I found a cool site that integrates Yahoo maps and the inherent photo gallery capabilities of color iPods. The site is iWay and it’s easy to use. Just type in ‘from’ and ‘to’ addresses and you get a batch of images to upload to your iPod. When on the road, go to your iPod’s photo gallery and you have working directions. =)
After a day of server config and other techie stuff, I got elbow deep in fermenting pinot noir at Argyle Winery.
This is harvest season and it’s a special time at Argyle. After harvesting vast amounts of vineyard property, grapes are brought to the winery for destemming, crushing and fermentation. Argyle is one of the few wineries left that still manually crush grapes and perform the ‘punchdown’ ritual – huge 500 gallon containers of fermenting grapes are mixed by hand (truly grueling work) to perfect the mixture of juice, sugars and yeast. After punchdown, the juice ferments and is then barrelled for fining and aging.
Willy (holding the grapes) is in charge of the lab at Argyle where all the wines are made.
Cathy (Argyle’s marketing director) and I had fun doing punchdown.
You can see the grapes and juices bubbling up to the top. The juice naturally heats up to 80° or more due to the fermentation process.
Next year this gorgeous mixture will be sitting in a bottle on my dinner table! Yuuu-uuum!
I was sitting quietly at my desk, still groggy from my all-night work session, when I heard a loud roar of jet engines. I ran outside to spot the jets.
I went back inside, only to hear another set of jets…
About 40 seconds later, this jet flew over…
I stayed outside waiting for the next fly-by and after about 2 minutes, I got this…
I missed a shot of a transport plane (damn lense froze up), but I figured there must be another one coming soon. Well, it’s not exactly a fighter jet, but it was another in a series of odd fly-bys over the apartment.
