Social networking, booze and politics (10/18/2016)

Social networking is fun and as a family we participate heavily in it.  We share our daily life and we all like to show off and tell people how great we have it.  Even to day on Doctor Radio (SiriusXM) they were talking about it, and telling me that boys show the sports they participate in, their vomit; while girls show selfies or themselves with a group of girls smiling and they are more inward looking.  But regardless, we have it absolutely much better that all you out there.  

Not many of us share our grief or anxieties.  So now and then a friend post "I can really use your prayers today" or something like that, and then you know they are in trouble, but they really do not share much else.  You just have to guess.  Some do share more, but often do that in blogs such as this.  

I regularly follow a blog written by a woman who bares her soul.  It is sometimes gut wrenching and there is really nothing you can do but to read it, like it (as moral support), and maybe make a comment.  Most of these blogs are a form of self therapy (naturally they are an attempt of education and sharing as well); they can be and are mostly anonymous, in particular when published under a pseudonym; a few of your friends may know it is you, but many of your other readers do not know you from Adam or Eve.  I rely on social networking during my travels throughout the state and I like it in a lot of cases.  I even wrote about it almost a year ago in this blog posts <click here>.

But why am I talking about this today?

Going through my Instagram pictures, twelve of the 220 pictures I posted feature the booze (mostly beer) that I was consuming at the time.  People that like these pictures often feature pages with only beer postings.  

My Facebook postings aren't much better.  Although I do not post many drinking or booze picture, my latest picture is one of our visit to a microbrewery in Hampton this past Sunday (see the picture below).  Even on this blog, I wrote a number of wine reviews (I need to do a Virginia brewery review one of these days).  Yes, I consider myself a responsible drinker, but darn, I do advertise my drinking quite a bit.  

I took this picture this past Sunday when vising the Oozlefinch brewery at Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA

For young people they say it is bad for you to post all these things on-line, because human resources will find it when you are looking for a job and it may jeopardize getting hired when it shows you are a party animal or boozer.  They are probably correct, but that is not what is bothering me.

I am so amazed about the booze oriented society we live in and that we participate in.  Our family learned the other day that a dear and close friend of ours who we suspected of being an alcoholic was arrested for at least one DUI, had her license suspended and was caught driving without a license.  We are not sure if she was drunk at the time, but we know she is probably looking at jail time.  Last time we talked was month after her arrest and she was out on bail and she did not tell us anything.  So it looks like she does not want us to know or is afraid to admit to it; the only thing she told us was that she had lost her job but sounded very positive.  We did not know it then but we do know it now and are not sure what to say and what to do.  She does not believe in Facebook or any other social network and there is the rub.  She did not answer her phone calls and her only email address we had was through the job that she lost so we looked on line to see if she had another email address, but instead we found her mugshot and arrest record.  We are stunned and have been worried sick, but again we do not know how to approach her. 

I like my beer, my glass of wine, my single malt (not all at the same time or on the same day), but I do think publicly we are way too booze oriented.  Is social networking part of this increase focus on booze, is it a little like I have it even better than you; I drink booze that is more expensive than the stuff you are drinking; or I have more fun than you?  What ever!  But is it feeding our dependence on alcohol?  I wonder.  Also remember, one DUI and you could be without a license and that could mean without a job.  

OK people let's stop trying to poke each other's eyes out, but let's be genuinely social, interested and concerned with each other; instead of just indiscriminately liking what your friends post on Instagram or Facebook (sorry I do not do Twitter although I am being tempted in this political season).  It has already been a rough season of liking things or fighting with what were friends but now all the sudden you don't like them anymore because they are trying to push their brand of politics.  That is almost enough to push me to drinking.  So let's stop and be interested, supportive and nice to each other and have a real social network.

I promise that I am going to be less booze oriented on my social social networking sites and more supportive of my true friends.  An by the way, if you have suggestions on how to be supportive of our other friend in need let me know (but again we are not supposed to know)!

Northern Neck II (12/27/2015)

I want to end 2015 with a post that is somewhat of a throwback to the original intent of this blog.  My initial idea behind this blog was to share some of the pictures, sites, and experiences that I have during my travels as instructor in the state of Virginia.  I get to a few far flung places and if I can help it, I do try to get off the darn interstate highways where everyone tries to drive in the left lane whether they belong there or not.

I realize that I have gotten off on tangents so now and then, on soap boxes and talked about global warming, training, course development, environmental issues, ecology, stormwater, and even sailing.  I should pare down my labels (or subject list), but I guess that's must be my way of showing off.  I have made an effort of hiding all the key words (labels) that I've only used once.

Oh well, back the the subject of today's blog: The Northern Neck!  (Yes, I wrote about it before in this blog post).  The Northern Neck is the northern most peninsula that jots out of the mainland of Virginia.  Going from south to north we have: "the Peninsula, where we live; the Middle Peninsula; and the Northern Neck.  The Northern Neck has the Potomac River to the north, the Rappahannock River to the south and the Chesapeake Bay to the east.

View of the Rappahannock River from Belle Isle State Park.

The Northern Neck is a nice place to visit.  It is an hour drive from us on the Peninsula, it is an hour from Richmond, even closer to Fredericksburg and probably an hour to an hour and a half from the greater DC area.  It has one of the oldest wineries in Virginia (Ingleside Vineyards) and what I consider one of the best (The Hague Winery, at least three years ago I thought it was one of the best).  I reviewed some of the Northern Neck Wineries in this blog post and in a later post (here).  It is somewhat out of date.  New wineries pop up and I have to visit some of them and revisit some of the old ones; but there are so many in Virginia.  

During our visit this past Sunday we saw a sign for the "Good Luck Vineyards", we have not visited it yet, so no review, but we need to go.  The name takes me back to the time we spent in Nepal (I worked there in 1981, 82 and 83), and we often stayed in the Good Luck Hotel, so if only for some weird sentimental reason, we should visit this vineyard.  If the wineries read this post, they desperately need to invite me to come back to review their wines (hint, hint)!  But there is so much more to see.  I have not yet visited Reedville, the place made famous by the menhaden, fish oil and the ferry to Tangier Island.

This time it was State Park time.  The Northern Neck is host to two State Parks: Westmoreland State Park and Belle Isle State Park.  Westmoreland is located on the Potomac and we have stayed in cabins at that park a few years ago.  It's a great place.  So this time we decided to go hiking at Belle Isle State Park.

Hiking along the shoreline of the park looking over the Rappahannock

Belle Isle is on the Rappahannock River.  It is relatively new and it is very nice.  All the photos in this post were taken at the park.  It is worth a day visit.  The park also has two cabins that can be rented for overnight stays and a camp ground.  I am wondering about sailing there and anchoring out while the rest of the family goes out there and camps or stays in one of the cabins.  That would be a riot.  However, as you can see from the photos above there is no nice secluded inlet to anchor (my boat draws 4 ft) and you are very exposed there in the middle of the Rappahannock.  Yes there is a boat launch, but from what I can see on the charts, the water is only 2 to 3 feet deep and that's not enough for me and my boat.  Oh well, so be it, we'll just have to bring the kayaks.  There are a lot of kayak opportunities at the park and even canoes for rent.

This Sunday we spent an afternoon hiking some of the trails with the dogs, and just exploring.  Belle Isle is relatively new in the state park system and yet has to mature.  Never the less it is a nice place to hang out.  A great place to walk (it is flat), to kayak/canoe, it has a boat launch, it has a pick-nick area and even a sandy beach.  Note that the water is salty.  Hopefully the captions on the photos explain things a bit more.  Go visit and enjoy.

A creek that you cross going from the mainland on to the island

Another creek crossing going on to the island

A view of the Rappahannock from the Island

There is a pick-nick area in the park with access to a sandy beach.  Our dogs just loved playing in the surf.  It was a rough warm-ish day (77 but the wind over the cold water made it feel colder right on the shore).  Note that the water is salty.  In our area, the Rappahannock is famous for its oysters.

Virginia Wines (3) (11/10/2014)

This past weekend we spent a day tasting some Virginia wines.  We traveled to a Blue/Green resort in the Gordonsville area (near Charlottesville) and on the way we visited some wineries and bought some wines to drink that evening.  We drank wines from wines from the Rockbridge winery, Ox-eye winery (and no we did not visit either of these two wineries), Grayhaven winery and Cooper Vineyards.  It is a pity that we visited the Weston Farm Vineyards website too late, otherwise we would have noticed their announcement that Google maps cannot find them (we searched for 15 minutes and gave up).

This does not even make a dent in all the wineries in Virginia.  My understanding is that Virginia is the third or so wine producing state in the U.S, and the latest winery map touts that there are 250+ wineries in the state.  As I mentioned before, 10 years ago I was skeptical about Virginia's ability to make red wine, but they have come a long way.  I actually like a lot of the reds they produce at this time (granted I am a red kind of guy).

As with anything, I believe that education is essential in life, and that is also important when drinking wine.  I read the wine spectator and a nice assortment of books on  wines and wine making although in no way am I a wine expert of a wine snob.  The only wine I can pick out of a line up of blind taste testing is the Merlot by Boogle, but that is also because my father-in-law brings it over very frequently when he comes over for dinner.  But yes education is important even in this period of anti-intellectualism.  Why drink the same bud-dry or a cheap box wine, when with a little education and adventure you can drink something better or more interesting for about the same price?

Today's post is not a winery review, I will do one again in the near future.  In the past I reviewed the wineries and wines I have visited and tasted from the Tidewater (click here) and the wines from northern Virginia (click here).  But below are some of the Virginia wines that we still have in our collection.  It is a pity that Virginia wines are so expensive, compared with their counterparts for California or even from France, Spain or Italy; otherwise I would definitively want to drink more Virginia wines and visit more wineries.  Now I have to limit it to two or three wineries every year, and limited consumption; Virginia wines are not for the people that live on a budget, that is for sure.

The Virginia wines we still have in our collection (some date from 2006 and one from 2004)

Highland County (11/3/2014)

Monday was the last morning of a long weekend in Highland County.  It was fun to see our daughter, who drove over from Morgantown and to visit with friends who had decided to move away from the Tidewater of Virginia and settle in the mountains.

The morning started out nice.  We had rented a cabin in the B&B and the sun was just coming above the horizon when I walked over to the main house for a cup of coffee.  Low sun angles make amazing pictures. so I quickly walked over to a cabin that is known as the "Bird house" and shot the picture below.  The orange glow of the sun on the foreground and the distant mountains created a great picture.

Before leaving we decided to go for a walk.  The road we took was past the B&B towards what I assume is Sounding Knob, since we were walking on Sounding Knob Road.  The knob is in the Highland County Wildlife Management area and according to the map, the knob is close to 4300 ft high.  We only walked for an hour, but it was nice to be out and about.  I could not help taking the picture of the lone tree in the pasture along the road.

We ended the morning with a drive to Bridgewater Virginia and a visit to the Bluestone vineyard.  This is another winery that I have to add to an up coming Virginia wine review that I write so now and then on this blog.  But suffice it to say the wines were decent; the place is pet friendly, and it was a great place for a pick-nick lunch with a glass of cold rose wine.  Regretfully, after arriving home at 6 pm, I was back into the car to drive to Fredericksburg for two days of teaching.  I need to retire!

Virginia Wines (2) (6/10/2014)

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about some of the wineries I visited in the Tidewater of Virginia.  Wineries like Dog and Oyster claim they have a similar climate as the Bordeaux region in France and that they should therefore be able to rival them.  We'll see it that happens in my life time.

Today I want to deal with the wineries I visited in northern Virginia, and rank them as well. Rappahannock Cellars was the first of the wineries I visited in Virginia (2003).  While I already was a wine enthusiast and had tasted in Missouri, this was a fun first experience, and my very first impression with Virginia red wine, which I found very below par at that time.  Things have changed in the past few years, and I can tell you the reds made by Chester Gap Cellars just a few miles up the road are among some of the best Virginia reds I’ve tasted lately (2013 and 2014).

Here is my review of the wineries I visited in the northern area (the date in parentheses is the year I visited the wineries):

Old House Vineyards  (2013) - 4 stars - Interesting place with some interesting grape varieties (barberra).  Inexpensive to taste.  Great place for weddings.

Rappahannock Cellers - (2003) - 3 stars (this rating is probably out-dated) - My first tasting in Virginia.  It was fun, but I remember a very touristy tasting room.  I still own their tasting glass and drink wine from it every day.

Chester Gap Cellars - (2013 and 2014) - 5 stars - A great secluded winery with the produces some outstanding reds.  Try their Merlot.

Fox Meadow Winery- (2013) - 5 star - Location, location, location.  Love the place, good wine, I was impressed by their Riesling.

Aspen Dale Winery at the Barn (2013) 3 stars  A very charming place, wine was so, so.  Live music was too loud to really understand the host.  This winery was the first that served wine paired with food.

Glen Manor Vineyards (2013) 2 stars  Great location and very scenic looking towards the National Park.  Wine was mediocre

Breaux Vineyards (2014) 1 star  Rude staff, crowded and expensive.  See my review of last month.

The picture below was taking at Chester Gap late April of tis year.

Northern Neck (6/1/2014)

On Sunday morning we decided it was time to get the h… out of Dodge and to go explore something.  Sailing was not an option since it was blowing pretty stiff and it was actually cool.  So we decided to go explore the “Northern Neck” of Virginia.  On the way up we stopped in Mathews County at “Fort Nonsense”, or what we might call now “Fort WTF.”  It seems to have been a fort built by a local brigade to stop the advancement of the Union soldiers on their way to Richmond.  The problem was they never came; the Union soldiers went up the peninsula (Williamsburg etc).  So they never saw any action there.  Oh well.  I think I could have predicted that, the shortest way from Fort Monroe to Richmond does not lead through Mathews; hence the name “Fort Nonsense.”

We continued our trip to White Stone and we had lunch at Willaby’s café.  Really not bad, maybe with the exception that my poached eggs were poached a little too long and were more like hard boiled eggs.  After lunch we drove to Windmill point to walk the beach and take a look at the marina (a possible destination in our sailing adventures).

We ended our day in the Northern Neck with revisiting the Dog and Oyster Winery in Irvington for some tasting and relaxing.  In a previous blog posting I had given this winery 2 stars, and thanks to this visit I am going to revise it to at least 4 stars.  I wish I could make it 5 stars, but the wine was very expensive.  It was definitively good, in particular their Merlot, but I could not get myself to pay $45 for a bottle; which is the reason for the 4 stars instead of 5.

The photos posted here are from our visits, a shot from the restaurant, of Windmill Point and the entrance to the winery.  A fun day in just a small section of the Northern Neck.

 

 

Virginia Wines (5/23/2014)

As some of the readers of this blog know by now, I am a lover of wine, and have written about it in this blog at times.  Being a lover of wine and having visited numerous wineries in Virginia, I can only say that they have come a long way.

I think the first Virginia wine I tasted was some Governor’s White from the Williamsburg Winery in 2000, and found it mediocre.  I toured the winery in 2012 and noted a great improvement in quality of some of their wines.  I remember taking my daughter on a college tour in 2006 (or was it 2007?), and since I had a designated driver, we stopped at as many as we could cramp in.  My impression at that time was that Virginia was getting better with their white wines, but that reds were poor.  There was one noted exception, which were the reds from Fincastle that I really liked.

Fast forward to the more recent years, and Virginia now makes some dynamite reds.  It is really fun to be able to see this progression.  In the following few blogs I will try to give you a list of the wineries that I have visited over the past years.  I will be dividing it into a three arbitrary regions (lowlands, Piedmont and mountains) and publish it in three postings.  This is different than the Virginia Wine website, but so be it.  I’ll rate them from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest/best ... and sorry, but I could not get these numbers to line up); however, note the year of my visit, that should give you a good idea if my rating is still current or not.  For example, I will rate Fincastle very high for my 2006 visit.  I tried to revisit them in 2012, and waited for 10 minutes in their tasting room and there was no one to serve me, even after I called out.  I left the place without tasting and/or buying more wine; it was very disappointing, to say the least.

Well here is my list of the low country wineries that I visited:
 

Winery

Bloxom Winery                    Eastern shore       2010     3 stars       Great location, great lunch (artesian pizzas), wines are fun, enjoyed the Red Kiss (none-dated blend).

Chatham Vineyards              Eastern shore       2010     4 stars       Great romantic location, nice wines, bring lunch or a snack and sit outside with a bottle of wine.

Williamsburg Winery           Tidewater            2012     2 stars       Expensive, commercial, nice whites, average reds.

New Kent Winery                 Richmond            2013    2 stars       Young winery which shows in its wines.

Dog and Oyster Vineyards   Northern Neck     2007    2 stars        May have had a different name (White Fences) when I visited. Enjoyed their Rose. Was in its infancy.

The Hague Winery               Northern Neck     2006    5 stars

                                                                           2010    5 stars       This is a winery I really enjoy visiting because of its quality wine and unpretentious.

Ingleside Vineyards         Northern Neck          2010    5 stars       Very mature winery with great wines. It is a little commercial.

The photo below is one from the archives.  I took it when we visited the The Hague Winery in 2010.  The line up of female behinds was just too much to ignore.

Front Royal (4/27/2014)

I am running a little behind in my postings, which is partially due to work related issues and computer problems.  We bought a new laptop with Windows 8.1.  Having used a smart phone for quite some time now, it is not as alien as some predicted; moreover, it does has a regular window’s screen if you want to use that instead.  My problem was that my Norton 360 started having a conflict with some of the programs and there went my email, my store and my internet explorer access.  Somehow it did not affect my Chrome and my other programs, but it was difficult to figure out what the culprit was.  Now hopefully there will be a solution soon, so I can reinstall my Norton, which I've used for more than 10 years.

Back to our trip to Shenandoah State Park; we stayed there from Friday evening through Monday morning.  On Sunday we did another two great hikes and we visited our very quickly becoming favorite winery.  I am posting three photographs of my favorite spring blooms here.  The bluebell trail made good on its name.  Virginia bluebells were in bloom everywhere.  We also saw a lot of pawpaws in bloom on that trail (no photo from those blooms).  Along another trail the redbuds and dogwoods were in full glory as well.

Now about the winery; we visited Chester Gap Cellars, just outside Front Royal.  This is a nice winery tucked out of the way on a steep slope.  I am sure the slope helps with the quality of the wine.  Some of the other wineries are on flat country, and honestly they probably get too much moisture here in Virginia.  Grapes from flat areas most likely produce a lot of sugars; and wines from those grapes loose character by just producing loads of alcohol and very little tannin and other flavorful compounds.  We liked almost every wine at Chester Gap, and may be because of the ambiance of the place, but I am sure, also the way the grapes are grown.  Last year we bought a 2006 merlot, which was absolutely wonderful.  The 2007 merlot we bought this year is a bit thinner, but still very good.

Shenandoah State Park (4/26/2014)

Here is another picture from the park.  Kind of that post card picture.  It was taken at the lookout point, overlooking the river.  Spring was late this year, thanks to that cold winter we have been experiencing.  But unlike last year when we were there the same weekend, the dogwoods and redbuds were blooming everywhere.  The bluebell trail was amazing, but that will be the subject of the pictures I'll put up for the 27th.  In addition to hiking in the morning, we drove up north to Harpers Ferry.  Of course on the way north we had to stop by a winery, and so we stopped at Breaux Vineyards.
Breaux was somewhat of a let-down.  This is an industrialized winery and it was absolutely insane.  The tasting staff was impersonal and they went either just through the motions or openly complained to you about what was going on around them.  For example, the first thing we were told by the tasting staff was how the owner had made his millions in real estate on the Outer Banks, like we really cared.  We were there for the wine.  Moreover there was no interest in us, like where we were from etc.  It was loud and noisy.  Moreover, the wine was not great, not bad, but very overpriced.  We left there with a bad taste in our mouths (literally and figuratively).
On the other hand, Harpers Ferry was great as ever.  It is nice to walk in such an historic place, where so many things happened.  I decided to add a picture of the family buying ice-cream at the and of our visit to this place.
Driving back to the park we ended the day with dinner at a great little restaurant in Front Royal.  Element is a cute small restaurant with good food and wonderful wine.  I will definitely add my review of this restaurant on yelp one of these days.

Shenandoah State Park (4/25/2014)

We had a wonderful weekend at Shenandoah State Park the last weekend of April.  In my books this comes close to being the best park in the Virginia State Park System.  It is a great place for some hiking, biking, kayaking and even some wine tasting at the nearby wineries (which are really good and in a future post, I may write a review of the ones we have visited in this area).  Friday started out a rainy, but after the rains were over we had a great walk on a nearby trail. 

Rosemont Winery, LaCrosse, VA (2/22/2014)

On vacation this weekend and visited Occoneechee State Park (more photos to follow in the next few days).  One of our traditions while at a state part is to find a local winery and go wine tasting.  The only winery nearby that was open to tasters was Rosemont Winery in LaCrosse.  It was a fun visit during a beautiful day (temps were in the high 60s).  Wines tasted at the winery were generally pretty decent (I liked the Traminette, the Lake Country Red, and the Cabinet Franc).  We got away with two bottles of wine we enjoyed.  Virginia has come quite a way with its wines, six or more years ago I found them mediocre, but nowadays they are getting better and better.

Eagle Rock (10/26/2013)

Visited Blue Ridge Vineyard on Saturday.  Great people, good wine.  We had a great time.  We bought a couple of bottles which we'll enjoy.  Moreover, the staff directed us to a few great places to eat.  They were very helpful and fun.
This photo was taken on the way into the property.