Sunday Matinee - "Nights of Capiria"

As a dedicated cyclist my Sundays follow a pattern. You could say they were set in a certain way. I wake up at my usual time, make coffee and a batch of waffles, then read the Times and hang out till about 9:oo. Then it's time to tog up and hop on the bike for three to five hours of riding. It goes without saying that I'm not very energetic or productive afterwards. This past Sunday followed a very different path as Karl and I had done "The Fig" counterclockwise from Los Olivos on Saturday. After four hours and 5,500 ft of climbing Sunday was set to be a day of rest. I ate breakfast early then did a few chores around the house. At 11:00 I lit up a Habana and settled onto the front porch to read the paper. It's been a very long time since I've smoked a cigar with the Sunday Times. The deeply nostalgic flavor of the smoke carried me back to my thirties when after breakfast nicotine was a common activity. After that I walked downtown to the theater to see "Nights of Capiria" the Fellini movie that sits between "La Strada" and "La Dolce Vita". What a wonderful movie, and especially as I have never seen this gem before. The films that bookmark it I have seen countless times, but somehow I had missed this masterpiece. There's something about these Italian movies from the '50s that really appeals to me. They are so human and so fantastic at the same time. People talk about Fellini's surrealism, but really he's just portraying the circus of the human heart in all its strange flare lit beauty. I arrived home about 3:00 just as Heidi and Zoie were arriving so we all sat down to an impromptu lunch of bread, ham, cheese and red wine. It seemed in keeping with the mood of the movie somehow. An espresso followed as I still needed to run some errands and cook dinner. I didn't feel all that great later in the evening as the wine and coffee wore off simultaneously, but I regret none of it.

The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino

On Sunday night we headed out to the movies. We looked at previews online and the Italian movie "The Great Beauty" looked like the best on offer. The preview was charming, and since adolescence I've always been a sucker for subtitled movies. They make me feel somehow more sophisticated and worldly. The movie exceeded expectations. It was lovely, strange and thought provoking. Unlike so many Hollywood movies, this movie left much up to you in terms of filling in the blanks and making your own judgments. It was adult in the best sense of the word. In particular I loved how the dream sequences were presented in a factual episodic style just like the waking segments. It was only the strangeness of the dreams that made you realize what they were. In some ways it is "La Dolce Vita" for our time, but unlike that film it focuses on literary vs. cinema types. The main character is a charming rascal - full of wit, intelligence and some amount of malice, both towards himself and others. This movie made me want to stay up all night long and take up cigarettes once again. After the movie ended and we were walking to get a drink Heidi said to me, " I feel like that movie allowed me to see inside your head." A great compliment indeed as the protagonist's head contains a complex landscape. I left the film resolved to dress better.

seasonality

The weather this fall and early winter have been great for cycling, but terrifyingly dry from a wine-growing point of view. The rainfall is the lowest ever recorded for most California locations. A persistent ridge of high pressure over the Great Basin lead to this and it now seems it has finally broken as we have had two rains in the last five days. I am ever the optimist when it comes to farming, but I doubt very much that we will reach even half of normal rainfall. As the two prior winters were on the dry side of average as well we've got quite a bit of salt built up in the root zone from irrigation. This will likely not get flushed out this spring. A great concern as well is whether or not the aquifer that we depend on for irrigation will hold up through the late summer and fall period. My transition to cycle commuter could not have been easier so far this year. A few cold mornings was all I've had to deal with the last three months. This morning it was just starting to drizzle in town at 7:00 when I started out, and by the time I reached the winery the road was dry. I essentially just out ran the storm. Within a few minutes of arriving it began to rain in earnest and it has been raining lightly and steadily all day. Sometime in the next hour or so I'm going to head home. It looks to be a wet one. It is good to keep Rule #9 in mind, "If you are out riding in bad weather it means you are a badass, period." while it is not one of my top priorities to be a badass, I will take credit where due.