Charlie Brown and Laser Spies
I am in Napa and Sonoma counties this week for work and before anyone feels sorry for me you should all know that I am staying in a hideously disgusting resort and seem to have found all of the boorish and deformed tourists to be found anywhere in Northern California. If you made an airport bar a "resort," this would be it. For starters, it is in a parking lot right next to the main highway from Vallejo to Napa. My "restful" room on the second floor has a balcony but sitting on it is hazardous because of the highway fumes and the glaring lights from some sort of truck stop or something right over the hill that is supposed to make me feel "nestled" in Napa Valley or something. The interior is decorating in 1950s Horror, everything smells a little off, and I was so repulsed I didn't really want to take a shower because that would allow the air in the room to reach more of my skin. I slept the first night with lots of clothes on so that the sheets would not get too close to me. Etc. You get the idea.
The staff was surprised that I was not wandering around in resort-induced bliss. They tried to lure me out into the parking lot and ply me with lousy food. "No, no thank you." I looked out into the parking wistfully hoping to find a car there that would take me away. And then I had an idea -- "Dear pleasant concierge, there is something you can do for me." "There is?! He said brightly. Do you want to rent a bicycle to go for a ride (around the parking lot)? Or take a walk through our (flimsy) vineyard (that clings to the berm we built to hide the highway)? Or can I interest you in a (corn-fed, feed-lot raised, anti-biotic laden) burger (on white bread with mayo)?" No, no, thanks. "But can you get me a rental car delivered right to the door to be here within the hour?" His crest fell. "Yes, yes, I can do that."
I was free!
But what am I doing here, you may ask? Why? Well yesterday I had to go teach a bunch of spy-laser-engineers about laser regulation. I happen to be one of the world's leading experts in the subject. The other expert is my colleague who actually does all the work and then teaches me what I need to know about laser regulation so that I can go on fabulously wonderful business trips such as this. These laser spy people work in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, nearby, so I drove through Sonoma (beautiful) and the Valley of the Moon (beautiful) to this place right next to the Charles Schulz airport (yes, the man who invented Charlie Brown). I passed famous vineyards like Kenwood and Chateau St. Jean and B.J. Cohn and Chalk Hill and the Charles Schulz museum.
I alighted at the laser-spy station and spoke for two hours to these people who barked things like "Are there any foreign nationals in the room?" and "what about our death ray laser disintegrating human vaporization tool -- is that legal?" I talked for two hours about how virtually everything they do or think is out of compliance with any known laser regulation but that it's all probably okay because their only real customers are the Pentagon and the Border Patrol and that when push comes to shove those guys generally get to import whatever they want but please please call me if anything goes seriously amiss. The laser-spy-engineers all shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Then the hands went up. Turns out plenty had already gone seriously amiss. Sigh.
Then I had time to kill before dinner so I toodled around in my little rental and drove around the vineyards and looked at all the weird hills out here that look like muppet heads with little mops of live oak trees wigs on the tops and I watched the rain and I parked under a live oak tree on a dirt road for a while and took a little nap and then drove around some more and realized I had absolutely no idea where I was. Then my laser-spy-engineer client called me and told me what time dinner was and then he asked me where I was. "At this moment, if you must know. I am lost. Somewhere in Sonoma County, other than that, can't really be more specific. I see grapes and live oaks and little hills. Does that help? No? Oh. But no worries! I have no reason to think that being lost will make me late for dinner!" He seemed skeptical. And then he seemed truly shocked when he walked into his hotel lobby half an hour later and indeed, there I was, sitting placidly, right on time. A gas station had helped me. "I'm lost," I announced to a Citgo man. "No you're not," he said, "you're right here!" Indeed.
And then we had dinner in the historic railway section of Santa Rosa, right across the street from a park with a statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, right down the street from the giant image of Woodstock in his Red Baron costume. Everything good was closed (of course) so we ate in a cavernous whiskey bar. The food was totally mediocre but the whiskey -- ah! The whiskey! I learned all about rye whiskey and can now say with confidence that I LOVE RYE WHISKEY! The restaurant was very happy with me. My laser-spy-engineer client ordered an unusually large bottle of wine all for himself that was not really even on the menu. He saw it in the bottom of a cupboard of some kind across the room and said, "can I have that one instead?" It was very good. A meritage. So now I know what a meritage is and can sound wine-
knowledgeable at a moment's notice.
And my laser-spy-engineer client regaled me with hilarious stories. Such as how in his youth his company relocated a facility in The Netherlands, a building designed to attract light because there is none on the North Sea, to Venezuela, a country virtually suffused with light and not much else. This light-attracting building performed very well in sunny Venezuela and got a little, uh, warm, due to all the light and stuff. So he was sent down there to figure out how to cool it down. He succeeded in cooling down the warm, light building, and was so successful that every snake in a 100-mile radius promptly moved in underneath it because it was so lovely and cool under there. But he didn't mind. He said it kept the rodents away.
And then I had to drive back through the Valley of the Moon to the Horror Resort.
And you may still be asking WHY? WHY IS SHE STAYING IN THE HORROR RESORT? Because today through Thursday I am part of a biotech venture capital conference that is being held in the Horror Resort. Again -- WHY? Because, it turns out, there is no place any good anywhere in Napa or Sonoma counties large enough to accommodate our little biotech venture capital group. Which is not really that big a group, to be honest. So, clearly, I must build one. I could make millions...millions! Why has no one thought of this before? A nice conference resort in a nice place very close to another nice place (San Francisco) with wine and whiskey and spies and hills and live oaks? I could be rich! What are these people up here -- morons? Are they sitting around doing nothing but reading Peanuts cartoons or something?!
Sigh.
The staff was surprised that I was not wandering around in resort-induced bliss. They tried to lure me out into the parking lot and ply me with lousy food. "No, no thank you." I looked out into the parking wistfully hoping to find a car there that would take me away. And then I had an idea -- "Dear pleasant concierge, there is something you can do for me." "There is?! He said brightly. Do you want to rent a bicycle to go for a ride (around the parking lot)? Or take a walk through our (flimsy) vineyard (that clings to the berm we built to hide the highway)? Or can I interest you in a (corn-fed, feed-lot raised, anti-biotic laden) burger (on white bread with mayo)?" No, no, thanks. "But can you get me a rental car delivered right to the door to be here within the hour?" His crest fell. "Yes, yes, I can do that."
I was free!
But what am I doing here, you may ask? Why? Well yesterday I had to go teach a bunch of spy-laser-engineers about laser regulation. I happen to be one of the world's leading experts in the subject. The other expert is my colleague who actually does all the work and then teaches me what I need to know about laser regulation so that I can go on fabulously wonderful business trips such as this. These laser spy people work in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, nearby, so I drove through Sonoma (beautiful) and the Valley of the Moon (beautiful) to this place right next to the Charles Schulz airport (yes, the man who invented Charlie Brown). I passed famous vineyards like Kenwood and Chateau St. Jean and B.J. Cohn and Chalk Hill and the Charles Schulz museum.
I alighted at the laser-spy station and spoke for two hours to these people who barked things like "Are there any foreign nationals in the room?" and "what about our death ray laser disintegrating human vaporization tool -- is that legal?" I talked for two hours about how virtually everything they do or think is out of compliance with any known laser regulation but that it's all probably okay because their only real customers are the Pentagon and the Border Patrol and that when push comes to shove those guys generally get to import whatever they want but please please call me if anything goes seriously amiss. The laser-spy-engineers all shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Then the hands went up. Turns out plenty had already gone seriously amiss. Sigh.
Then I had time to kill before dinner so I toodled around in my little rental and drove around the vineyards and looked at all the weird hills out here that look like muppet heads with little mops of live oak trees wigs on the tops and I watched the rain and I parked under a live oak tree on a dirt road for a while and took a little nap and then drove around some more and realized I had absolutely no idea where I was. Then my laser-spy-engineer client called me and told me what time dinner was and then he asked me where I was. "At this moment, if you must know. I am lost. Somewhere in Sonoma County, other than that, can't really be more specific. I see grapes and live oaks and little hills. Does that help? No? Oh. But no worries! I have no reason to think that being lost will make me late for dinner!" He seemed skeptical. And then he seemed truly shocked when he walked into his hotel lobby half an hour later and indeed, there I was, sitting placidly, right on time. A gas station had helped me. "I'm lost," I announced to a Citgo man. "No you're not," he said, "you're right here!" Indeed.
And then we had dinner in the historic railway section of Santa Rosa, right across the street from a park with a statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, right down the street from the giant image of Woodstock in his Red Baron costume. Everything good was closed (of course) so we ate in a cavernous whiskey bar. The food was totally mediocre but the whiskey -- ah! The whiskey! I learned all about rye whiskey and can now say with confidence that I LOVE RYE WHISKEY! The restaurant was very happy with me. My laser-spy-engineer client ordered an unusually large bottle of wine all for himself that was not really even on the menu. He saw it in the bottom of a cupboard of some kind across the room and said, "can I have that one instead?" It was very good. A meritage. So now I know what a meritage is and can sound wine-
knowledgeable at a moment's notice.
And my laser-spy-engineer client regaled me with hilarious stories. Such as how in his youth his company relocated a facility in The Netherlands, a building designed to attract light because there is none on the North Sea, to Venezuela, a country virtually suffused with light and not much else. This light-attracting building performed very well in sunny Venezuela and got a little, uh, warm, due to all the light and stuff. So he was sent down there to figure out how to cool it down. He succeeded in cooling down the warm, light building, and was so successful that every snake in a 100-mile radius promptly moved in underneath it because it was so lovely and cool under there. But he didn't mind. He said it kept the rodents away.
And then I had to drive back through the Valley of the Moon to the Horror Resort.
And you may still be asking WHY? WHY IS SHE STAYING IN THE HORROR RESORT? Because today through Thursday I am part of a biotech venture capital conference that is being held in the Horror Resort. Again -- WHY? Because, it turns out, there is no place any good anywhere in Napa or Sonoma counties large enough to accommodate our little biotech venture capital group. Which is not really that big a group, to be honest. So, clearly, I must build one. I could make millions...millions! Why has no one thought of this before? A nice conference resort in a nice place very close to another nice place (San Francisco) with wine and whiskey and spies and hills and live oaks? I could be rich! What are these people up here -- morons? Are they sitting around doing nothing but reading Peanuts cartoons or something?!
Sigh.
posted by Anonymous @ 1:13 PM
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