i spent $130 on reference books yesterday on a whim. who does that?? well, me, i guess.

i didn't get home from work until after 9:00p on Friday night and called up Suzanne to tell her i wasn't really up for cleaning off the day's filth and going to her friend's art opening. i might have made it had the gallery been a smidge closer to home. but as it were, driving to Mill Valley for some mildly decent paintings was pretty unappealing, even if the artist was purportedly hot. she was just fine with this and added in a few yawns to emphasize the point. so i stayed home and went to bed a little early. and that made it a whole lot easier to get up at 7:00am the next morning to go bike riding in Sonoma with Angie.

we took our bikes up to the Sebastiani winery in Sonoma and peddled around the Sonoma bike path thinking it'd actually lead somewhere. but after a mile-and-a-half of paved nothingness, it abruptly ended and no amount of searching could find any worthwhile extension. so we headed back into town and decided on an outdoor lunch at some italian restaurant on the main square. quite edible, despite the numerous yellowjackets that descended when my pork loin arrived.

afterwards, we took the map and the "I [heart] SONOMA VALLEY" stickers i'd wrangled from the visitors center, and took off in the direction of Ravenswood winery. i soon discovered that the map showed everything deceptively close together and that the day's ride was going to be much more exercise and distance than i'd expected. this was a good thing! it's what i'd hoped for. and it made a mere three wineries fill an afternoon.

Ravenswood was fine. it's a pretty popular label so they were excessively overwhelmed with tasters. their wines are always good, in that "mm, this is pretty good" way. but i didn't feel compelled to buy anything and we headed off to Buena Vista. Buena Vista is apparently California's oldest premium winery. now, what the difference between a premium winery and a normal winery is and how this affects BV's "oldest" title escapes me. but it was a beautiful little spot -- a little ravine of greenery with a handful of stone buildings and a stream running through the property. quite nice but also quite ready to sell itself. some wineries focus on providing great wines with only the bare essentials of marketing and some wineries pay much more attention to their image. this was certainly of the latter type. not that there's anything wrong with it and not that i can actually say with any conviction that it really affects the quality of the wine. but, and maybe this is purely because of the atmosphere, i tend to find that places that put a great deal of work into their image have only mediocre wines. and, as you may have guessed by now, this was no exception. i was thoroughly unimpressed with everything. even their cream sherry. tasty but terribly ordinary. so we biked on.

next, and last, stop was the Gundlach Bundschu winery. Gundlach Bundschu is one of those names that sticks out in your mind but only in that it is distinct. mere moments after leaving the winery, we were at a loss as to what its name actually was, other than it started with a G and a B and sounded somewhat german. in fact, just now, i had to look it up to come even close to spelling it correctly.

aside from its difficult name, GB is also at the top of a fairly steep hill accessed by a very bumpy road. now, in a car, this is hardly noticeable. but on mountain bikes after a several mile ride to get there, it's a distinct effort. but well worth it. the winery is quite serene -- a little wooden, barn-like structure with a huge stone patio overlooking a man-made pond. the only thing that broke the serenity was the very obvious fart smell we encountered upon walking inside. i thought maybe it had something to do with all the old people in the room but when we returned later with the car to pick up the wine i'd bought, the smell was still lingering and obviously a function of the winery itself. in any case, the wines more than made up for the stink. delicious! yum. i bought five bottles, three very good Gewurztraminers (one for Angie) and two very interesting Zins. i usually don't care that much for Gewurztraminers because the bouquet that is so tasty doesn't match the rather ordinary flavor. but these were exceptional. hard to describe accurately but if you're lucky, i may invite you over for a taste. in any case, i definitely recommend this winery. in addition to having good wines, they also worked hard to have us enjoy our time there. a lot of wineries have started charging for tastings, which i can understand at the larger, more popular places. GB not only didn't charge but offered to open pretty much anything on the list for us to taste! kudos to them.

after biking back, picking up the car, driving back to GB to get the wines and heading off, we stopped by my cousin Mike's semi-new little taqueria in Point Richmond for a quick taco and hello, then back to the City for a haircut, then over to Oakland to drop off Angie, then back to my place to shower and change before heading to Absinthe for dinner with Dennis and Kim. (say that ten times fast!) the three of us had a nice, leisurely, and very European (we didn't even sit down until 9:30p) dinner. Dennis was mildly mad at me for telling him i'm not his secretary (which i'm not) but got over it when i basically ignored his fuming. Kim and i caught up on each other's lives. we all quizzed one another of our birthdays and, despite being good friends, none of us got any answers right. we called it a night a little early and i wandered home, after a very brief stop at G Bar and a peek at some movie being filmed at the firehouse down the street, looking like this:

Sunday was nothing like Saturday. i slept in until after noon, something i haven't done in ages, made an extensive "to do" list for the day, wandered around the house until two, watched the Giants finally win a game against the lowly Expos, motored out intending to get supplies to do an oil change on my motorcycle but found the BMW shop closed, ended up at Border's looking for one book in particular but leaving with the aforementioned stack of reference books, looked at my list and realized i'd only crossed on thing off of it, was content and perfectly happy by that.

and so ended another weekend. now, off to work and the tempestuous ordeals of getting the project schedule in line with reality.