Road Trip: Napa, Day Six - Castles and Coffee

Today was a day of castles, coffee and college shenanigans, and in many ways it marked the beginning of the road trip proper. The day started much as the day before, with me sleeping in and then walking to Peet’s after I awoke. I’ve been trying to get into a British history class at UCLA that fits my schedule better than my current third class, but today was the first day they allowed non-majors to register for the class. I can’t access the UCLA website from my phone, so I needed access to the wireless at the coffee shop. Unfortunately, it turns out the class is waitlisted, but I at least got onto that and I’m in fifth position.

Around 3:00, Nate and Tyler finally arrived to pick me up and begin our mutual journey. It was on Sunday that the two of them departed in Tyler’s Scion and they spent Monday in Morro Bay with Nate’s brother and then left the next morning to meet with me. When they arrived we left my sister’s apartment and drove into the beautiful little Napa Valley town of St. Helena were Nate’s grandparents live. Nate caught up with his grandparents, and his grandfather orated on the various fine qualities of Napa wine and two buck chuck.
When he finished, Nate, Tyler and I drove to the Castello Di Amorosa Winery. The Castello is apparently a recent addition to the valley and is modeled on European Castles. It advertises itself as having hundreds of rooms, guided tours, a chapel and, naturally, a torture chamber. To get to the winery, we drove up the 29 through the valley, passing once more under the wonderful lane of trees in St. Helena I talked about a few days ago. Turning of the 29, we climbed up a windy road lined with trees and arrived at the castle. Perhaps taking  a page from Hearst Castle, the Castello Di Amorosa has multiple different tours that can be taken, each one exploring different parts of the castle and costing different amounts of money. Being cheap college students, we took the cheapest route, a $10 entrance fee that allowed us to taste five of their wines and then explore the main level of the castle unguided. We goofed around, filmed our antics and enjoyed the wine (well, Nate and I did, Tyler only got Capri Sun because he’s a baby). One neat feature of this wine tasting compared to the Sterling Vineyard is that you get to choose which wines you taste. Nate and I tried the four reds and also two dessert wines (they poured one for Nate and one for me and we shared). The wines were good, but I can definitely say I’m still not a fan of dessert wines. I just don’t see the point of them.

Leaving the castle, we drove back down the 29 to St. Helena, and then went out to dinner with Nate’s grandfather. Unfortunately, his grandmother is on a very limited diet prescribed by her doctor and she can’t go eating out (keep her in your prayers). The four of us went on to the Silverado Brewing House, a favorite of Nate’s grandparents. Nate and Tyler got pasta and the brew house’s own root beer and I had a seasonal rye ale (which tasted like a malty wheat beer). I’m afraid I actually can’t remember what it is his grandfather had to eat. While we ate, he told us funny stories about his days back in the war.

After dinner, Nate’s grandfather went back to his house and Nate, Tyler and I drove back into Napa to get some items from Target and Safeway. I drove, and it was my first time driving Tyler’s car. The  car was fun and controlled very well, but I occasionally gunned it more than I intended, being used to far less powerful cars.

Tomorrow, we’ll be spending a little time in Napa and then taking a little detour back the way we came from to visit my aunt and cousins in Sunnyvale. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them and introducing them to my friends.

Book Review: Speaker for the Dead

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1987 Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel and 1986 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novel

More than a year after finishing Orson Scott Card’s famous Ender’s Game, I finally got around to reading (well listening to) its award-winning sequel Speaker for the Dead. The later novel concerns the discovery by humans of a second intelligent alien race, called the Pequeninos on the recently settled planet Lusitania. The Brazilian Portuguese settlers of the planet are thereafter confined to a single city and their growth permanently limited by congressional order. The Pequeninos are a small, technologically primitive species with pig like features (earning them their other nickname, Piggies). Congress decides that the best thing for the Pequeninos is that they get as little contamination from humans as possible, and the only people allowed contact with them are specially trained xenologers (anthropologists for aliens) who have to work their hardest to learn about the Pequeninos while not letting the Pequeninos learn anything about them. I can’t really say much more about the plot without spoiling some very important parts of the story.


Speaker for the Dead is a fascinating book that explores important questions of personhood, religion and psychology. General consensus says that Ender’s Game is a far superior book to Speaker for the Dead, but I’ve heard at least two people disagree with this assessment. The first is my friend John Schiefer, and the second is Card himself, who thinks Speaker is the far more important book. In general, the former group are considered rather heretical by the science fiction community at large, but I’m afraid that I have to throw in with them. Not at all to diminish the quality of Ender’s Game, but I simply felt more invested in the world and characters of Speaker. Ultimately, the world felt more creative and the themes addressed are ones that seem more important to me.

The book is not entirely without its flaws, however. I really only have one minor complaint. This is that Speaker is very clearly written to have sequels, which means that while it addresses the major question of the book, it also leaves some things open so you’ll read the sequel. While I know that this is one way to do things, I’ve never been a particular fan of it.

Anyway, Speaker for the Dead is a great book and I highly recommend it. Of course, to read Speaker for the Dead, you first have to read Ender’s Game, so go pick up a copy and read it, and then treat yourself to Speaker

Road Trip: Napa, Day Five - Little Happens

Today, I’m afraid, was rather uneventful, and there’s really very little to tell about. I’m sure the same wasn’t true for my sister, she had her first day of work. This included discovering that her Deaf aid, while being something of a lip reader, definitely depends upon sign language, doing a lot of paperwork, and discovering that she didn’t have anywhere to put all of her stuff.

I, on the other hand, woke up late, read a little, walked to Peet’s coffee where I wrote and posted up that last post on Revelation, got music ready for my iPod and bought toilet paper for Joy’s apartment. When I got back in the early evening, Joy was already home and preparing to go out for a jog. While she went out I started some laundry that I needed to do, and discovered that I didn’t have enough quarters to dry it. Because of this, I walked to a local store and then back, so I got in plenty of walking today anyway. I also got to listen to plenty more of Speaker for the Dead, which I’ve almost finished. I can’t say how I’ll feel about the book at the end, but so far I think I might actually like it more than Ender’s Game, which I know is heresy, but I guess I’ll have to content myself with being a heretic.

Anyway, that was my day, uneventful but good. Tomorrow my friend’s arrive and we set out for a night in St. Helena down in the valley and then on to the rest of our journey.

Theology: Revelation

Some time ago, a friend asked me something along the lines of if I thought The Rapture would happen before or after The Tribulation. This created an awkward moment in which I had to explain that, well, I didn't really believe in The Rapture, or The Tribulation (conceived as a specific period of seven years where all the unbelievers are punished by God, before being sent to Hell to be punished some more). I didn't accept these concepts, I said, because I didn't think they were supported by scripture, and as those ideas were only about 200 years old, I just couldn't give them much credit. My friend wanted to know more though, and I really couldn't give him much info because Revelation isn't my area of expertise. It's enough for me to accept that the book is meant to comfort us that, though evil may seem to reign in the world for a time, God will triumph in the end. Still, I decided I should do some more research on the topic. I had also at this time begun reading Fred Clark's entertaining but troubling critique of Left Behind, which further persuaded me of the importance of refuting Darby's weird interpretation of scripture.

So anyway, I dove into my research of Revelation during some of my free time, and discovered to my frustration that while there was plenty of information on the internet on the topic, a good comprehensive summary of the topic was hard to find. Because of this, I decided I'd write one myself and post it up on my blog. Well, my research isn't done, and I still may have more to write on the topic, but I discovered that Gregory Boyd had once again beaten me to the task. Boyd is a modern day aplogist, and he has the tendency to write things I was thinking of writing, and doing it better than I would have. I was on Boyd's website looking for some information concerning Biblical scholarship when I discovered he'd written a nice, short summary of various interpretations of Revelation (he, by the way, also had an exact answer to the question I had gone onto the website to investigate).

Here is what Boyd has to say:

Few biblical topics have captured the imagination of contemporary evangelicals like the book of Revelation. The recent unprecedented success of the Left Behind series is evidence of this popular fascination. Many evangelicals don’t realize that the futuristic interpretation of Revelation advocated in this popular series is only one of several interpretations evangelicals espouse. Here’s the major views scholars take of the book of Revelation.

The Preterist View
The term preterist comes from the Latin word praeteritus, which means, “gone by.” The preterist interpretation of Revelation holds that the events spoken of in this book were all specifically fulfilled in the first century. This view has precedent in the early church, but it did not become widespread until the nineteenth century. With the advent of the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation, it became the dominant interpretation among New Testament scholars, though it has been less popular among evangelical scholars.

According to preterism, Revelation is a heavily symbolic, apocalyptic and prophetic book that was written primarily to warn readers of impending persecution, to encourage them to persevere in the face of suffering, and to reassure them that God is in control and will overcome evil in the end. Preterists argue that most of the symbolic events in this book can be correlated with first-century figures and events. For example, “the beast” likely refers to Nero, whose “number” is 666 (the numerical value of “Nero Caesar” in Hebrew [NRWN QSR]). Similarly, the forty-two months of his horrifying reign (13:5) happen to be the exact duration of the Roman siege on Jerusalem beginning in A.D. 66.

In defense of their position, preterists contend that we must not abandon sound hermeneutical principles when we consider Revelation. As with every book in the Bible, we must attempt to read Revelation from the perspective of the first-century Christians to whom it was originally written. Revelation was written to “the seven churches that are in Asia” (1:4) about matters that “must soon take place” (1:1) because “the time is near” (1:3, cf. 22:6, 10). Throughout the book, there is an urgency for the readers to respond quickly (e.g., 2:16; 3:10–11; 22:6, 7, 12, 20). According to preterists, these statements require that we look for fulfillments in the lifetime of the original audience. (They argue the same for Jesus’ pronouncement of impending doom in Matthew 24 [and parallels], for Jesus explicitly states “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened,” vs. 34). The spiritual themes of Revelation are timeless, these scholars argue, but the specific events of which this book speaks were all fulfilled in the first century.

The Idealist View
Many Christians throughout history held to the idealist (sometimes called the spiritualist) interpretation of the book of Revelation, and many evangelicals today continue to support this view. What is most distinctive about the idealist interpretation is that it denies that the events and figures recorded in this book have a direct correlation either with events and figures in the past (as the preterist believes) or the future (as the futurist believes). To search for such specific fulfillments, they argue, is to fundamentally misunderstand the apocalyptic genre of this book. Revelation should be read as a heavily symbolic dramatization of the ongoing battle between God and evil.

According to the idealist view, Revelation is a spiritual paradigmatic work that summons Christians to faithful living in the face of persecution and reassures believers that, however dire their circumstances, God will win in the end and their perseverance will be rewarded. Hence, the multitude of symbols employed in this book, most of which are drawn directly from the Old Testament, are in various ways “fulfilled” whenever Christians find themselves in spiritual conflict.

Idealists defend their interpretation on a number of fronts. Most emphasize that the nature of the apocalyptic genre does not require and may actually rule out locating specific correlations with the symbols it employs. They frequently point out that attempts to find such fulfillments in the past, and even more so in the future, are guesses at best. They often argue that absurdity results from attempts to interpret Revelation literally (e.g., Rev. 6:13; 8:12; 12:4). Perhaps most importantly, they emphasize that the spiritual application of this book’s message does not hinge on and may even be compromised by trying to locate specific fulfillments for the dramatizations it presents.

One weakness of this view, in my opinion, is that it can’t easily account for the specific historical churches to which this book was addressed — “the seven churches that are in Asia” (1:4) — and the repeated emphasis that the events about which it speaks “must soon take place” (1:1) because “the time is near” (1:3, cf. 22:6, 10). Nor can it easily account for the repeated warning for readers to respond quickly (e.g., 2:16; 3:10–11; 22:6, 7, 12, 20).

The Futurist View
By far, the view that is most popular among the evangelical masses today is the futurist view (sometimes called the dispensational view). According to this view, almost all of Revelation (chapters 4–22) records events that will take place at the end of time. While many early church fathers believed segments of Revelation concerned the end of history, the understanding that the bulk of this book concerns the end of history is almost without precedent until the nineteenth century.

A key verse for the futurist interpretation is 1:19, in which the Lord tells John, “Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this.” According to most futurists, “what you have seen” refers to the vision recorded in chapter 1. “What is” refers to the seven letters written to the seven churches in Asia minor in his day, recorded in chapters 2 and 3. “What is to take place after this” refers to all the end-times events recorded throughout the rest of the book (chapters 4–22). While there is disagreement about this matter, the fact that the church is not mentioned in these chapters leads many futurists to conclude that these events will occur after the “rapture,” when, according to futurists, the church is literally taken out of the world (1 Thess. 4:16–17).

Futurists usually grant that there are apocalyptic elements in Revelation that cannot be interpreted literally, but they insist that Revelation is first and foremost a prophecy (1:3). The things that will take place are literal events that have yet to be fulfilled. Indeed, futurists argue that many of the events prophetically recorded in this book are such that they could not have taken place before modern times (e.g., the reference to an army numbering two hundred million in 9:16).

Alternative Interpretations
These three options do not exhaust the possible interpretations of Revelation. In the late Middle Ages, for example, a number of leaders entertained what is sometimes called a historicist interpretation of Revelation. According to this view, Revelation records the gradual unfolding of God’s plan for history up to the present. A majority of Protestant Reformers held to a version of this view. They viewed Revelation as a prophetic survey of church history and used this interpretation to argue that the pope of their day was the Antichrist. While one finds occasional popular commentaries yet espousing some version of this approach, it has fallen far out of favor with evangelicals.

Some scholars combine the preterist and idealist interpretations. In this view, the symbolic dramatizations of Revelation have first-century correlations, but they are written with paradigmatic significance. For example, Nero may in fact have been the specific Antichrist referred to in Revelation 13:8, but the reference to him is cosmic in significance, covering all Antichrist movements that resist God’s purposes in the world.

Other scholars have sought to combine elements of all three views. They say that the dramatic events of Revelation have been fulfilled, are continuing to be fulfilled, and will at the end of time be climatically fulfilled as the Lord concludes history and ushers in his reign as king.

For my part, I find the arguments for the preterist reading of Revelation quite compelling, though I also believe there are paradigmatic spiritual truths found throughout the book, as the idealist camp argues. The futurist interpretation not only does not impress me; it frankly concerns me, since it easily leads to sincere Christians wasting time trying to read this book like it is a cryptic horoscope of the future. This is tantamount to divination, which the Bible strictly forbids. I also worry that the bizarre apocalyptic pronouncements of some national Christian leaders, combined with the even more bizarre attempts of some to affect world politics on this basis (as some Zionist Christians have recently tried to do) justify non-believers dismissing Christianity as foolishness.

Two good books defending the preterist view are: D. Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation ( Dominion, 1987); K. Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell: The Dating of the Book of Revelation (Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).

For several good defenses of the idealist (or spiritualist) interpretation, see L. Morris, The Revelation of St. John (Eerdmans, 1969) and M. Wilcock, I Saw Heaven Opened: The Message of Revelation (InterVarsity Press, 1975).

For an overview of the four main views espoused by evangelicals, see M. Pate, ed., Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Zondervan, 1998). For an interesting commentary on Revelation that fairly presents the interpretation of various views, see S. Gregg, ed., Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Nelson, 1997).

In my research, I also discovered (thanks to Wikipedia) a nice chart discussing the four majors views of Christ's Millenial Reign, which tie in closely with the categories Boyd discussed above. That chart was made by someone named Nathan Wilson, and can be found on this website.

I have one more thing to discuss, before I conclude this post, and that's a common objection made by the Premillenial Dispensationalists to symbollic or spiritual interpetations of Revelation. Tim LaHaye puts it this way in The Truth Behind Left Behind: A Biblical View of the End Times, "Once you begin heading down that road, however, everything is up for grabs. You can invent any kind of "interpretation" you want." Yep, anything, like you could interpret the beast with ten horns and seven heads as a person. Oh, wait, that's what they do. It's really difficult for me to understand what exactly these folks mean by literal (or even literal as possible) because they seem to selectively decide what to take literal, and what not to. The beast is a man, his ten crowns ten Kingdoms, the locusts are maybe helicopters, but Babylon has to be the real Babylon and the thousand year reign has to be a literal thousand year reign. And the idea that treating something as a symbol means it can mean anything is also just plain wrong. Symbols are what they are because they denote something, they mean something. A symbol is created within a cultural context, and by understanding that context (say 1st century Palestine) we can understand the meaning of that symbol.

But all that aside, their slippery slope fear is absurd. I've even heard it said that if we take Revelation figuritively, well then, why not take everything in the Bible figuritively. Even the resurection isn't safe and sooner or later everyone will be reading the whole Bible as a metaphor. Well, the Gospels are clearly biography (though not of the modern variety) and Revelation is cleary imagery, for one.

Second, you never hear the same objection made about Pslams or Jesus's parables, for example. Imagine if someone said that David had a heart disorder where his heart was literally melting because in Pslam 22:14 he says "My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me." Nobody would take that seriously because people know Psalms are poetry, and they understand that poetry has symbols, imagery and metaphore. Similarly, Revelation is appocalyptic, and appocalyptic literature is symbolic and hyperbolic. As the chart above says, you interpret whether it's symbolic or literal by context.

Third, the fact that the thousands of years of history that the church didn't accept the Dispensationalist view of Revelation didn't lead to people thinking the gospels were symbolic should demonstrate that these fears are unfounded. Further more, the supposed literal interpretation of the Darbyists has lead to all kinds of interpretations of the symbols in Revelation. It has, for example, been claimed that the ten crowns of the beast were to be ten European kingdoms, and so clearly the European Union was going to be the Kingdom of the Antichrist (this was back when the EU had only ten nations in it). Now, they're saying the ten crowns mean ten world kingdoms under one world government, and its cleary the United Nations (which supposedly has plans to reorder the world into ten Kingdoms, though were those plans can be found outside of prophecy club newsletters I've never been able to determine).

Anyway, take all this information as you will, and know that I am not a Premillenial Dispensationalist. I am, I think, closer to a historic Premillenialist view, with a bit of an Idealist and a bit of a Preterist interpretation of the prophecies. What I don't like about the Dispensationalist view is that it tends to lead to a love of war and suffering (because these signal the approaching end and the coming Rapture), a fear of peacemakers (because the Antichrist is interpreted to be a man of peace) and an anti-Biblical refusal to try and make this world a better place (because it's God's will that things get worse and worse). Our mandate as Christians in this world is to be Christ to the world, we're supposed to mend brokenness, to heal all kinds of sickness, and to, as much as possible, manifest the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, which means making the world a place of love, peace and wholeness.

Politics: The Bible is a Liberal Conspiracy

This just in from my favorite nuts over at Conservapedia – the Bible, apparently, is a liberal conspiracy (well, not all of it, just the parts that talk about compassion, and not judging other people). For those of you who haven’t heard of them, Conservapedia is the “conservative” and “trustworthy” Wikipedia (which is, of course, a liberal conspiracy). The truth, of course, is conservative, and so we must create a website dedicated to carefully censoring all information so that the public only gets the truth, unbiased by liberal lies. This is naturally the only way to be trustworthy. Now, I consider myself pretty conservative, so this kind of absurdity really get to me. It’s kind of like having an idiot sibling who always hits on the waitresses, only more embarrassing.

Anyway, on to this business about the Bible being a liberal conspiracy. This is not, first of all, the same as the King James only folks. That particular group believes the King James Bible is the only legitimate translation, because more recent ones have used as reference documents that were not available when the KJV was translated and have decided to remove a few verses as inauthentic. I happen not to agree with that group, but they’re not really crazy. The folks at Conservopedia, however, have decided to retranslate the Bible, and use as many conservative ideas as possible. These include “homeschool” for Jesus teaching his disciples and “rich” with “idle miser” (because stories in which Jesus admonishes the rich look bad for rich conservatives I guess…).

That business about the story of the woman caught in adultery being maybe not in the original gospel, by the way, has been known for quite some time, and really should be common knowledge, it’s in the foot notes of most translations of the Bible after all. There are however, very early copies of the story and its generally acknowledged that it’s a genuine story about Jesus that got later inserted into John. Of course, regardless of whether it’s genuine or not, there’s plenty of other verses about not judging other people which aren’t in question.

Now, I attend college, so I understand liberal bias (well, pseudo-liberal, there’s really nothing liberal about the way they think) but this is not the way to handle it. Conservapedia, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!

Road Trip: Napa, Day Four - Church Search and Wine Taste

Being Sunday, today initiated Joy’s search for a new church community to be a part of. This is, undoubtedly, one of the hardest parts of moving to a new area (it goes right along with having to make a whole new group of friends), and Joy for years attended a particularly good church, so the new one has a lot to live up to.
So, today we attended her first local church, which I found using an app called Bink, on my phone. Bink allows me to search for businesses of a certain type in the area I’m in, and I used it to look for a list of churches. Now, there’s plenty of churches in the area (including at least four Baptist churches within a mile of her house) but not even every good church is suited for every person, as today probably demonstrated. On the list of churches was a Four Square Church. Being, understandably, a fan of Jack Hayford, Joy decided to begin by checking this one out. On Saturday night I called to find out the service time, which was at 10:45. I also learned that it would be casual dress, which made me happy because I didn’t actually have any nice clothes packed.

At 10:30, we pulled away from Joy’s apartment and drove over to the church. Google maps mislead us a little, putting us at a dead end, but it wasn’t far off and we found the church. It was a small unremarkable building with a cracked, weed grown parking lot and a large lawn of brown grass. There were maybe three cars when we pulled in, and ten or so congregants. This was indeed a small church, and many of the congregants were part of the same family, but they were nevertheless friendly and enthusiastic, and God was definitely in the place. I particularly liked the way they got the children involved in the service and the fact that they had a time for everyone to pray for each other. The sermon was also solid, though the pastors beard kept distracting me (he spoke on the necessity of praying for our leaders, even those we don’t agree with. Yes, my fellow Republicans, that means praying for Obama). So, I’d say it was a good church, a true place of healing and worship, but it was tiny. For some people, tiny is great, but it really didn’t seem to be what Joy was looking for, so her search will continue.

After service, Joy and I went to Trader Joes for her to buy groceries, then back to her house for lunch, and, at last, on to wine tasting (my first). Joy decided she wanted to show me the vineyard she had visited on her last trip through Napa, but at first we stopped at the wrong vineyard. It was a nice place, with rows of olive trees and overall an attractive Tuscan appearance, but it was not the one she wanted to go to and so she called the friend she’d originally gone with to learn the name of the correct vineyard (Sterling) and we got back on the road and on our way. The drive through Napa Valley is really one of the more beautiful journeys one can take, there are green rolling hills, covered with rows of grapes, and the whole way is lined with beautiful trees. Even the houses are pretty.

We finally arrived at Sterling, which is much further down the Valley than where we had originally stopped, but Joy certainly made a good choice in deciding to go there instead. What makes Sterling special, is that it is both a wine tasting experience and a tour which tells one all about the process of wine making. It’s great fun to learn about the various steps involved, and how important each little choice is in the final products taste. Even the barrels which the wine is aged in affect the flavor. The tour starts with an air carriage ride up to the top of a hill, where the wine tasting and touring take place. There’s also a lovely view from up there.
The tour was, as I said, quite a lot of fun and the staff at the winery were wonderfully friendly. All in all we tried six different wines, though Joy didn’t drink much of the red. The first we tried was a 2007 Gewurtztraminer, which was a rather sweet and spicy white wine. It was good, but being a white wine was not my favorite. After getting a view of the pressers and barrels where the wine is fermented, we got a taste of the 2008 Viognier, a white wine smelling of peach and tasting, in my opinion, fairly generic white. Finally, we came to the actual tasting room, where we had a 2006 Pinot Noir, before being seated for our final two wines. The Pinot had a lot of dimension, and I would have loved to have a steak with it. After being seated, our hosts brought us samples of the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. Cabernet is usually my favorite wine, and this one was a good strong and spicy tasting blend, but was ultimately a little to vinegary for my taste and so my vote would go to the Noir for this trip. Since Joy didn’t particularly like the reds, our server brought her a Chardonnay, which I also had a sip of. It struck me as a good Chardonnay, but it was Chardonnay, so again I didn’t enjoy it too much. Our server actually poured Joy a glass of the Cabernet, and indicated that it was so I could have more (I can’t say that I minded). Finally, we came to the finale, a 2007 Malvasia Bianca, which is a sweet, syrupy summer wine and totally not to my taste. Joy, of course, liked this one best.

After finishing our wine tasting, Joy and I headed back to Napa, but along another highway. This one was also gorgeous, and had a particularly wonderful stretch in which we drove under a tall lane of trees that looked like something out of an English countryside. We also passed through St. Helena, the town in which my best friend Nate’s grandparents live, and stopped in the downtown area when we saw Woodhouse Chocolates. A friend had recommended Woodhouse, saying they had the best chocolates he had ever tasted. The chocolate I had was indeed good, though I wouldn’t call it the best ever. We also went into an artisan bakery which was next door to the chocolate store. It had all kinds of wonderful looking, expensive baked goods, including a rich and hearty looking granola, and they were as arrived putting together packages of their day old goods. They sell these packages at a steal and so Joy bought one, and I enjoyed a muffin/croissant/cream-filled donut hybrid. After our little stop in St. Helena, we got back on the road and headed back to Joy’s apartment, where we’ve been ever since.

Tomorrow, Joy starts her first day of work, and I’ll have a few hours to kill. I plan on doing some laundry and then maybe walking over to Peet’s to take advantage of the free wireless. My phone is fantastic, but surfing the net on a computer is still much easier.

Road Trip: Napa, Day Three - "Oakland Sucks" and various other rants

The Oakland Raiders have fans. This fact puzzles me because they’re a team that cheats, pays dirty and is proud of both facts. Oh, and they’re also apparently not very good. Now, I’m not too into football,  I see maybe one or two games a season, and they’re usually college games, but I don’t like cheating so I don’t like the Raiders. Oh, and I also don’t like Oakland.  Besides housing a football team I hate, and sometimes supporting cop killers, the freeways there are the worst I've been on this side of Los Angeles. You may be wondering why, in a blog post about a trip to Napa, I am dissing Oakland... well, today mostly consisted of my sister and I driving my dad to the Oakland International Airport for a flight back to Southern California. We discovered, during a morning filled with various logistical phone calls, that a plane flight would cost just about as much as a car rental and would also require a drive into Oakland, so it was decided that my dad would fly home. These logistics, by the way, included a call to Comcast (the only local cable provider) to find out how much internet would cost my sister, this call took over a half-hour of my dad's time (perhaps this would be an appropriate time for me to rant about how much Comcast, like Oakland, sucks).

I should mention, that the logistical summersaults of this morning were mostly worked out by Joy and my dad (I tried to look some stuff up on my phone, but Napa has no 3g and the Edge Network is painfully slow). While they made all their phone calls, I took my Bible and Book of Common Prayer out to the beautiful river trail behind my sister’s house and did my hour of prayer. It ended up that I prayed from 9:00 to 10:00 instead of 8:00 to 9:00 due to my attempts to help with the logistics, but I'm sure that God will understand.
Around 1:00, we left for our trip to Oakland, and while buying lunch for my dad at Wendy's in Napa, discovered that my sister had left her purse behind. Since we didn't really have time to go back, it was decided that my dad would drive to the airport, and I would drive back. This decision would come back to haunt us. Excepting some bad traffic on the way and the general ugliness of Oakland, the drive there was mostly uneventful and we got my dad there in plenty of time. Before getting on the free way, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get my sister a magazine to read on the way and then left Oakland behind us.

On our way back to Napa, we discovered that the 80 East was the only nearby crossing to a wide river and required a toll (a common trick in Northern California it seems). This toll required cash, and since I had no cash and Joy had forgotten her purse, we got off the 80 and ended up in Crockett, a dead little riverside town with nothing but ridiculously steep hills and dark creepy bars. After circling around for some time trying to find an ATM for me to get cash from, we finally went into a place called the Dead Fish and found out we could find an ATM in the Tec Club (the aforementioned dark creepy bar). We went there, parked on a nearly vertical street, and walked into the bar. I had a great deal of difficulty with the ATM and a sleazy man made what I think was an awkward pass at my sister. Finally, I got my cash and we dashed out of there and got back on the freeway, arriving back in Napa around five-thirty, and was it ever a sight for sore eyes. I was already of the opinion that Napa is beautiful country, and Oakland and Crockett only reinforced this. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite through with our adventures because the car decided to start running low on gas on a stretch of freeway with no exits and no gas stations. We did make it to a Shell, however, and got the car enough gas for the rest of the way home, as well as a ride afterwards to Peet’s Coffee and Tea for my sister to use the wireless.

Let me just close by saying that Peet's Coffee and Tea rocks, I'm over there writing this blog and they just gave out the last of their pastries to us lingering customers. Since I'm starving, this is quite awesome. They also happen to have tea and coffee that is far and away superior to Starbucks, a better atmosphere (including lovely classical music) and free wi-fi.