May 29, 2005

Wine & Graduation

Some pictures from our trip to the SF Bay Area last weekend. Our main mission was to see our friend Marc graduate with his Psy.D. from the California Institute for Integral Studies, but we also went wine-tasting in Sonoma the day before.

A few notes on items in my "trip report":

  • The San Francisco Chronicle has a good wine section, and most of the wineries we visited have been profiled by the Chron over the past few years: Ridge, Siduri/Novy, and Nalle. (I knew there was a reason why I liked Ridge just that little bit more — it was founded by four engineers!) As properly befits its grandiosity, Ferrari-Carano didn't just get one article, it was the centerpiece of a thirty-nine-part series of articles: "GRAPE — The Making of California Wine". The "GRAPE" archive, or the first article.

  • When oh when will Muni repair its Hamburg streetcar and put it back into service in the historic streetcar fleet? If they need parts, maybe the Schönberger Strand railroad museum could help ...

  • My favorite book at the Builders Booksource that I didn't buy: Learning Construction Spanglish.

Posted by Kevin at May 29, 2005 09:49 AM
Comments

Funny that they call them 'historical' streetcars. Trams like that are still everyday transportation in many Eastern European countries.

I was in SF the inaugural day of the 'historical streetcars, sometime in the 90s. I don't remember exactly when, though as I used to visit SF a lot. Great place.

Posted by: J at May 30, 2005 12:10 PM

Well, considering that most of the F-Line streetcars are anywhere from 70-100 years old, I think that they deserve to be called 'historical'. Considering that SF has other streecar lines with modern equipment, I don't think they're condeming the entire tramway concept as historical ...

But I agree that Europeans tend to keep things that work for a lot longer than Americans, even ignoring the obvious financial constraints of Eastern Europe; until just a few years ago, both Hamburg and Berlin were running S-Bahn trains built in the late 30s!

(Ironically, not only are the F-Line streetcars better loved by the public than SF's 'modern' light rail trams, they're also more reliable!)

Posted by: Kevin at May 30, 2005 07:10 PM
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