mengwong - Camping at Napa

Move to California. Become a hippie. Eat less meat. Take your Whole Foods cloth bag to the Farmer's Market. Stop driving. Ride a bike.

And visit wine country!

This Easter weekend, inspired by the New York Times, I explored Napa Valley with ladykalessia, jtavan, and dazeoflaur. The article specified bicycles, and we obeyed. I wanted to try touring on my Brompton, and Jeremy wanted to stretch his beautiful Breezer.

To get there, inspired by TransitCampBayArea, I took public transit.

Caltrain from Palo Alto to San Francisco: $5.75.
BayLink Ferry to Vallejo: $12.50.
VINE Route 10 to Bothe-Napa Valley State Park: $2.75.

I went 100 miles, door to door, for $21, at a cost of 21 cents per mile.

At 25 mpg and $4/gallon, that would've cost $16. The fully loaded cost of driving, however, is closer to 50 cents per mile (according to AAA.) Driving would've gotten me there faster, but with a poorer use of time: three hours in a car is three hours lost: eyes on the road, twitching at other drivers. Instead, I stopped at the farmer's market, browsed hundreds of stands, and bought lunch to go; then I got on the boat and enjoyed the lunch in a civilized manner, using both hands, seated at table. Through the window I watched the Marin headlands and Alcatraz go past. And I read.

Bill McKibben's Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families explores Malthus's question from a Greenpeace perspective. The worst thing you can possibly do for the environment is have a child: at the micro level there is that proverbial mountain of diapers, and on the macro there is overpopulation and untrammeled economic growth at the cost of global warming. And, so, if even two is too many, and zero not enough, then maybe one is just right.

It was amusing to read that only children are not weird in any way; they are just fine, even without siblings. In some ways they tend to do better. Phew.

True, the train, bus, and ferry did all run on diesel, so there was still some shame. A true hippie would've cycled the entire distance. I could have done it, but it would have taken ten hours, and I am not nearly that fit.

Camping at Bothe: $20/night. These campgrounds were a treat, though an air mattress is essential for gravel. Hot showers within walking distance, miner's lettuce growing wild and tasty, and, next door, two families who lost their homes to the subprime crisis and whose kids are now, as a result, having the time of their lives. Unfortunately, they come from that class of society which believes in frequent sugaring of children, hence raucous, hence not such a great experience for the neighbours trying to sleep.

Saturday evening, birthday dinner for ladykalessia. The Kobe burgers at Martini House were every bit as good as jtavan had promised. The mushroom amuse-bouches were delicious, as was the mushroom soup. They love mushrooms. They even have a tasting menu of nothing but. The underground bar is perfect in every way. And, of course, with thousands of little lights that glow on the grounds, they had me at hello. Was it worth dressing for, in black tie? Absolutely. I recommend it to erica.biz and jenrourke too.

Sunday morning. We bicycled to Calistoga for Easter brunch. The Calistoga Inn and Restaurant has lovely grounds. We were afraid it would be mediocre, because everybody goes there, but the food turned out to be quite acceptable and I would be happy to go there again.

We cycled back along the Silverado trail and stopped at a number of wineries along the way, none of note, except for the redonkulous Castello di Amorosa: as Jeremy said, it is so very tacky that the needle goes all the way around, back to "awesome." It is an authentic 2-year-old Tuscan castle, with pennanted battlements and a half-moat, on top of a hill, surrounded by vineyards. Naysayers will be shot.

Just down the road from the State Park is a magnificent old restored water-powered grain mill. The next few loaves of bread from my kitchen will have been milled there, yesterday. As an engineer, the experience of standing inside a machine three storeys tall and powered by water was almost religious. In the software trade we regularly design systems a hundred times as complex, yet this machine, so simple, and so big, was tangible in a way that software cannot be.

Sunday night. Pizzeria Tra Vigne had excellent crust, though the toppings were a little salty. Back at camp, Laurie and I learned to make fire. A fire has distinct modes: the 12V cigarette lighter will ember paper, but you have to concentrate the heat and blow if you want it to burst into flame; then it will light the wood, but if you want the wood to stay lit you have to arrange it to reflect heat upon itself, and also you need ventilation. Smoke in your eyes is very painful, but we got it in the end, and we put a few pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When it's down to coals it looks like the molten surface of a cracked and cooling planet.

Monday morning. Bouchon Bakery (YATKR) had awesome nutter butter cookies, epi de ble, and brioche. It was a treat to watch the baker shape the epi loaves. Her artistry was consummate, consummate.

Then I put the "nap" into "Napa" as Jeremy drove us all home.

I can't wait to go up again.