Spit it Out

One important lesson I learned from my wine class is that I can’t spit, well neatly, that is. The instructors and other students seemed to spit nice condensed globs into their dump buckets. But not me. It was stringy and messy and trailing over my books. My sister compared it to the scene in Mulan when Mulan tries to imitate being a man. Pretty accurate description. I can agree that spitting is a necessary evil in tasting event. There’s no point in being too buzzed to know what you’re tasting. But here are two guidelines I would find helpful in preventing myself from making a mess:

1 Opaque cups are better than clear glasses. Do we really want to see what’s floating around in there?

2 Individual cups for everyone. Do we really want me leaning over other people when I have to spit?

En Guard!

Yes, I sabered a bottle of champagne. But no, it was not as graceful and smooth as youtube.com or any other member of my class would have you think. All week-long the instructor of my wine immersion class kept talking about how we would be sabering champagne. Unlike apparently everyone else in my class I had never heard or seen sabering done that I could remember. It’s done by running the blade along the seam of the champagne bottle and whacking the lip so theoretically the glass breaks and the champagne shoots out the end. The instructor kept stressing the dangers if you turn it towards someone (and one girl did actually have the cork shoot out prematurely on its own) and that if the wine was too cold the whole bottle might explode. But each person who went in class stressed how much easier it was than it seemed. One guy in my class even stated “I usually do it with a butter knife.”

Then it was my turn. It took me two bottles of champagne and all 4 seams.

First bottle, first seam: I nicked part of the lip off

First bottle, second seam: I couldn’t get anything. then my instructor took it from me, hit it and the entire neck flew off. He then explained I must have made a small hole on the other side so air was leaking so when it went it was going to explode. So of course now I’m even more nervous…

Second bottle, countless hits. Everyone told me I was doing it too weakly-well I am too weak! Additionally the bottle was too big for my hand and the condensation made it threaten to slip out of my hand so I couldn’t get a good grip. Somehow on the second bottle though I did manage to crack the glass but for some reason the cork didn’t shoot off as its supposed to. But after a second whack it finally did. Unfortuantely due to the 1 million attempts I made no one got a photo at the exact moment I got it:

Would you like fries with that?

One of the things everyone talks about after being to California is going to IN-N-OUT, and we all know I love trying local foods on my trips! Kera recommended I ask for “animal style” which is part of the “secret” menu that all Californians know. Kera also said personally she’s not a fan of their fries but she had heard they taste better animal style as well. But when I ordered both a burger and fries animal style she cracked up at the caloric intake I had in store. But as they say, when in Rome…

Now, I’m not sure I’ve ever even eaten a hamburger from any fast food joint before (normally I find them gross) but this was actually delicious. And I did SHARE the fries, don’t worry:)

Next I tried Rubio’s fish tacos. When Kera mentioned fish tacos it just sounded like a gross idea to me…Why would I want fish in my tacos? But I wasn’t going to let a little being weirded out stop me:

I’m not sure if you can tell by my face, but I found them surprisingly delicious.

Worst Western: Where customer service is an inconvenience

If this is the Best the West has to offer than I’ve seen enough. I will say I’ve stayed in one hotel that was worse than this, but this one wins the “most-likely-to-go-out-of-business-in-a-week” award as well as “the-customer-is-not-only-wrong-but-they-are-in-my-way” award.

Let’s start with my shower Monday morning. The light in the bathroom was dying so it blinked like a strobe light the entire shower. It took me two days of calling the front desk for it to be changed…When I turned on the shower I was immediately sprayed in the face. As I was batting at the water hitting my eyes like a cat I realized there was water shooting out of the back of the shower head that arched around and sprayed my eyes no matter if I was facing towards the shower or facing away. Then stepping out of the shower: I did not have one towel all week that didn’t have a hole in it. And you can assume they were stained questionable colors as well. I mean seriously? Towels are always a little sketchy at hotels in my opinion, but we aren’t even throwing them out when they have holes in them anymore? Have you no pride in your image?

Breakfast was next. Now in general I take continental breakfasts to mean “stale-and-skimpy-but-you-will-eat-it-to-avoid-paying-somewhere-else”. Well this one makes all other continental breakfasts look like a great feast. When I got there at 7:30am (the hours of breakfast were 6am-10am) there were only two bagels in an already open bag, 3 varieties of cereal, no OJ and watery crappy coffee and maybe one orange and one apple. And a guy next to me said “this is the biggest spread we’ve seen since we’ve been here!”

You won’t be surprised the hotel didn’t have a restaurant, but they did advertise a buffet on Wednesday nights that went until 7:30pm. But when we arrived at 7:00pm we were told there was no food left though we could check the heating pan. We opened the pan and there it was, still in their plastic boxes: microwave lasagna, only 2 servings left. they didn’t even make the effort to take it out of the plastic to disguise it was freezer lasagna!!

There were other little things, like one of my classmates asked if he could have a plain piece of paper and was refused, he then asked if he could have a tablet that usually comes in the room. They told him those were only for paying guests. He said he was a paying guest and he had used up the one in his room, they told him too bad. Another evening we asked if we could make a photo copy: 25 cents a pop. I guess it’s not that different from the hotel in Vegas that has a sensor and will charge you if you even add anything to the fridge, let alone eat something from the mini bar. But at least Vegas made everything look shiny and luxurious while they ripped you off.

My mother called the hotel one evening to get ahold of me and when she asked the front desk if I was in my room the response she got was “How would I know if she was in her room?” Have they never been called at the front desk before??

My checkout day was worst of all. Due to some scheduling complications I had plenty of time until my flight so I wasn’t really worried about calling a taxi. So once I finished packing I went downstairs to check out. I asked the guy at the front desk if he could call me a cab. He seemed completely flustered and had to call the manager over to find him a list of the cab numbers. He was completely awkward on the phone-clearly his first time doing this. I asked the manager if she had an estimate of how much the cab ride would cost and she said “I wouldn’t know, I never take a cab” in a kind of condescendingv”why-would-you-ask-me-that” tone. So then the cab took 30 minutes to come…which seemed like a long time. I went back to the desk and said “it seems like it is taking a long time for the cab.” The woman said “I wouldn’t know, I didn’t look at the time the call was made.” So I asked if we could call them back and she said “Ma’am, I’m in the middle of something so why don’t you call them.” Then she proceeded to give me the number to the wrong cab company. Just then the cab finally did show up (apparently the driver had gotten lost on the way) the woman said “Patience is a virtue.” There is nothing like that phrase to make you lose all patience. I snapped “yeah it’s great when you’re trying to catch a flight” and she said “well you should have called them yourself earlier and set a time for them to come”. Seriously? She wanted to argue with me? When I worked customer service we were taught not to engage in verbal sparring with a client but to try to soothe them and resolve the issue. I said “Wow, that’s incredibly helpful, thank you so much for your wonderful help” with so much sarcasm dripping from it she probably had to send the new vacuum boy back around the lobby. I mean seriously. The entire week the staff treated my fellow guests and I as if we were unwanted house guests in the way and under foot.

Jet-setter 2.0

I know in my post Jet-Setter I already touched on the elegance that is me in the airport, but this trip to California brought me to an all-time low. The big issue: over packing undersized bags. Never again will I bring a backpack as my carry on. I can’t even remember why I thought that was a good idea beforehand. I know wheeled-suitcases are a must for both carry on and check. And yet somehow I ended up with a 30 lb backpack threatening to topple me at any moment. The problem with the checked luggage was one word: wine. I was in wine country, at a wine class, so of course I got a little carried away buying wine. And I also discovered that unlike international flights where only 2 bottles are allowed, you can put as many as you want in the luggage domestically. Now I didn’t go crazy-I only had 3, but just asking one more bottle sent me seriously close to the weight limit on my bag. To be exact I weighed in at 49 lbs exactly (and for those of you who don’t know, the limit is 50 lbs or else you are charged $50 more for going over limit). So of course I was sweating more than usual! And to go with the wine? 2 wine glasses. I know, I know, who would try to pack fragile stemware in with 49 lbs of crap?? Me, of course. I’d gotten the wine glasses complimentary from wine tasting in Temecula with my friend and I couldn’t bear to part with them. (I did leave one of them with my friend, but I did take one red glass and one white glass). In my defense: everything made it.  Not a chip in one glass! Not a break in one bottle! And a taste test last night revealed at least one bottle wasn’t ruined by transport!

The second issue was my fabulous new hat. I know others are not as thrilled with my new floppy hat as I am, but I truly am quite excited about it. But there was no way it was going to fit in my suitcase. So instead, not only did I carry it with me through the airport, that was also where I got the most wear out of it. California apparently gets summer later than us (which I wouldn’t know since this was only my second time making a domestic trip in maybe 15 years) so it wasn’t really beach-y/poolside weather. So the place I wore my hat the most was in the lady’s room where I’d pop it on my head so I’d have my hands free. I’m not sure what people thought as I exited stalls with a floppy beach hat perched on my head, but I figured there wasn’t much lower I could go at that point.