We made our third trip to the Valle with Chris Gluck and the Wine Vault crowd. This one was excellent as usual, but it took a lot out of me. You’ve got to have an iron constitution (mostly liver) to visit four wineries every day for three days.

We had superb pairings of wine and food. The food is always the surprise in the Valle – there’s a restaurant culture there that’s as good as anything in the States or Europe – it’s just smaller and found out on dusty roads in the middle of nowhere. Our best stops this week were:

• Lechuza for a gnoshing walkaround dinner, supplied partly by Laja.
• Piojan Vineyards, a great new find for us. Great wine, 10-year aged balsamic and a chocolate sausage (really).
• Clos Tres Cantos, the pyramid winery. Great vibe, interesting people and really good wine. We bought one of our two allotted bottles there.
• A superb dinner at La Lomita.
• A memorable final dinner at Fauna.

 

• A fun stop at my favorite microbrewery, Agua Mala.

Our residence in the Valle at El Cielo Villas was first class. Comfortable, large, impeccable landscaping and situated very conveniently on the new road in the Valle center.

It was a great few days with great friends, but we were really happy to be home. Time for some normal life.

I’m developing a reputation as a weather jinx. Everywhere I travel the weather seems to take a rapid and severe turn for the worse. Evidence:

• Every trip I’ve taken to Kentucky this year the temperatures have zoomed to new all-time highs and then immediately dropped back to normal when I leave.
• Our trip to Malta and Sicily led to our suffering higher than normal temperatures there for a couple of weeks. Was beautiful after we left.
• I dropped into New Orleans for this weekend and a weird tropical storm blew through, doing more damage than the last hurricane. Closed the airport and cancelled our annual golf tournament.
• I’m soon on my way to Guadalupe Valle in Mexico, and they’re in the midst of wildfires throughout the area.

Perhaps this is my hidden superpower. Along with making wine disappear.

The trip to NOLA was weird but fun. Heavy rain, power outages, a golf bag lost by the airlines and a golf tourney at an old school country club, Tchefuncta. My great friend Jon is a member there and this was our second time competing. This might have been our year – we won our first match (of four) and were way up in our second match before the storm stopped the action. So it wasn’t to be. But we had great fun and we can brag about the victory that almost was for the next year.

We had some really great food. Perfect fresh fried seafood at Rip’s on the north shore of Lake Ponchatrain. Some of the best sushi rolls I’ve ever had at Aki in Covington. And a perfect sausage Po’Boy at Bear’s. The Cajuns know how to eat well. I’m happy to learn from masters.

With the tournament cancelled we had options of drinking at the club with a hundred other frustrated golfers or going home for something more quiet. We chose the latter and watched most of the first season of The Expanse. I like that series a lot.

The final weirdness of the trip was that NOLA area experienced big power outages as a result of tropical storm Olga. The airport was shut down for about five hours, so by the time I wandered in it looked like a Christmas Eve crowd – huge, desperate, cranky and occasionally rude. My favorite traveling partners. But I leveraged my A-list and TSA-Pre  status and got through without too much trouble.

Update from Mexico – my weather jinx hasn’t followed me here. Weather is good, but the damage from the wildfires of a few days ago is widespread. We and quite a few others on the trip brought donations of clothes and goods for the now-homeless people of La Mision which was hit hard by the fires. Hoping for a speedy recovery for all of them.

 

The last two and a half days have been consumed by our first-pass olive harvest for 2019. It was a success but it was a lot of hard work.

On Wednesday I acquired a truck from Enterprise and got all the harvest equipment staged – rakes, nets, sorting stations, and bins. That was the half day; not big deal.

On Thursday three hired helpers and I picked olives while Kathryn and our friend Caroline sorted out leaves and bad olives. We worked steadily for eight hours and picked about 750 pounds before sorting (660 pounds after sorting), filling 3/4 of what’s called a macrobin. It wasn’t as much as I had hoped but it was all we could do.

Picking is reasonably hard work, even with nets and rakes. You position the nets on the hillside, nestled up against the tree trunks. Then you attack the olives with rakes, making it rain olives onto the nets. When either the trees are stripped or you’ve got almost too much to carry, you roll the nets up and hoist the olives to the sorting stations. Then you do it all again. And again.

For a young person I think it’s light work, and my hired guys seemed to think so. But for a 63 year old, scrambling around the hillside and carrying heavy loads takes its toll. I was and am very, very sore.

The sorting is also hard work, but more from the repetitive and monotonous nature of it. It’s assembly line work. It’s basically quality assurance – you can mill the olives with damaged/bitten olives and with lots of leaves, but the end product will suffer. It won’t taste as good.

At the end of the harvest day we celebrated with some good wine (probably a bit too much) and some Mexican food. The next morning we took our olives to the be milled at Cougar Vineyards in Temecula. The owners at Cougar are great people and grow olives in addition to Italian grapes, and I’ve struck up a deal to process our olives using his milling equipment. (BTW, their wines are superb. If you live in Socal you should visit them.)

We had some technical problems that took up the first couple of hours. An electrical problem kept the mill from starting at all, then a mechanical problem kept us from operating continuously. Rick the winewaker, one of his helpers, a technical rep from the manufacturer (by phone) and I all worked through those problems. Finally, we got the cantankerous equipment working.

After about five hours of milling, our 660 pounds of olives yielded 10 gallons of oil, which turns out to be 11.5% oil content. That’s a little low – we should get 15-18% oil from our olives. But we kind of expected that – the longer the fruit stays on the tree, the higher the oil content, and an October harvest is fairly early.

Another side effect of an early harvest is that the oil will have a sharp, somewhat bitter flavor. That flavor does mellow out on its own in a few weeks, but the freshly-milled oil is a little harsh. One treatment for that is filtering, which we may try this year. Rick at Cougar thinks that’s a helpful process, so we’ll see.

All in all, a hard couple of days but a success. I don’t know how many more such days I’ve got in me, but we’ll need at least 2-3 more to harvest the bumper crop we’ve got this year. Next harvest days will probably be right after Thanksgiving.

 

We’re heading back to the Valle de Guadalupe soon with this crew (featured photo above). We’re very fortunate to have a world-class wine and food region within driving distance. I can’t wait!

On a Monday afternoon we returned to one of our favorite campsites, Lake Hemet. We last visited on the July 4^th weekend, and we liked the place a lot in spite the innumerable holiday weekend campers we had to content with. Once we were on the lake you could get away from the hordes and it was a beautiful spot.

Visiting in October, on weekdays, was completely different. The first thing I noticed as we drove up the mountain was the distinct brownness of everything on SR79 and 371. It hasn’t rained in Socal for about 7 months and it shows. Right now it’s as dry as it gets here. We saw remnants of some small fires along the 371.

The second thing that struck me as we climbed upward was the yellowish-greenish-brownish color of the scrub (manzanita, creosote bush, etc.) along the road, in fact as far as the eye could see. It’s an unusual color; there’s no name for it. I guess it’s what fall looks like in a high desert setting.

Upon entering the campground and finding our spot we noticed a lot more permanent-looking “campers” tucked into their sites. RVs and trailers with porches, sheds, woodpiles, makeshift enclosed add-on rooms – these are not rigs you pack up and go in an afternoon. My only explanation for this is that it’s a cheap

retirement option. Pay $20-40K for a used RV, get it here, then pay $400-500 per month for a long-term space rental and you’re good to go. That’s a LOT cheaper living situation than anything else I can think of in Socal, and the setting is beautiful. My first reaction upon seeing all this was…who in the world would live like this? My more considered reaction is…I get it. Simple, cheap, peaceful, safe, and surrounded by beauty.

When we left the Temecula area it was 91 degrees. The temperature at the lake was a much more comfortable 81 at the peak afternoon heat. We walked around the almost silent property and took in the views, some shown here. The lake itself was down about 8 feet from its spring 2019 high – I suspect that this level is more the norm. We’ll see how that affects the fishing tomorrow.

We enjoyed a simple meal of hamburgers grilled over charcoal, heated up baked beans, cole slaw and some apples from a tree just yards away. Camp grub at its finest.

Later that night we learned firsthand that the high desert nighttime is cold. We don’t have a thermometer, but I estimate it got down to 35ish. Cold enough to get your attention in the Socal uniform of T-shirts and shorts.

All told after our first afternoon and night back at Lake Hemet I am very satisfied. It’s a peaceful place. The lack of cell phone service and Wifi is disconcerting at first – we’re so seldom disconnected these days – but even that feels good this morning. Now for the fishing…

Postscript from day 2. Double disappointment. While the half-day fishing on the lake was beautiful, we caught no fish and didn’t see our eagle buddy. That’s fishing. Before we return I’m going to do some research on this lake and lake trout fishing techniques to be better prepared.

The primary mode of travel for most Americans isn’t an airplane, a bike or a train – it’s a car. I’m the same – I’ve driven 200,000+ miles over the last decade, mostly associated with my too-long work commute to San Diego and LA. Even retired I’m driving something like 12,000 miles per year, so having a good vehicle is important.

I’m a year away from needing to replace my primary traveling tool, my car. The BMW 5-series plug-in hybrid has been and continues to be a great car. Drives like a BMW, is beautiful and most importantly qualifies for the carpool lanes. Carpool lanes are essential in Socal unless you want to spend hours in heavy, heavy freeway traffic.

In retirement my needs have changed somewhat, so I’m thinking a truck. But also needing the carpool lanes leads one to wish for an electric truck – something that doesn’t exist yet but looks like it will in late 2020, pretty much perfect timing for me. So I’ve put myself on the waiting list for two prospective EV trucks – the Rivian and the Atlis. I’m hoping for the Atlis (better looking design) but the Rivian is much more likely to produce a vehicle in the near term. Rivian has huge orders from Ford and Amazon and is extremely well capitalized. Atlis not so much.

The specs on both are amazing (see below), so either way it would be a great vehicle. BMW performance, truck utility and EV efficiency and conservation. Win-win-win. The only downside is price – they’re going to be expensive. It should be noted that neither company has produced a single ready-to sell vehicle yet, so that makes things a bit risky. But that’s where Tesla was a few years ago.

Anyway, stay tuned. We’ll see what the EV truck landscape looks like a year from now.

From motor1.com: “Rivian intends to offer the pickup with three available powertrain options. The base model has 402 horsepower (300 kilowatts), 413 pound-feet 560 Newton-meters), and a 105 kWh battery capacity offering a driving range over 230 miles (370 kilometers). The middle step has 754 hp (562 kW), 826 lb-ft (1,120 Nm), and a 135 kWh battery with a range over 300 miles (483 kilometers). The range-topping version has slightly less power at 700 hp (522 kW) and 826 lb-ft (1,120 Nm), but it packs a 180 kWh battery with a range over 400 miles (644 kilometers). “

I’m gratified to see that this blog has increasing numbers of visitors and readers over its short existence. Thanks! But besides just reading, please take the time to leave a comment. I find that comments are some of the more interesting parts of weblogs, giving readers (and the author) insights into who else in the world is interested in the same subject. And a chance to interact.

Blog comment streams can also be cesspools of negativity, but I’m using comment moderation to filter those out. Internet trolls and spambots not welcome here.

So leave a comment, say hello and preserve your Internet footprints here. We’d all appreciate that.

(Feature picture above is of owner/chef Faro Trupiano of 127 West Social House, a super Fallbrook bistro. Drop in and tell Faro hello – the food is great.)