Salad Is Slaughter

We just got back from a quick vacation and it was much too short.  Monday morning we headed up to Yosemite.  We came in on highway 41 from the south so we could stop at Glacier Point.  The road to Glacier Point is only open during the summer, so when it is open you need to take the opportunity to drive up there.  The view was incredible.  There were scattered clouds on Monday and they made the pictures I took of Half Dome looked more like a painting then a photograph.  From Glacier Point you can look down into the valley and pick out the Ahwahnee Hotel and the Merced River.  Over to the left of Half Dome you can see El Capitan and to the right you can pick out waterfalls.

After we left Glacier Point we drove down through the tunnel.  When you come out of the tunnel you get a view of the valley from a different angle.  Where Half Dome dominated the view from Glacier Point, the view from the tunnel exit is dominated by El Capitan. 

After taking more pictures we headed off to the Ahwahnee hotel.  Instead of staying in the hotel proper, we stayed in one of the cottages near the Merced River.  They’re a bit small but we could store our bikes in the room instead of locking them up on the bike rack every night.  After we unpacked we took a short hike down the trail toward Mirror Lake.  We didn’t go quite as far as Mirror Lake; maybe a mile down the trail and a mile back.

We got back to the room after our hike and dressed up a bit for dinner.  We decided to have dinner at the Ahwahnee dining room, and they have a dress code:  collared shirts, no jeans, no tennis shows.  We brought in our own wine – a bottle of Nickel and Nickel Chardonnay – and paid the $20 corkage fee.  As we walked in with the wine one of the waiters saw what we had brought and basically fell all over himself to open it and talk to us about the winery.  He was impressed.

The food was excellent and the price wasn’t unreasonable.  We started with soup – I had the soup of the day, which was a yellow tomato soup that reminded me of an Indian curry, and Janet had a cold fruit soup.  Both were very good.  Next we split a spinach salad.  We ended with pork tenderloin with sweet potatoes and a fruit sauce.  We couldn’t finish the pork so we took it back to the room along with some of the bread and made sandwiches the next day.  They were some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.

We started off Tuesday morning with a hike down to Mirror Lake and back.  Total distance was probably around four miles.  Mirror Lake is more of a puddle this time of year but the views of the surrounding cliffs was really nice.  From there you can look up and see the flat side of Half Dome.  Part of the trip back was off the paved trail through the woods.  I liked getting away from the people, but there was quite a lot of horse crap on the trail.  The flying insects also made that part of the hike less than pleasant.

After the hike we ate our leftover pork sandwiches then took out the bikes.  We went back to the trail and did the loop of the valley.  We rode past Mirror Lake, then went past Curry Village then out toward El Capitan.  The bike path doesn’t go all the way out to El Capitan, and we didn’t want to deal with riding on the street with people who aren’t paying attention to their driving.  The path takes you to Yosemite Village and to Yosemite Falls. 

Just like the last time I was there, Yosemite Falls was dry.  I really need to go in the spring.  They’re doing a lot of construction around that area so it’s pretty hard to get around.  The bike path is routed between the trailers and the road and it’s not easy to find.  We completed the loop and arrived back at the hotel.  The whole bike trip only took about an hour or so, and that included stopping and taking pictures.

We got back to our cottage and changed into our swimming gear.  We walked down to the Merced River and walked in.  The water is cold.  Really cold.  But you get used to it, and eventually I was in a hoohoodilly-deep pool of water that had been snow not too long.  After you get used to the temperature it felt pretty good on the legs.

Dinner on Tuesday was room service.  It’s pretty much the same food you get in the dining room.  We had the candle light dinner for two, which consisted of appetizers, soup, salad, entrée, and dessert.  The first appetizer was a crab and salmon salad.  It was really good.  The second appetizer was shrimp in a ginger sauce.  It was also a fine selection but I like the crab and salmon a bit better.

The soup of the day on Tuesday was chicken with vegetables.  It was a very hearty soup and you could have made a meal out of that alone.  I’m glad they only gave us a small bowl because it was very filling.  It was a good soup, but I thought the soups that we had the night before were better.  The spinach salad was the same as what we had on Monday night and like Monday night was excellent.

For the main dish Janet had the lamb and I had the prime rib.  The lamb dish was really interesting in that they served it with a mint couscous wrapped in phylo dough.  The prime rib was basic American faire served with mashed potatoes and asparagus.  Both main dishes were very good.  We couldn’t finish our main dishes again so we saved the leftover lamb and prime rib along with the bread for sandwiches on Wednesday.

At this point we were stuffed so we took a short walk around the hotel grounds.  When we got back we finished our dessert:  strawberry shortcake with rice pudding.  It was very good.  I’m glad we did so much hiking and biking on Tuesday because we ate a lot.

On Wednesday we did the bike trail again, this time going in the opposite direction that we did on Tuesday.  This time we saw more wildlife because it was still fairly early in the morning.  We saw a couple of deer by Yosemite Village, but the most impressive dear was a huge buck with a pretty large rack of antlers near Curry Village.  I got a few pictures of him.  Up until this point our only wildlife viewing had been squirrels.

The Ahwahnee is replacing their slate roof and their selling pieces of the original roof that was installed in 1927.  They took some of the slate pieces and engraved things on them – Half Dome, a bear, and so on – and are selling them to tourists.  We bought a couple and they look pretty nice in the family room.

We could have used one more day of hiking, but the time we had in Yosemite was still pretty good.  We arrived back home on Wednesday evening and the dogs were all very happy to see us.  They like the dog sitter, but they miss their mom and dad. 

Last Saturday Nickel and Nickel Winery set up a special tasting to celebrate their release of their new cabernet sauvignons.  It was free for wine club members so we drove up to Napa for a taste.

Most of the cabs that you buy are actually blends – say 78% cabernet sauvignon, 12% cab franc, and 10% petit verdot for example.  They also take grapes of the same variety from different geographic regions to make a vintage.  The wine makers do this to try to get the scent, color, and flavor that they’re looking for.  It allows them to have a bit more consistency from year to year and we own some excellent wines made this way.

Nickel and Nickel winery on the other hand is one of the few wineries that produces single vineyard wines.  On Saturday we tasted eight different recently released cabernet sauvignon wines.  Each wine was made only from the juice of cabernet sauvignon grapes harvested from a single vineyard – one of which came from a vineyard that was only two acres. 

Each table in the tasting room was set up with two wines, and each had a clear plastic box sitting on the table that contained an example of the soil from that vineyard.  Some of the soil had huge rocks in it, some had smaller rocks, and still others had no rocks at all.  Yes, you can tell the difference between wines from the same year made from identical grape varieties grown in different vineyards.  The soil, climate, altitude, and even what is growing around the vineyard can affect the taste of wine.  For a good example of other plants affecting a wine’s taste try to find a Raven’s Wood Winery (Sonoma) wine from the Gregory Vineyards.  That particular vineyard has eucalyptus trees nearby that affect the wine’s flavor (in a positive way).

Nickel and Nickel also had a couple of tables set up with a wide variety of cheeses, pates, sausage, bread, and crackers.  We would sample some food between each pair of tastings to get ready for the next pair of wines.  Every wine we tasted was great and we bought several bottles.

Do you want your ass kissed?  Join a high-end wine club then go visit the winery.  They notch up the niceness level a bit when they find out that you send them a check every couple of months.  When I mentioned that we really enjoyed a Syrah we had received in a wine club shipment and we were disappointed that it was sold out, we were told of that a small supply had been found and we could get some if we wanted.  We did. 

Non-club members got to take their purchases out in the standard cardboard boxes.  Wine club members got their wine in wooden cases, and had those cases carried out to their car by winery employees.

We also made a quick stop at Opus One to pick up some Overture wine and after we finished at Nickel and Nickel we stopped by Cakebread.  Again, being a wine club member has its advantages because you don’t need to call in for a tasting reservation.  At Cakebread you’re escorted to a special patio area for your tasting.  We were disappointed to find that they were sold out of the Russian River Chardonnay.  We even asked if they had found some after they announced the sellout, but unfortunately they were really sold out of it.

Since the company buys our network hardware from K-mart’s Martha Stewart Living collection – it may not work worth a damn but the case colors are aesthetically pleasing – I’m sitting here watching work pile up so I decided to do something constructive.

If I had to limit myself to one pay movie service, I think I’d choose Showtime.  For starters, they’ve begun the second season of Dead Like Me.  I was wondering if season two would be as good as season one, and it is.  I may spend a couple of bucks and pick up the season one DVD set.  If I believed in an afterlife, I think I’d want a job as a reaper.

Even better, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! started running the second half of its second season.  Season one is available on DVD for those who don’t subscribe to Showtime.  They ran about a half dozen shows at the beginning of the summer, then the new stuff stopped.  I was disappointed because the show is always good – it’s 60 Minutes with F-bombs and they’re not afraid to examine taboo subjects like myths and errors in the Bible.  Last week they started showing new episodes again, and I came away from the show thinking that the funeral home industry is populated by a bunch of scum who try to get every dime they can out of grieving people by selling them overpriced crap that they don’t need.  It was a very informative show.

Next week Bullshit! is going to examine the erosion of the First Amendment and the assault on our rights by religious fanatics.  That’s something I’ve been complaining about for a long time and I’m glad to see that they’re taking up the cause. 

The most disturbing story so far from season two has been their examination of PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  I’ve always been suspicious of PETA, but now I think there’s reason to fear them as well.  The FBI should be investigating them and the splinter groups they fund as terrorist organizations.  I read on the Showtime website that Bullshit! has been nominated for a couple of Emmies, and I’m will to bet that this is the story that they submitted.

They’ve even done a story on recycling that shocked me and my beliefs.  It turns out that recycling metal is a good thing while contrary to what you might think, recycling plastic and paper is more harmful to the environment than not recycling.  It was fascinating stuff and exploded a lot of myths about the subject.

The best news:  Bullshit! has been renewed for a third season.

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Last week Janet saw a bobcat walk out of the woods in front of our house and sit on the rocks.  Not a bobcat skid-loader or excavator like you’d see working around a construction site, but the kind of bobcat that is frequently mistaken for a mountain lion, sits on the rocks in front of your house, kills a lizard, then eats it for lunch.  She thought it was pretty cool.

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We used our George Foreman grill to cook scallops on Sunday.  If you take the big scallops, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, toss them on your GF grill and close the lid, and cook them for two and half minutes.   They come out perfectly.

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When Janet was in Oregon over the weekend she went into a pet store and saw that they had just gotten in a new shipment of Belgian Sheepdog stuff.  So now we have a “Danger, Belgian Sheepdog Crossing” sign for the house.  I’ve also got a Groenendael keychain that looks just like Lisa.

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I had to take my Pathfinder in to the shop yesterday because the “Service Engine Soon” light was lit.  They had to replace a rear oxygen sensor and they loaded new software into the computer.  Of course, I just passed the three-year mark a couple of months ago so it was no longer under warranty.  Throw in the 45000-mile servicing that I decided to have them do, and you’re talking a nice chunk of change.

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I made some Thai food with a green paste we bought at Dean and Deluca on our last trip to Napa.  I tossed some chicken in, and added a little coconut milk like the directions said.  It came out pretty good.  We had a Riesling that Janet brought back from Oregon and it was great.  It would have been better if the Thai food had been a bit spicier.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote a short story, published in the 1950’s called The Man Who Sold the Moon in which wealthy entrepreneur D. D. Harriman, decides to privately finance an effort to put the first man on the moon.  Harriman sold the idea of a privately financed moon trip to his board of directors by claiming that there was money to be made, and there was but the real reason was that he personally wanted to step foot on the moon.

Enter reality, circa 2004.  Humans first stepped on the moon in 1969 and that effort along with the stories of Heinlein inspired kids at the time to study science and engineering.  I know, because I was one of them and I worked for 14 years flying satellites.  But people haven’t been back to the moon for three decades, trips into space are limited to government employees and the incredibly rich, and the rest of us lament the government bungling, pork-barrel politics, and short-sightedness that have kept us on the mud ball.

In June of 2004 Michael Melvill became the first person to pilot a privately financed rocket into space.  Note to the hair-do on CBS who read the story:  SpaceShipOne did not go into orbit.  To reach orbit you have to go really, really, really, fast and his small craft didn’t do that.  For those of us who sometimes wonder what the hell happened, this was a great accomplishment and gave us hope that the rest of us actually had a chance to see the Earth’s curve from 62 miles above the ground.

The reason Burt Rutan’s company Scaled Composites is launching their rocket is to try and win the X-Prize, a ten million dollar prize to the group that first launches a privately financed rocket into space (100 kilometer altitude) twice within 2 weeks.  The rocket must be capable of carrying three people.  The money won’t cover the development cost of the rocket, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.  Rutan’s group plans to try to win the prize with their first launch on September 29, and their second flight only 5 days later.

Now a second group from Canada known as da Vinci Project plans to launch their rocket called Wild Fire on October 3, with the second flight within two weeks.  Many people thought that Rutan’s group had the best chance to win the prize, and he probably still does because he’s got test flights under his belt while Wild Fire doesn’t.  However, competition is a good thing, and a delay with SpaceShipOne that pushes back their run for the money could open the door for the Canadians.  For those of us who really want the private sector in the space travel business this is a good thing.

So where are they getting money for these launches?  Burt Rutan’s group is funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.  The da Vinci Project needed an additional $500,000 to make the attempt, and GoldenPalace.com came forward with the money.  The ten million dollar prize is nice but the real money to be made is in launching a fleet of these vehicles.  There are truckloads of cash to be made in the tourist trade alone. 

When I saw that Paul Allen was the financial backer for SpaceShipOne, I wondered if he had a bit of D. D. Harriman in him.  Maybe the same thing is true with someone in GoldenPalace.com.  I know that I’ve been waiting years for a D. D. Harriman to come along and jumpstart the industry and if I had that size of a bank account I would have done the same thing.