A Glorious Week At Home

You're the Wine That I Want!

So. thanks to some seriously impressive organizational skills on the part of the captain of my van for our Ragnar Napa team, most of us met up today in Oakland, legs recovered, ready for some deliciously awesome wine-tasting.  Despite the destination of our relay, there was very little (van 1) to no wine (van 2, my van) actually tasted on the relay weekend, so we were on a mission.

A Sunday full of local winetasting was the perfect way to cap off a week at home with lots of general home todo stuff (laundry, bills, voting, etc.), prep for upcoming travel and the holidays (the rest of the year is ridiculous), a trip out to the impressive Gallo Center for the Arts to see (and more importantly listen to) Joshua Bell, and dealing with the final punch-lists for the kitchen (almost done!).

Final Inspection (fingers crossed) is Monday.

Overall, the week was low-drama.  Lots of work, laundry, easy miles, etc.  Following the World Series (Go Giants!) including being guests at Giants-fan-friends who sent us home with 3 nights worth of microwaveable lasagna leftovers (HUGE THANKS! -- also, there appears to be a correlation with the wins, more lasagna is clearly needed).

On the running front, it was a fine week.  My knees are completely recovered from Chicago.  I managed 30.55 miles total including *much* walking. Today, I woke early, and, since we were staying the night in the East Bay near the trail, headed for an out and back along the new span of the Bay Bridge for 9+ miles of one last long run before NYC.  It was cool, beautiful, and overall, a great way to spend the morning:

View of the Oakland Port Cranes (AT-ATs) under the old bay bridge span.

Good side-by-side showing the new pedestrian portion and bike path vs. the old bridge span.

What remains of the old Treasure Island touchdown (from the new pedestrian trail).

The gap of the removed old span from the current pedestrian turn-around point.

In other news, thanks to the YTWTIW East Bay Wine excursion, we learned all about the East Bay Vinters Alliance, which is so cool.  Who knew there were so many wine tasting venues you could visit in the greater Oakland metropolitan region?   Makes perfect sense, really.  There are way more people in the actual bay area than up in NorCal wine country, why not source the grapes, make the wine, and have a tasting room and wine experience close to the people, instead of requiring them to get themselves all the way up to where some subset of the grapes are grown.

We visited two wineries -- Urban Legend (AT-AT logo alert!), where the owners were so welcoming and willing to chat about anything and everything related to their wine business; and Cerruti Cellars who blew us away with the phenomenal space and huge back table/room that they gave to our group solely in exchange for the tasting fee (which was waived w/purchase).

All-in-all, it was a great bay area week.  We even held our own in the World Series and got some (minimal) rain! Now all we need is for the Giants to kick some booty in Kansas City...