry wines.  I don’t understand the palates that do like dry wines...it’s like purposely giving yourself cotton-mouth.  Anyway, so I’ve decided that Pinot Noir is my go-to wine from here on out.  Enter Sonoma Valley.  Sonoma Valley was about an hour and a half drive from where we were living in California.  Sonoma Valley is the lesser known cousin to the famous Napa Valley, and being that these two places are known as producing some of the best American wines, I figured we should probably pay them a visit since we were out there (it would have been irresponsible not to, right?).  Some people argue that wines are better in Sonoma.  I don’t get involved because either I like a wine, or I don’t.  Location (at that point) didn’t seem to play much of a part into whether or not I like a wine.  So Simon and I went to Sonoma to visit the Benziger winery, an estate that I had been to in the past and had really liked.  They do this type of farming called Bio-dynamic, which I understood to mean that they take their farming one step further than organic.  They don’t use pesticides or commercial fertilizers, and any waste products from their harvests are put back out in the vineyards as fertilizers.  They also have little ‘bug gardens‘ where they grow specific flowers to bring in “good” bugs who then fly out into the vineyards to eat the “bad” bugs.  It actually seems pretty cool.  So we went there and took the tour and got to have a private tasting in the wine cave.  Everyone there was very nice and friendly.  We made a few other stops at some other vineyards, tasting all the while.  We happened upon another winery called Ty Caton, and I had had one of his wines previously and had really enjoyed it.  So we swung in there and had some tastings there.  We even got to meet Ty, which was pretty cool.  It was there that one of the guys behind the counter told me that we needed to “work on my palate” since Pinot Noir was just unacceptable to him.  He didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the impression that he regards Pinot Noir about the same way one would regard Arbor Mist...wine for beer drinkers, not wine drinkers.  And what does he care what I like anyway?  I’m obviously not the only person that likes to drink Pinot Noir or they wouldn’t make it.  I had heard about wine snobs loitering about in California, but I hadn’t actually encountered one until that day in Sonoma.  It was then and there that I decided that a $10 bottle of wine is just as good as a $100 bottle of wine.  And here’s the thing I learned about wine...it does make a difference where the grapes are grown.  I might like one Pinot from California, and not like another grown in Oregon (for reference, the Pinot Noir that I seem to like the best is grown in the Santa Lucia Highlands in California...how's that for specific?).  Location matters, and the only way to find out what region you like your wine from, is by trial and error.  I’d rather make errors with $10 bottles than $100 bottles.  Just because a wine is expensive, doesn’t mean it’s going to taste good. 

When living in California, I noticed a little habit I had developed somewhere along the line in this traveling life of mine.  Whenever Simon and I were going on a day trip, I would always post a little status update on Facebook saying where we were going.  I figure that if something bad were to happen to us while we’re out and about, knowing where we were going is a good place to start to try to put the pieces together.  I know, it’s weird, and it’s only a facet of this “fear of death” thing that I’ve got going on.  So, if you see status updates detailing where I’m going for whatever reason, it’s a clue to where to start looking should I disappear off the face of the earth. 

I know I’ve talked about the dogs in California before, but I just have to mention how weird they were.  They’re incredibly aloof.  All of them.  I’ve never encountered dogs before who didn’t want to meet strangers.  If not for a little pat on the head, then for a swift nose to the crotch.  I didn’t get crotched by a single dog in California...not that I minded, of course, but I thought it was odd that these dogs had so much self control.  Maybe people in California do a better job of training their dogs to be good canine citizens, and that it’s impolite to shove one’s face in someone else’s crotch.  I have no idea.  All I know is that there were a ton of dogs living in our neighborhood in California, yet I had little to no interaction with any of them because they ignored me.  It wasn’t that they were well aware of my presence and held back to watch, they ignored me as if I wasn’t even there.  Some of the dogs even ignored my dogs, and how they managed to do that while my dogs were practically hanging themselves at the end of their leashes is still a mystery to me.

While living out in California, I noticed that my pants had gotten tight.  Yes, I probably gained weight while I was out there because the food was so good and the physical activity was uninspiring, at best.  I found it weird that when I was living in Florida, I went for 3-6 mile walks at 3-4 times a week, sometimes more.  Then I get out to California and all I want to do is sit around, go out to eat, and...yeah, I have no idea what else I did.  A lot of the roads in Palo Alto were very straight, and they all went through neighborhoods, and maybe I just got bored with walking by them.  Although, I really like looking at houses, so I don’t think that was it.  Maybe it’s because it was so flat, although Florida is really flat too.  I loved wandering around San Francisco when Simon and I would go there for the day.  The hills there are so steep, it’s a good work-out.  Maybe if we had lived in San Francisco I would have gone out and walked around more.  It’s weird how in some places I’m really inspired to get out and exercise, and other places I’m just not.  It shouldn’t matter, really.  I wish I liked to exercise, that would make this whole thing a lot easier.  And my pants would fit better.  :)

Simon and I were watching and episode of How I Met Your Mother, and the characters were talking about the phenomenon known as “graduation goggles,” the feeling of nostalgia you get when you’re leaving something familiar, even if that something familiar wasn’t all that pleasant.  For example, the name graduation goggles comes from that wistful feeling you might have had when graduating high school...even if high school really wasn’t all that pleasant, it was still familiar and something you had gotten used to.  The fear of the unknown causes graduation goggles to appear, and make it seem as though high school really wasn’t that bad after all.  I feel like graduation goggles are most frequently applied when in a relationship with someone you really don’t want to be in a relationship with.  Suddenly memories of all the good times come flooding back in, and you think to yourself that maybe staying with that person won’t be so bad after all.  Months later the relationship is on the skids, and even the graduation goggles can’t save the train wreck that is your relationship/job/family member/etc.  Simon and I had graduation goggles as our last days of Stanford drew close.  I remember one day, one of my last days, Simon and I were in the staff lounge at the end of our shift, and one of us (I don’t remember who) made the comment, “I’m actually going to miss it here.”  It was then that we realized we had graduation goggles on.  There’s no way I was going to miss working there, and in fact, would have to think long and hard about ever going back.  Being aware of the goggles is the half the battle.  

One funny thing I noticed about people in California is footwear.  Well, I notice footwear everywhere, but I was frequently perplexed by some of the footwear I saw in California, particularly by what people were wearing in Big Sur, Yosemite, and Muir Woods.  Keep in mind that there is hiking, sometimes strenuous hiking, to be done in all of these places.  We saw all manner of flip flops, Converse, Uggs, and even one man in loafers on the hiking trails.  How does one hike in those kinds of shoes?  I would have had to turn back after the first half hour...maybe even sooner than that...especially in the flip flops...or the loafers.  But I don’t own any loafers, so I guess I wouldn’t have been out there in loafers in the first place.  Maybe other people don’t have feet issues.  Maybe people like hiking in flip flops.  There were a lot of people in California that wear those barefoot shoes, both with the individual toes and without.  Those are weird too.  I want to try on a pair but so far I haven’t.  I believe those shoes are designed for running, and since I abhor running, there seems to be little point to even bothering with them.  

I guess that’s it for my California recap.  I do miss it out there, and lucky for me, I have a job that’ll most likely take me back there again someday.  :)