New Slang

            The Aussies are funny about their slang.  It is an art to them, well developed and highly practiced.  But, I confess: I often times don’t quite follow the logic.

            Case in point, Australian Nick on the arvo shift (See, there we go.  ‘Arvo’ is Aussie shorthand for ‘afternoon’) hails me one day.  “Oi, Daniel.  Do you know what we call you Americans?”

            “Yanks?”

            “Well, that too.  But, we call you ‘seppos’!”

            “Seppos?  Oh, ok.”

            “…”

            “Uhm… Why?”

            “Back in World War II, everyone called Americans ‘yanks’.  But ‘yank’ rhymes with ‘tank’.  Septic tank.  ‘Seppo’, like ‘septic’.”

            “But… ‘Yank’ was already slang for ‘American’.”

            “Well, yeah, but…  ‘Seppo’ is better.”

            Your logic is truly dizzying, Nicholas.

            But we’re just getting started!  For a week straight, Nick and I get put on pump-over duty.  I’ve done pump-overs before, both back home and here at Bird in Hand, but for Nick, who’s mostly been cleaning tanks and doing other grunt work, it’s the first time he’s had a crack at the operation.

            There are two basic variations of the pump-over.  Different places have different names for them, but at BnH they are called ‘CPO’ and ‘APO’.

Nick takes a swig.
Liters of wine are lost, each pump-over, in this manner.

            Pump-overs are performed on fermenting red wines.  Because the ferment creates CO₂, a cap of grape skins and seeds rises to the top of the vessel.  It is best to have the cap either wetted by a pump-over or pushed back down into the wine via a punch down, several times a day.  Both methods reincorporate the grape skins and seeds back into the wine, where color and tannin are better extracted.  Additionally, the operation introduces oxygen back into the wine, which helps the yeast achieve a healthy ferment (stressed yeast tend to have stinky ferments).  Also, by keeping the cap wet the wine will tend to protect itself against volatile acidity problems developing at this early a stage in the process.

            The CPO, or ‘closed pump-over’, is the simpler of the two operations and, according to BnH methodology, means draining wine off the racking valve near the bottom of the tank, and pumping that wine back over the cap.  CPOs tend to be performed near the end of the ferment, when a lot of oxygen being introduced might not necessarily benefit the wine but the cap still needs to be kept wet.

            The more intensive operation, the ‘aerated pump-over’ (or ‘APO’, although I think I prefer the Sunset Hills moniker for the procedure: ‘Big Air’), involves allowing the wine to pour out of the bottom valve and through a metal screen, which both helps aerate the wine and filters out seeds and skins, which could clog your pump.  The wine is collected in a large tub, and from there pumped back up to the top of the tank.  Because Bird in Hand is fond of using open-top fermenters for its Shiraz, using the propeller-like attachments that have been developed for use in closed-top tanks is out of the question.  Too much spraying in all directions; an APO on an open-top fermenter requires a human handler.

            In this case, that handler is Nick, who heroically is poised up on the catwalk overlooking the fermenters, blasting the cap of grape skins and seeds with the spitting end of the hose.  This is known as ‘fire hosing’, which should explain the technique pretty well.

            Nick is having a blast doing this.  We’ve been charged with pumping-over some twelve or so different lots of wine, some Merlot but mostly an ungodly amount of over-extracted and over-ripened Shiraz (aka Syrah), the Shiraz so dark as to be more purple-black than red and ezaktly the type of thing that would tattoo all of these minor cuts and abrasions on our hands, which we've been accumulating for the past few weeks.

Part of pumping over necessitates samples, for Baume and temp.  Well, samples include taste testing, too, for my Aussie friend and myself, with Nick taking some pretty heavy doses and looking to be drunk by smoke-o.  And this juice, like most all the fruit in Australia, is too hot.  If the ferments keep rocking on this way, it's all gonna come out at 17% alcohol.  (Cellar secret, here:  I know some stuff “in the general area” has received “Jesus Units” to bring down the ABV, and tartaric to keep the acid levels up so that the thing still resembles wine.  Welcome to the New World, baby.)

So Nick stands on the catwalk, fire-hosing the cap with the juice I'm pumping up to him, and I scramble up there with a bucket, my graduated cylinder and hydrometers and thermometer.  I lean way down into the tank and grab a sample and, wild-eyed and blitzed and grinning like madmen we drink up, purple-teethed and red-handed.

Wine with dinner in "the tea room".

Well, by the time we're ready for smoke-o and dinner, we've finished up the job, and Nick takes my bucket and fills it with what we both agree is the best grog in the house, of the probably 75 thousand liters we'd sampled from, and agree that any proper meal needs accompanying wine.  Good thing, too, since dinner quality has markedly degraded as harvest has gotten frantic, and we both look at each other over the grub, and say "Prison food" in unison.  Well, with a bit of red wine and the proprietary olive oil mixed in with what appears to be noodles and dead animals, it ain't half bad.

“You know, we should have nicknames for that, APOs and CPOs.”

Here we go again, that Australian penchant for slang.  I can see the gears turning, and know he’s already got suggestions.

“CPOs we can call ‘Star Wars’, like, you know, C3PO.  And what about APO?”

We think about it for a while.  Nick chimes in again.

“APO kinda sounds like ‘ape’.  Let’s call APOs ‘gorillas’!”

It occurs to me, all convoluted logic aside, that both nicknames are longer than the abbreviations ‘APO’ and ‘CPO’.  But, Nick is tickled pink about the whole thing, and I don’t think there’s any use fighting the Aussie slang mentality.

Paralyzing Boredom and, then: First Big Crush

            Our first week is slow, no fruit to speak of having come in just yet and the initial blitz of sanitation having been largely accomplished.  I get put on the afternoon shift, which is loosely and almost understandably vernacularized as the “arvo” shift.

On my shift are two Indians, with whom I often solicit a ride to and from work.  The first, Karan is a well-spoken and friendly young man, a former financial analyst whose job drove him quite literally to drink, and thus read Hugh Johnson and Janice Robinson.  Eventually, he picked up and left India for a Kiwi cellar hand gig, and then Sonoma.  And now, of course, the Adelaide Hills.  The other Indian, Shri, is a bit more enigmatic.  There’s more of a language barrier here, and the first time we exchange any words he just yells at me, through thick Indian accent, about having worked in Napa.  He is a good guy though, and as I come to know him better he often - only half-jokingly, I think - asks me to take him to the pub, or wherever “all the girls are.”

Also on my shift are two Australians.  Ali is only on part-time, being also a fulltime Uni student studying Wine Marketing in Adelaide and having a weekend job at the cellar door at The Lane.  She’s fresh off a two-year cellar door management position in New Zealand, where she’s shacked up with a Frenchie who’s family owns vineyards in southern France, which she and he plan on taking over and settling down on.  The other Aussie, Nick, is thoroughly and masculinely Australian.  A bit older chap, he’d worked a vintage back in the ‘90s, and is undertaking this vintage right before throwing himself into the launch of a distribution business, focusing on small scale Australian wineries, and also breweries and cider producers.  He enjoys a healthy antagonism with Shri, which starts out as an almost racially charged thing, but which morphs into this sort of offbeat friendship by the end of the first week.

We work from three in the afternoon until eleven at night, when graveyard takes over.  The first half of our shift is overseen by Wade, already met.  Peter is also around, the high-strung little winemaker who is a holy terror, and recalls me that quote from A Christmas Story.  “In the heat of battle, Peter wove a tapestry of obscenities.”

Chewie!  ("WHAT A WOOKIE!")

However, the second half of the shift, as night comes on, takes a decidedly more laidback feel.  Dylan (or, more often, “Dylo!”) the assistant winemaker, barely in his thirties, takes over for Peter and is mostly content to keep to the lab and run sulfur, acid and carbon trials on various wines.  Wade is relieved by a guy named, and I’m not kidding, Chewie.  Chewie reminds me of an Australian Scott Spelbring, with a voice and cheerful disposition that any American, their exposure to Australian culture and people being limited to Crocodile Dundee and commercials for Foster’s and The Outback Steakhouse, would find immediate comfort and recognition in.

But, the first week is slow.  We find ourselves custodians of the installation, and not much happens outside of some petty squabbling about who gets to do the single nighttime pumpover, and these mop-up tank cleaning jobs.  Mostly, it’s just to get us into the habit of sanitation, so crucial in this business.

And the habit is as follows:  Everything at the winery, before use, is hit with the standard three-pronged sanitation regimen.  First you set up your mono pump, which is the basic workhorse for wine movements, with the suction end drawing water from a 55-gallon drum.  The push end of the pump gets stuck down into the opening at the top of the tank, and is outfitted with a shower ball attachment.  Then, someone fetches caustic.

(Two notes here, on caustic.  One from each of the cellar masters.  From Wade: “Be careful not to get any of this shit on you.  You splash some on yourself, and you won’t feel anything for about fifteen minutes.  Then, you’ll feel a burning like someone’s just stuck a lit cigarette into your skin.  And then it’s too late to get it off.  It burns you up from the inside, like.”

And then, from Chewie, to Karan:  “You need to be wearing some goggles, mate.  (Turning to me) Especially you Americans.  Don’t know what it is about you blokes, but last two vintages it was one of the yanks that got caustic in his eye.  Last year the feller did a right good job of it, too.  Ended up melting his eyeball, like.  Burned all the color out of his eye.  He ended up being alright, didn’t lose his sight or anything, but had to wear an eye patch for six months with this special jelly on the inside, help it grow back.  He did a proper bang up job, alright.  But still…  Nasty shit.”

But still…  Nasty shit.)

So, someone fetches caustic, suited up with rubber gloves and a face shield and/or goggles.  Said person is dispatched to this big, thousand-liter tub sitting outside, forcing open the valve that always sticks and sends caustic gushing and splashing into your 5-gallon bucket.

The caustic gets dumped into the barrel of water, and the whole lot gets sucked up by the mono pump, dosing the inside of the tank and killing anything living in there and melting any tartaric acid that might have built up.  Once the 55-gallon barrel is drained, you attach the suck-end of the hose to the bottom valve of the tank, and cycle the caustic through for a few minutes.

One must be careful when executing this procedure.  The shower ball ends have a tendency to want to try and back the hose out of the tank and spray skin-melting caustic all over everything.  I saw this happen, once, when Nick hadn’t properly secured a hose, and only a quickly killed pump and the fact she was wearing her protective gear saved Ali’s otherwise pretty face.

Anyway, once your caustic gets cycled through and drained from the tank, you do a quick flush of the system with a course of water, then repeat the process with citric acid, which is actually quite mild, especially compared to the caustic, and is oftentimes used to clean wine stains from one’s hands.  The citric neutralizes any remaining caustic and, once drained and the tank is flushed again with water, the vessel is good to go, ready to receive wine.

We do this a lot, in the build-up to harvest, there being somewhere between eighty and ninety tanks in the cellar, and these not always in a logical, numerical order.  Boredom sets in and then, worse, crypticism.  Notes, designating cleanliness and left on the tanks, progress from such officious messages as “Cleaned: 1/3” to the more informal “C+C (for Citric and Caustic) 3/3” to the playful “Chipper,” “She’s Apples,” and “Right-o.”  Eventually, the notes take an offensive (“Cleaner Than Your Mother”) and even ominous (“Nuked 7/3”) tone.

This tank is unclean.

Everyone’s itching for it, the action, like in those old war movies.  Hey Sarge, when’re we gonna see some action, huh?  Everyone is tired of the waiting.  Everyone wants to be in… the shit.

And for a week, we barely miss it.  It’s early enough in the season that there’s no rush to get anything off of the vine, and the pickers can wait until nightfall to harvest, when the grapes are cooler.  We prep the crush pad and the presses for grapes  coming in an hour after we get off, and getting crushed by the graveyard shift.  As things start getting busier, crushing ostensibly bleeds into our shift.  But, fruit that’s supposed to come in at nine PM doesn’t show before we knock off, and when we show for the next shift the day after, it’s to a press that’s just finished its cycle and a crush pad that’s been left wrecked.  These are accompanied by rumors, too, about the night shift and these marathon crushes, forty tons at a time.

And we get stuck on clean up.

But, it’s not long before harvest catches up with us and, one night, Chewie sets us in motion, prepping gear.

“They’re just out picking now, we’ll have fruit in about half an hour or so.  So, ah, Daniel.  You’ve done a bit of crushing before then, have you?”

I answer in the affirmative.

“Ah!  Very well then!  So I’ll just show you the setup here, then…”

The setup here is slick.  Tonight, fruit is coming in on “gondies.”  (Chewie: “They’re called ‘gondolas’ and, I don’t know why, we just shortened it to ‘gondies.’”  It’s that Australian penchant for slang and abbreviation.)  The gondies, these big, dumpable buckets attached to the back of the tractors and capable of holding upwards of three tons of fruit, follow the mechanical harvesters through the vineyards, receiving the picked fruit.  Once full, or else once the mechanized harvester finishes a row, the gondie comes back to the crush pad, dumping its payload into a seven-ton combination hopper and weigh-bridge.  Fruit is weighed and recorded, and the auger built into the hopper moves it along towards the crusher.

Via method of a trapdoor, fruit is dropped from the hopper to the crusher, and then into the pump that pushes the grape must from the crush pad and through a chilling system and into the press or, in the case of reds that need maceration, into a stainless steel tank for fermentation on the skins.

This trapdoor business is a bit tricky, it turns out.  Due to the downward slope at which the hopper angles the fruit towards the trapdoor, and due to the amount that the mechanical harvesters beat up the fruit, free running juice has a tendency to accumulate at the end of the hopper, right above the trapdoor.  And, when said trapdoor is imprudently opened, there is a very real risk of a veritable dumping of juice.

“I’m not kidding mate, it’s like a tidal wave!  Just Whoosh and you’ve got juice everywhere and Ruchie (Peter Ruchs, the winemaker) cursing up a storm, up to your ankles in juice and grapes you’ve got to clean up and all of it down the drain…”

And it turn out that this would happen, a few nights later on the graveyard shift as Aldwin, one of our Frenchies, opens the trapdoor and half a ton of Savi comes pouring down, actually tipping over what turns out to be a very poorly balanced and unstable crusher/destemmer.  The onslaught of grapes occurs, unabated, until someone manages to slam shut the trapdoor.  And then there’s a frenzied cleanup, as the crew tries to clear the crush pad enough to make it operable again so as to continue crushing, as more gondies and more grapes arrive...

(A note here, on the crush pad:  It is less a crush pad, per se, than it is a crush pit.  Due to the necessarily elevated hopper in relation to the crusher/destemmer, the crusher and its operator are actually sunk into the ground, about eight to ten feet.  The walls and flooring are concrete, and there are various hoses for must and half-ton T-bins for collecting the MOG (Matter Other than Grapes) spat out by the destemmer.  But the worst part about the crush pit is, by far, some sort of catastrophic infrastructural drainage problem.  Runoff water and juice merely collects in the back of the pit, rises like the tide until it’s ankle level and someone, feet wet, notices and does something about it.  Well, it turns out that “doing something about it” means scaling the walls of the pit, usually with the aid of an upturned bucket or cinder block, specifically placed there for this purpose, and activating an old an derelict centrifugal pump that’s been permanently located at the top of the pit, and which only runs in reverse.  Activating said pump will drain the pump, but at the expense of temporarily flooding the refuse water into the winery proper, where there is at least adequate drainage, but which leaves all the other cellar rats standing in swamp water for a few minutes.  Anyway…)

So, Chewie has me man the pit, leaving me straddling the crusher in such a way as to either counterbalance any tipping that might occur or, in the case of a very serious dumping of grapes that will tip the crusher anyway, will send me catapulting into a cement wall.  This position also puts me within easy reach of the hopper controls, including the trapdoor mechanism.

The first gondie arrives with a typical load of 2.05 tons of grapes.  Semillon.  And, we get underway.  Trick to operating the trapdoor without flooding the place, it turns out, is to open a valve that drains off the excess juice from the hopper into the crusher in a controlled manner.  Then, the trapdoor is opened and slammed shut, in increasingly larger increments, allowing any grapes sitting on the trapdoor to be cleared in a safe manner, and the fruit and juice is coming in slow and steady enough to leave the door wide open.  At this point the operator can dictate the flow of fruit by controlling the auger speed.

We only see a few tons that night, eight or ten, before the night shift comes in to relieve us.  But, it’s good to get a feel of the operation, and also a taste of the hectic life of harvest.  It serves as a good adjustment; away from the paralyzing boredom of our first week and towards the madness of the upcoming crush.

Arrival Story

John, an American who has expatriated himself in Adelaide with his Aussie wife Amy and baby boy, Jack, puts me up for a few days.  Despite their overwhelming hospitality, it’s a few days during which I grow increasingly worried.  I feel like I’m intruding, here, on John and his family.  And as if imposing myself on them for a night wasn’t intrusion enough, my stay has extended itself over the entire weekend.

Jetlag has actually worked strangely to my advantage, and I’m actually down by nine or ten in the evening, and up around six in the AM.

Up.  Up up up.  Up worrying.  Because, in the three days I’ve been in Adelaide, not one of my Australian contacts has come through.  Well, with the exception of John, of course.

Aerial of Adelaide, sighting down the wing of a
Singapore Airlines Airbus.

But, like I sed, all my other contacts… Kaput.  Lyn, the women who is ostensibly supposed to put me up in the Hills and whom Peter, the BnH winemaker, had instructed me to get in touch with upon my arrival, has not been picking up her cell phone (Mobile, they’re called here.  Not ‘mo-bill,’ like we Americans say; it’s ‘mo-bile.’).  Peter himself has likewise gone radio-silent, as has Mitch, who’s weirdly non-communicative for a guy in charge of “Communications” at Bird in Hand.  Even the Frenchie I’ve been exchanging emails with for the past month, Alwin, doesn’t answer his phone.

Needless to say: Yeah, I’m a bit worried.  I am freaking out, man.  I spend the normal operative business hours of the day placing phone calls and shooting off emails with growing panic, frustration and eventual desperation.

Do I actually have a place to stay at Lyn’s?  Do I actually have a job?  Was this whole thing a scam conducted by Australian immigration authorities in order to weasel me out of a $400 visa fee?  Yes, yes of course.  Damn.  Penal colony, remember?  Entire continent full of criminals, of course…

Then, small miracle on Sunday afternoon, and I do get in touch with Peter.

“You haven’t got a hold of Lyn?  Did you try leaving her a message?”

“Several.  Two today…”

“Alright.  Let me try and give you a call back in a minute.”

After a half hour of pacing, the De Michele phone rings, and John hands it to me.

“I don’t know what’s happened to Lyn, I can’t get in touch with her either.  Just show up at the cellar door tomorrow around nine-thirty or ten, and we’ll do induction and put you to work.  Worse comes to worst, you can sleep at my place for a night or two, until we sort something out.”

“Thanks, Peter.”

“Cheers, mate.”

So the next day Amy and Jack escort me out of the city on the M1 and later on the B34, freeways taking us right out and up into the Hills.  It doesn’t take us long to get out of Adelaide, which is fairly self-contained with minimal sprawl.

The Hills themselves are scraggly, mostly red rock with these sparse and struggling green patches, which is harsh yes, but it’s not quite Outback.

Amy and I chat for the half hour or forty-five minutes it takes to get out to Bird in Hand, and Jack nods off in the back seat.  Before too long, we’re passing vineyards, and I know we must be getting close.

We pull onto a little dirt road, with yellow signs with black outlines of kangaroos on them, reading “Next 5k,” and soon the BnH silos come into view.  In the little gravel parking lot we pull into, there’s a couple disentangling themselves from their car, obviously looking to start tasting even though the cellar door doesn’t open for another half hour.  I pull my gear from the trunk, tell Amy goodbye and thanks for everything, and set off to find someone who can tell me what I should do with myself.

First person I run into is an old and stooped groundskeeper, who mumbles and whom I follow around.  He leads me through the cellar, bigger than anything I’ve seen yet by far, and as we start running into people he mumbles at them “Peter?” and the other parties inevitably point us down the tank rows.  Eventually, we emerge from the far end of the cellar, cross a gravel lot where we must dodge an operating forklift, and then enter a doorway adjacent to a large barrel storage facility.

The groundskeeper nods me in, and then stalks off.  It’s obviously the winery’s lab, and everyone looks busy until someone gets off the phone and notices me.

“Hello, you must be Dan!”

“Daniel, yes sir.”

“Ah, they’ll be none of that ‘sir’ stuff around here, Dan!  Call me Mitch.”

We shake on it.  He’s a big guy, this Mitch.  Definitely one of those former athlete types, who’s bulk is getting a little loose in his middle age, but who looks as if he still plays ball or whatever it is he does on the weekends.  But Mitch is an extremely amicable fellow, broad and beaming.  He introduces me to Peter, the winemaker, who is wiry, a curt and seemingly high-strung man.  There are curt and seemingly high-strung introductions.  Then:  “Mitch, when is Greg supposed to get here?  We’ll have him and Dan do induction at the same time.  For now, give him  the tour and then have Wade find something for him to do.”

“Right-o.” (He actually says this, “Right-o.”) “Come on then Dan, I’ll show you around."

Mitch conducts our little tour through every part of the winery.  Tank room, barrel storage, tea room, case storage, cellar door (aka tasting room, you Yanks!), “the gallery,” events area, upper management offices, etc etc etc, ad naseam.

En route through the tank room I am introduced to John, a somewhat chubby and perhaps fratty kid a few years older than myself.  He looks kind of silly, holding a power washer and wearing a fluorescent yellow safety vest.  Friendly enough kid, though.

“Dan, this is John.  John, you’re living at Lyn Oborn’s as well, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.  So!  You’re our missing third roommate?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I am.”  So, at least I am expected.

Mitch ditches me in the offices, where a tan and very pretty she-Aussie named Fiona takes charge of me.  Fiona is apparently the Jaclyn O'Brien/Meredith Wilson of Bird in Hand, and she takes me through the biznasty side of the operation, along with Greg, a middle-aged and insomniatic looking Australian chap.  This is somewhat tedious and redundant, and is mostly just the bureaucratic side of the company looking to cover ass.

The cellar.  This is maybe a quarter of the tank space at BnH.

Anyway, after I fill out the requisite paperwork, Greg and I are issued those same fluorescent yellow safety vests, which official policy insists is required to be worn at all times while practicality dictates this policy is almost universally ignored.  We are sent off into the cellar to find Wade, who will ostensibly give us work to do.

Messianic in every way, Wade is like the Australian answer to Jesus.  Or a winemaking Nikola Tesla.  Like Jesus, if Jesus was more strung out and wore a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey cap.  First order of business, Wade shows me the dry ice maker, which is used to create a CO₂ buffer in tanks to ward of the oxidation of wine or juice.  We fill a bucket with the stuff, and Wade shows me the tanks that need dosing.

“Just chuck a few handfuls of snow in there.  Careful ya don’t hold on too long, you’ll get frostbite.” Then he looks at the handful of dry ice he’s holding.  Looks at it somewhat sadly, and somewhat proudly.  “Me hands are so mucked up, it doesn’t really matter.”

An admittedly ill-advised method, but whatever.  After I dose a few tanks, I notice my fingertips are really cold.  And, even when feeling does start creeping back into them, hours later, there’s a tingling I can’t quite shake.  Hmmm… Frost bite…  But, it’s alright, as the skin deadens and calluses over the next few days.  Harvest hands are coming sooner or later, and it’s probably best to leather up now.

But, it seems like Wade is just about out of busywork now, having been handing it out all day.  And no fruit has come in yet, to speak of.  Just a small amount of tempranillo, which I am both surprised and excited about.  All available resources have been diverted to cleaning the place and now, between there being too many cooks in the kitchen and the winery having reached an almost passable level of sanitation, there’s not much to do.

Things do begin to heat up towards the end of the shift, though.  It turns out a small amount of bottling needs doing, and I find myself thrown into the line, BnH having a permanent on-site bottling setup.  It’s a fluff job, but even so I can tell how slow and unaccustomed to using my hands I’ve become.

Man, have I gone soft?

But I get through till the end of my shift without mishap, and the bottling is good, helping me to get back into the swing of things, back to thinking like a cellar rat.

John offers to give me a ride home.  Or to what I at least hope will be home.  Having no real alternatives, I take him up.

John turns out to be a rather talkative type, assuming a domineering role in our conversations, although I’ve found in the past that I usually lend myself to this.  He’s a Fresno State kid, oenology, with a vintage in New Zealand under his belt, and three in Cali as a lab tech.  But, it’s me who gets his car started.

“Shit!  Not again.  This happened this morning, that’s why I was late.”  John pops the hood, and we get out to have a look.  “Know anything about cars?”

Long road home, as seen coming from Lobethal.

Almost nothing.  But, I come off looking like a minor savant, when:  “Well, there’s your problem right there.”  I push the positive cable back into place on the car’s battery.  John gives her a go and turns it over and, like magic, the car gets running.

I’d seen this problem before, on the zero-turn mower at SSH, and it’s perhaps the one mechanical problem I know how to fix.  But, I let John think I am more mechanically-minded than I actually am.

We drive into Charleston, a little northeast of the winery.  Charleston itself is less a town than it is an intersection, The Charleston Hotel (read as: pub) and The Book Post (combination book store, post office, general store and internet café) being the two defining features.  Lyn Oborn’s place is a gorgeous spread, mostly a horse farm in the rolling and sprawling and burnt golden Hills that the region is known for, though the Oborns keep chickens and a veggie patch as well.

No one is home, yet, and so John and I take a trip into Lobethal, the next town over, which has a fairly iconic bakery from which John is seeking to procure meat pies, and also a bank, at which I would like to put my personal affairs (or lack thereof) in order.

The car dies in the middle of a parking lot, we having taken a bump too hard, so John curses and pops the hood and I jump out and rewire the car, John starting back up long enough to finish his parking job.  We split up, agreeing to meet back at the car in a few minutes, and I walk the block to the Bank SA.

Well, no doing, banks here close at four PM on Mondays, which seems bizarre…  But, nothing I can do, just go another day without any accepted Aussie currency.  Back at the car, I watch a few Army types who congregate outside the shop where they'd just gotten barbecue.  They are weirdly non-intimidating, for being military types, and I wonder about the state of the Aussie army.

The homestead.

John comes back, having picked up a meat pie for me, too.  Curried chicken.  Well, I'd had a sneaking suspicion that my attempts at getting back on the vegetarian train, rekindled by the food at the Hoffmasters’, would soon be thwarted, here in Australia.  It is delicious.

Back at the farm, Lyn has arrived back home, as has her husband Peter.  John announces my arrival and, with incredible hospitality, Lyn assures me that I have a place to stay.  We set about, pulling a bed out of the garage to put in a spare and unused room.  It’s a bit spartan and not quite as comfortably cluttered as I like my rooms to be, but it will do, for this stint.

Just as we’re about to sit down for dinner, at which we’ve been joined by Lyn and Peter’s son Cooper - an equestrian rider and horse trainer- and James - whose relation here to the family I’m really not quite sure of, other than his status as “boarder” - a girl shows up.  Lauren is another coworker and tenant here, a pretty if tomboyish girl and another oenology student.  Cali Tech or Polytech or something.  Busy work had really run out on her shift, the evening shift, and she’d been sent home early, and joins us for eats: brats and burgers, chips (UK style), salad and fresh bread.

Anyway, we all sit down to dinner, and it’s actually quite a homey feel, here on the other side of the planet.

The Amount of Time it Takes Me to Start Sweating

When finally I manage to get out of my tangled web of international travel and into the heat of Adelaide, it takes me a moment to adjust to the glare of real, natural sunlight, away from the sickly fluorescence of the airports of the world.  It takes me approximately the same amount of time to start sweating, which is of course another adjustment to the sun and the heat of this place.

I haul around my luggage for a brief moment, somewhat at a loss as to what to do.  Supposedly, I am supposed to meet up with one John De Michelle, an American expat I’d been put in contact with through our mutual friend, Scott Spelbring.  I’d been in touch with John a few times, sporadically, and just a few days before my arrival in Southern Australia.  He had agreed to pick me up at the airport, and also to put me up for a night before I got out to the Hills

Only thing is, John had said he’d be at the airport just after five o’clock, when my plane got in.  However, owing to a thorough search and then a second, exhaustive picking on by Customs, I’d not been officially allowed into the country until almost seven PM.

I am almost two hours late to meeting a stranger and only contact in a foreign country, said stranger being identifiable to me based only on the description, “I drive a silver Ford Focus (Ford Escort), and I have long blonde hair and a winning smile.”  Similarly, I am known to John only as “probably wearing a Nutella t-shirt, a black bandana, yellow work boots... ahhh... Moderately bearded. Glasses. Will probably look wonderstruck. Big, army-green duffel bag.”

So, for a moment I drag my baggage back and forth along the pick-up lane, weighing options and formulating plans, scheming on how to acquire AUSD for a payphone call of cab ride, of which currency I currently have none, since none of my layovers had occurred during the normal operating hours of any currency exchange office.

I eyeball every silver car I see, and hard, hoping some sign of recognition will be given.

“Daniel?”

Bingo.

John, exactly as described, winning smile and all, pulls up to the curb and hails me through his open window.  “Go ahead and throw your stuff in the trunk.”  I hurl my bags into the back, and it is a relief to be rid of them, after two days of worrying and dragging them through overcrowded airplane aisles.

“John, good to meet you.  Are you a sight for sore eyes.”  We shake hands, and I realize how bad I must smell after two days spent in these clothes, their cleanliness already questionable at the onset.

“Man, good choice on the Nutella shirt.  Knew immediately that it was you.”

We have a laugh, and John drives me into his city.

Ada! (I Can Hear the Sound of Your Laugh Through the Wall)

            This last drive, to DIA, is the terminal one.  Or it could be, anyway, and there should be that sense of doom about it.  Maybe we don’t see each other for another four months, half a year.  Maybe I don’t ever see the girl again.  But it doesn’t feel that way.  After having driven so long and so far, we fall back into our habits, and this is just another part of the road trip.

We come full circle when, after filling up on gas, Caitlin attempts to steer us in exactly the wrong direction.  As with the opening leg of the journey, 1,700 miles ago in Middleburg, I have to coax her back on track, and we have a laugh.  And then, after this, it’s freeway, and we can sit and not think a little while, just covering ground.

At the Departures kiss-and-ride, Caitlin helps me with the last minute repacking of my things, which is mostly just us lingering for the sake of it.  Finally, I strap myself up with my gear, and we part ways.  I turn around, for a parting shot.

“Hey, Caitlin.” I steal a line from Tom Cruise.  “I’ll see you in another life, when we are both cats.”

I do not pull it off nearly as well as I’d hoped.  It’s a good line, and certainly fitting enough, but it is too practiced.  Anyway, hope she thought it was more suave than I did, it’s the last I’ll see of the girl.

Now begins a painful, thirty-six or so hour plane flight, on my own, and into the unknown.  Well, perhaps not completely unknown.  I know I have a job.  And perhaps a place to stay?  Other than that, well… Yeah, I guess there are still a lot of unknowns.

First hiccup comes during the security screening.  “Excuse me, sir.  Would you mind stepping out of line?”

Shite.

Snacks for my trip, courtesy the Hoffmaster ladies.

The TSA agent pulls me aside, carrying my book bag with her.  My bag will have to be searched, she says, and asks if I have any weapons in my bag, or anything that could cut her.

“Uh… Not that I know of?”

Well, she informs me, x-ray had shown something with a blade on it in my bag.  “It appears to be a corkscrew.”

Eff.

“Yeah, that’s right… Sorry.  It’s in that pocket right there."  She goes digging through my effects, and I realize I have all sorts of probably suspicious-seeming stuff.  Worst by far, before she gets to the corkscrew, is my flask, which I’d completely forgotten about and which is completely full of illicit shine, courtesy that lovable Renaissance man Chris Plummer.  The agent pulls out the flask, gives it a hearty shake, shrugs and tosses it back into my bag, continuing to rummage for that corkscrew with it’s tiny, one inch blade, obviously just waiting to be used by some crazed wine enthusiast to slit throats…

So my prized wine key gets confiscated.  But shine gets through, which will be important on my leg to Singapore, that twenty-one hour bitchery of a flight.

The first leg of the flight is a two and a half hour hop over to LAX on what turns out to be a cramped Frontier Airlines flight for everyone but myself and the young professional, Austin, with whom I share the back row of the plane, the two of us spread out over three seats.  I’d meant to sleep on the flight, what with not having gotten much shuteye the night before, and even do doze for the first half hour, nodding over my current reading, The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, a collection of Hunter S. Thompson’s “fear and loathing” letters.

Anyhow, Austin takes up an interest in the book, and asks if he may flip through it while I sleep.  I consent and, upon rousing myself after a brief power nap, Austin and I use Thompson as a jumping-off point to have a long, meandering conversation, waxing philosophical.  Austin is an overt and talkative type, a young guy but perhaps a bit older than me, and much better put together.  It’s a good talk, and the time passes quickly.

As we disembark from the plane, with Austin headed out into the city and me headed to International Departures, he kindly extends an offer, knowing the general state of my financial affairs.

“Look, I’d like to help out in some small way.  Let me buy you some snacks or junk food or whatever you want for the flight to Singapore.”

Good Lord, I am such a walking charity case.  Though I hate to admit it, I can’t deny how much I’ve relied on that whole Blanche Dubois “kindness of strangers” thing to get where I am now, and I think Austin senses this.  I put up token resistence, but get a very definitive-sounding “I won’t take no for an answer.”

A thousand miles of Pacific coast on the
underbelly of the continent.

So, I allow Austin to patronize me, and grab some Clif Bars, granola and chocolate covered pretzels, and some agua.

Austin is on his way to baggage claims and I’m off to make my connection, so we exchange contact info, shake hands and  linger a minute over the topic of our mutual adoration of Lana del Rey.  Finally, we go our separate ways, me headed into the belly of the beast, getting lost for a few hours of layover in LAX, the last American outpost before I go international.

*  *  *

The next day is a walking nightmare, a weird smearing of insane amounts of bad airline food (five meals in total, by my reckoning), good in flight movies (The Master, Lincoln, Raging Bull, The Dark Knight Rises and, to numb my mind for the last few hours, The Expendables II), shit sleep, cramped quarters and a general sense of atrophy.  There’s an hour-long stopover in Tokyo, and a four-hour layover in Singapore at three in the morning, and I sit down and read and watch as, slowly, the airport comes to life, and the ranks of the few stragglers like me who still have a connection to make are bolstered by the rest of those headed south.

The last leg of my journey is a seven hour flight into Adelaide, spent next to a fat Australian who’s not much for talking, with a Singapore woman’s seat reclined into my lap.  It’s so early in the morning that everyone pulls their shades down to try and get some shuteye.  Everyone but me, who hasn’t hardly slept in days and who’s too strung out to start doing anything about it now, and who everyone keeps asking to pull his shade down.  But to Hell with them, I want to see the damn thing, when it comes roaring into view.

Ada.

But I miss it, somehow, the approach to land.  Suddenly, we’re just over it.  Vast, iron-red and desolate Outback.  Good Lord, after thirty-six hours of travel, or a week if you want to include the trip from VA, I’m flying over Australia.  500 miles per hour and 40,000 feet up, having covered half the planet in a week and outracing the sun most times…

But even this doesn’t do the enormity of it justice, and it’s only when we come up the underbelly of the continent and turn east with the miles of coast and surreal Pacific waters that it sinks in, and sets my heart racing and me catching my breath like a sucker punch in the gut.

Good Lord, Adelaide comes roaring into view.

In the Rarified Air, Regrouping for the Final Push

The few days I’m able to spend with the Hoffmaster clan are every bit as therapeutic and regenerative as I’d hoped they would be, and even more of a detoxification from our road trip than I’d imagined.  I’m fed an entirely vegetarian diet, much of it vegan and raw; exactly what I needed to flush the White Castle and Sonic and Lord knows what all else out of my system.

Even my legs get a stretch and, on day two, having first provided me my preferred breakfast of black coffee and then a lunch of goodies from Whole Foods, Caitlin’s father Forrest takes me and the girls up into one of the state parks, where there’s scenic driving and good hiking to be had.  After a forty-five minute drive or so, we’re up in the mountains.

Crazy how low the temperature drops, up at altitude.  In the foothills it had been almost fifty degrees.  Up here, though, it’s down to twenty-three.  At the entrance to the park, a ranger admits that there’s “some snow” on some of the longer trails, higher up, but that the nearest one should be hikeable.  So, we give it a go.

When we pull up to the trailhead, though, next to this little lake, everyone in the car makes these little noises, like “Ooooh ahhh, ha ha!” which roughly translates as “Damn, it is much colder and windier and snowier up here than we’d anticipated.

Peyton, Caitlin’s sister, is adequately prepared for the weather.  And Forrest is überprepared, being the outdoorsman of the family.  Caitlin and I, fresh off the type of candy-ass winter that Virginia’s been dishing out since the so-called “snowpocalypse” of a few years prior, are decidedly and woefully unprepared, me doubly so, what with the abandonment of all my winter effects for my migration to warmer climes.

But, we get out anyway, to scope it out.  Or, to utilize a phrase Caitlin and I have been abusing recently (I’d just introduced it to the girl), we “case the joint.”  The girls even bring a blanket from the car, and after some good-natured fighting over it, decide to wrap themselves up together, huddling close for warmth.

“What do you think?” asks Forrest.  “Too much?”

I’m able to needle everyone on; it is not so bad, it is a short jaunt around the lake and, in jorts and a North Face jacket, I am arguably the most exposed to the elements, and therefore have the final say as to whether or not it is too cold.

“Is it cold, Daniel?”

“I mean, that lake is frozen as shit.”

And it is.

As we set off, not far past the trailhead, Forrest announces, “I have to go converse with the trees.”  I don’t quite get it, but wonder if the Hoffmasters don’t have some Indian blood in ‘em.  But, the girls explain.

“He always says that when he has to piss.”

“Oh.”

Actually, I sympathize.  The ride up had taken a hot minute, and the Hoffmaster women had been pushing water on me since my arrival, so as to counter the effects of altitude sickness.  And lunch had been accompanied by massive amounts of iced tea and coconut water.  I too must piss.

The girls keep trudging along, as Forrest and I trail them and talk about training in Boulder, specifically in winter.  By the time we reach the far side of the lake, we experience that peculiar thing called ‘the lake effect,’ and the wind coming off the ice carries on it these biting ice crystals blown off the snowdrifts.  Caitlin and Peyton, the wind and ice whipping around them ahead of us, look like they are lost in Antarctica, about to freeze to death.  One of them slips on the trail, and they both go down.

When finally we make it back around to the car, the girls and my legs are frozen.  It is decided that all haste must be made to get to Coffee on the Rocks, a java shop in one of the little mountain towns a little ways down into the valley.

We take the long and scenic way back home, on Rt. 7.  So different from the Rt. 7 back home in Virginia, this one hugs the mountain on one side and on the other overlooks the valley.  The trip down takes over an hour, and so idyllic that I’m lulled to sleep, this despite the cup of coffee I’d just ingested.

When we arrive back at the house, Forrest and I begin prepping for the run we’d agreed to go on.  This is a mortal terror for me.  Forrest may be fifteen years my senior, but he’s been rigorously training for an Ironman and, simply put, I am out of shape.  Even in regards to my running attire, I am outclassed.  Again, I’ve packed for the long haul in Australia, not my stint in the Colorado mountains.  So, it’s booties and a sweatshirt for me.

Actually, I fare much better on the run than I’d anticipated.  I’d feared how much the altitude would affect me but, aside from a splitting headache in the early parts of the run, it’s not much of a factor.

More debilitating, actually, are my biomechanics.  I’ve always had some level of muscular imbalances and, having not run in so long and atrophied somewhat, they’d only gotten worse.  Further wreaking havoc on me are the cumulative effects of the road trip, and my insistence on driving is coming back to bite me, now.  All those hours with my foot stomping down on the gas pedal had worked up a good bit of tension in my lower back, and I can feel it, now, manifesting first as a stiffening in my left IT band that pulls my stride, and finally translating into a grinding in my right hip.

But, you do what you’d learned to do as a long-distance runner; you grit your teeth and you man up.  Because the alternative is pussing out, which is no sort of alternative at all.  And, somehow, Forrest does not break me and, against all odds, I do not die.

The last half of the run is all uphill, back to the house, and when finally we take the last turn and it comes into view, Caitlin is out front, taking advantage of her break from being compelled to entertain me to finally unload her car.  I pull up short, and she asks me if I’m ok.

“Yeah, fine.  Still got it.”

(Caitlin would later tell me that I looked like death, but admitted that her father said I’d “kicked his ass,” thinking I’d taken it easy on him.  Well, I don’t know if that was the case…)

But, as these things go, the moment you stop running is the moment things start to lock up, and real pain sets in.  I gather a few of my lingering possessions from the car, and then make a strangely agonizing trek up the thirty-six steps ascending the Hoffmasters’ own personal slice of the mountain.

Forrest is taking the first shower, and so I sit down on Caitlin’s bed, zombed out, watching her unpack.  Well, I soon lay back, feet still cemented to the floor, and flirt pretty hard with sleeping.  So, Caitlin takes off my shoes, throws my legs up on the bed so that I can curl up all fetus-like, the way I do, and throws a blanket over me.  Thus, I sleep.

And am consequently woken up, all too soon, and am told to take a shower, become presentable and ready myself for dinner.  The hot water actually does wonders for my back, as does a generous dose of Tiger Balm.  Still, the walk down to the car is a limping torture, as is the trek through the parking lot to the Mexican joint where we’re eating out.

Peyton and Ali have gone to pick up one of Peyton’s friends, Delaney, from circus practice, of all things.  So Caitlin, Forrest and myself hold down the fort and wait for reinforcements.  (Read as: eat all the chips and guac and talk about Forrest’s overly and unwantedly sexually aggressive hairstylist)

The girls arrive, and we tuck into food.  It’s killer veggie tamale for me.  I’d heard food in Boulder was killer, and this affirms the sentiment.

Back on the mountain, the girls and I gravitate towards the basement, and listen to Mitch Hedberg, whom Caitlin and I had rediscovered on our trip.  It is good and keeps us lighthearted, and we spend an hour giggling together.  After getting our kicks, we settle in to watch Yojimbo.

Well, no one yet has ever gotten through Yojimbo in one sitting, and we all drop asleep where we are.

*  *  *

Next morning, and I’m up fairly early by my standards and, back stiff and feeling old, I do some rudimentary stretching, a dose of the good ol’ Tiger Balm and pop a few ibuprofen, and am thus readied for the day.

Great majority of my morning is spent, over a cup of coffee, trying to get the happenings of the last few days down on paper, and then from paper onto the computer and then out into the ether.

This is actually somewhat hard to do, what with the girls giggling away and carrying on and such in the kitchen, concocting some sort of egg, tortilla and salsa dish, calling Ali in every few minutes to come save the day.  Actually, for all the girlish antics that take place, the meal turns out to be quite excellent.

Caitlin and I had meant to get moving early on things and do another round of hiking but, well, I’m barely moving at all, early morning.  We fall back on the contingency plan, which is to hit thrift shops and the army surplus store, then visit Oskar Blues for a free tour in the afternoon.

Downtown Boulder is a happening area, and we meander down Pearl Street, scoping the little shops and coffee bars and people busking for a living, as Caitlin wants to do.  Overwhelming homeless population in these parts, though.

On the way down the strip, I have trouble keeping up and Caitlin notices the limp.  What can ya do?

We tool around the army store for a bit, mostly and ostensibly to find boots.  But, nothing pleases me aesthetically that would serve practically, and so we pick up only a few odds and ends: bandanas, work gloves, a shirt to be thrashed during harvest.  I toy with the idea of getting another knife, too; something more practical than the nigh-Bowie knife I’m currently operating with.  But, again, the right knife is not here.

On our way back to the car, Caitlin and I linger over a busker, a kid on a steel string guitar.  A genuine cowboy stands nearby, doing a jig and sporadically throwing bills into the guitbox case.

Minor down note, here, as we approach the car.  We’re just in time to see parking authority ticket us.  Well, such things happen.

With all haste, we set out in the general Grand Rapids direction.  Somewhere between here and there is the Oskar Blues Brewery.  We know that a free tour is conducted at 4pm, but we are running late and also don’t really know where we’re going.

At five minutes past, we roll into what seems far too much like a dive to be the brewery proper, but sidle up to the bar anyway, and a typically hip she-Coloradoan in turn sidles up to us.  We inquire about the tour.

“You just missed them,” the barkeep informs us.  “Let me get you a drink, and then I’ll walk you in.”

Excellent.  I get a Ten-Fiddy.  What with me being a real man and all, I can handle the 10.5% abv and 550 calories per 12oz pour.  Caitlin, being a lady and only slightly more delicate than me, goes through a flight and orders something lighter.  Pils, or something.

Drinks in hand, we catch up to the rest of the tour, which is actually surprisingly small, consisting of just three other people.  There is one decidedly motherly type, a slightly metal chick, and a kid just out of his teens who is either a skinhead or has alopecia, I can’t decide.

The tour is good, and I’m kicking myself for not bringing a camera.  Even Caitlin, who’s not much of a beer drinker, enjoys herself.

By the time we circle through the facility and back to the bar, it’s 5 o’clock, and everyone who’s just gotten off their shift on the production side is there at the bar.  Bunch of regulars, as well, one of whom sits down on the stool next to me, is asked how he’s doing and is slid a beer before he can finish his sitting.  Bunch of dogs, here, too.  A pretty boxer, a fat and old chocolate lab, and a French mastiff and a Great Dane, both huge, brindled and obviously companions.

I love Great Danes (circa Meredith Wilson, concerning my affinity for the breed: “You know, they only live seven or eight years, right?  Aw, you like the heartbreak, don’t you?”), and this huge, bone-thin and loping lady comes sauntering up to us, and gets a lot of love from Caitlin and myself.

The tour guide comes up, and brings us a couple of double dry-hopped Deviant Dale’s.  The brew is thick and indulgent, the way Oskar Blues likes to do it, and hoppier than hell.  Delicious, but kicking.  Caitlin really likes hers as well, but asks me to finish hers, and drive home.  Well, okay…

We order some chips to try and sober up, and Caitlin flirts with the barkeep, who we both agree is the most attractive person we’ve yet seen in Colorado, male or female.  For all the talk about the generally beautiful health-nut hippie chicks haunting Boulder, I’ve been fairly underwhelmed by the local fauna thus far.  Tipsily, we make our way to the gift shop, and pick out a t-shirt.  Oskar Blues bandana, too.

Back at la casa de Hoffmaster, it’s spaghetti squash for dinner, which is excellent.  But, my mind is elsewhere, me finally getting nervous and flighty, realizing that there’s nothing but sleep between now and tomorrow, when I make my break with the States.

After dinner and a bit of wine, we gravitate towards the living room, where there’s a fire going and the girls are doing homework and Caitlin is reading.  I try to get some writing done, and hope some black tea will help facilitate.  This is a tea family, and everyone else is indulging as well, but with those lesser, caffeine-free varieties.  Everyone balks at my decision to drink black.

But, despite this and my intentions of staying up all night to prep, I quickly nod off, in that cozy environ.

I wake up in a panic a few hours later, being sure that I’ve missed my flight.  It’s quiet and late-seeming, the fire having died down and everyone else having gone to bed except for Caitlin, who’s asleep on the coach with me.

But, it’s only 11:34pm, and I still have hours ahead of me.  I set and double-set and check and double-check my alarms, then put myself down again.

Two hours later, and it’s the same drill: wake with a start and go reaching for my watch or alarm clock or cell phone or whatever.  But still, I have time.

But I know now that I’m not going to be able to get through the night like this.  Better to try and be productive now, and try and sleep on that long flight later.  I try to get up without waking Caitlin but, half-conscious, she murmurs, “Aw, don’t leave me…” Which is a cute and endearing and a little bit heartbreaking of a thing for her to have said.  “Aw” is right.  Aw, Daniel… She’s just a kid.  Well, because I guess I’ve become somewhat attached now, haven’t I?  Even in this short a span of time.  Daniel you sucker, that’s not like you.

Despite these protests, after a wide-eyed hour or so in the dark, I get up, and start making my final preparations.