The Fireworks in Vichy

On the fourth of July I wrote that we left the Public Market for the motel where we charged the phone and got my keys.  After that we took Main through the town and crossed a small creek to a development on Big Ranch.  My friend had a bag of poppy seeds that she was distributing everywhere.  Then we ended up at Montecito Winery where we happened upon the bike tour that we had read about.

The first pourer was nice and then we interacted with a retired Michigander and later a nice older lady.  The Michigander showed us the wine tour guide and how to access the local bike trails off Redwood.  There was a story of a Christian Brother and there was also a story about riding bikes with his son.  Everyone had a bike story.  The Pinot was the best.

We rode to Oak Knoll then and took Silverado Trail.  The road climbed a bit and we found Odette Winery in among the rocks.  I filled the water and my friend ordered us the Adaptation Flight.  Later we had a glass outside and talked about Dune.  We also saw hawks fighting and an itsy bitsy dragon fly landed on her glass.

We rode up Silverado Trail to Yountville Cross Road and passed over the bridge and the approach to the town was easy.  I tried to get her to see the whole town but she was really hungry.  We went to the R+D and split a burger.  The coleslaw was good.  The service was really good—one server thought we were leaving without coming in because we were walking away from the building afterwards.

We crossed the highway and headed down Solano.  We stopped twice on the side of the road.  A bus tried to pick us up twice.  After that we crossed into town on the railroad track’s bike path and entered the downtown.  I had to take a nap because I was exhausted from the daytime heat and exertion.

Much later we went to the local Mexican restaurant and then we walked out to the bridges and watched the fireworks in Vichy.  From there we walked into town and had a beer at Henry’s.  Then we returned to the motel.  We ended up asleep at 11.

In the morning of the day that I wrote this I was up around nine and when I interacted with her my friend thought we were late.  The clerk at checkout was friendly.  We discovered the streets were closed for the parade.  We went to Model Bakery and my friend was not impressed.  When we left she was still concerned about getting out.

We went to the edge of town and I discovered that the turn I wanted was an overpass that we missed but Kaiser turned out to be the better choice for the ride anyway.  We went under the bridge and onto the Airport road.  We climbed Kelley to the edge of the county and on the rail over pass I discovered that Lombard would have worked.

From there we took City Streets through American Canyon and were worried about making the ferry.  We took Broadway to the bike path and headed to the bay trail.  We passed under the bridge there and were soon at the ferry terminal.  My friend upped her Clipper and got me a ticket.  We boarded and I used the Wifi.  I had received some tweets due to her.  A lot of people liked my photo from the trip.

At the ferry building I got a cup of coffee and my friend got strawberries from the farmers market.  We caught the Alameda Ferry and rode to my friend’s sister’s house on Santa Clara.  Her friends were there.  They left me alone with the baby later to go shopping.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.