Napa Valley Aug. 25, 2008

Day 1: Napa Mis-hapa
The day started innocently enough. Drinking coffee, eating cereal, and packing our bags. We like to take midday flights -- which is not an easy task when using frequent flyer miles -- so we don't have to rush around. Around 8:30 am, Frank comes downstairs and announces that part of a bottom tooth has fallen off in his cornflakes. Here we go. Luckily, our dentist squeezed him into her schedule, slapped some bondo on the broken tooth, and Frank was back just in time to throw the dogs in the car and head out. Dropped the boys at the 620 Pet Resort and we are on our way to the airport. (Hi, Frank here. Our original concept was for Sue to write the blog and me to edit, but she did such a nice job that I'll just throw in parenthetical comments here and there.)

We arrived at the airport way too early, so we had time for lunch. BBQ Brisket at the Salt Lick, which was good, but not as good as Rudy's, in my opinion. Although we do put the Salt Lick rub on everything we barbecue. So with our bellies full of meat, we slept through a lot of the flight, which was a non-stop to San Jose -- another great benefit to living in the southern Silicon Valley. Must be a pipeline of geeks to and fro. We had to fly in and out of San Jose to get the fancy car that Frank wanted. He always dreamed of cruising around California in a convertible, so I reserved a Mustang convertible at Hertz.

The San Jose airport is just as run down as ever. They are building a new terminal, so it's even more beat up than we remember. After a long trek to the rental car facility, we find out that there are no Mustang convertibles! That old Seinfeld clip just replays in our minds.


Frank, ever so gracious and persistent, with his 26 years of professional customer service experience, manages to snag a convertible Volvo with unlimited mileage. Not too bad. (The car also has a turbocharger, which means it has some get up and go, and a folding hard top that retracts at the touch of a button.) The car comes with a GPS, so I program in our hotel and we hit the road. The drive to Napa from San Jose takes about 1.5 hours and we just happened to hit rush hour, so our drive took a little longer. (Good thing we had the GPS, we never would have found all the turns during rush hour without it.)

We arrived at the the River Terrace Inn around 7 pm. Our room was a little disappointing as it smelled a bit moldy, the view of the river was obscured by the awnings over the cafe below, and the room was right next to the elevator. I guess you can't expect too much when you get a free night through their Internet special. The place looked exactly like the pictures on their web site, only a little shabby. We unpacked and then headed to Target to get some scented candles, and then out to dinner. We couldn't find the restaurant, no thanks to the GPS, and ended up at Tuscany, which was mediocre at best. We shared a Caesar salad and a goat cheese pizza. The place was busy considering how bad the food was.

Since Napa has no night life, I had decided to do a daily blog. Back at the hotel, I turned on the laptop and a blue screen appears. Unbootable. Fantastic. I tried everything and surmised the hard drive must be trashed. That's the perfect end to our first day of napa mis-hapa.