Wine and volleyball

Torsten and I went out to Virginia with our friend Nick on Saturday afternoon to visit a vineyard and enjoy a wine tasting. Two other couples, also friends of Nick's, came along, so it would have been four couples except that Nick's wife was sick and couldn't make it. It is interesting, though, how once you're in a couple, it's so easy for your social life to shift to doing all sorts of things exclusively with other couples.

Anyway, it took us a long time to get going because there was some sort of triathlon in DC in Saturday and all these different roads were closed, and so everyone was stuck in traffic trying to get to the meeting point, and even those of us who were on the Metro were thwarted (at least, I was) because there were delays and shared tracks all over the place. So we left at around 2:00 instead of 12:30 as originally planned. But the weather was gorgeous and we still had time to get to the vineyard before it closed, though we didn't go as far away as we had originally planned.

I am not much of a wine drinker, but wine tastings are good for me because I can taste a little wine without having to drink a whole glass. Because when I have a whole glass of wine, the taste becomes more and more unbearable for me. Usually I wind up not being able to finish the glass.

But oh man, Virginia vineyards seem to specialize in sweet wines or something. There were 10 different wines and five of them were impossibly sweet, like disgusting grape juice. By the end of the tasting, my tongue was very angry at me. But then we went to a charming restaurant with a great bar and had a good time. And the nighttime drive back was very nice and relaxing.

And of course, I took pictures (full set here):





Sunday was a good day, too--I got up early and went to volleyball "practice" with my coworkers over in Rock Creek Park. The "team" is just a few people from my company, none of whom I know because it's a rather large company, playing in an intermediate-level rec league once a week. It was very hot because we played outside, but luckily the actual games will be indoors, in school gyms, so one outdoor practice isn't the end of the world. And I learned that even though I haven't played competitive volleyball since high school, I haven't forgotten how! I can still serve! And hit! And receive (at least as well as I ever could)!

Our first game is on Wednesday. And Torsten will be coming to cheer us on, so we'll have at least one (and probably only one) fan. But he claims he's bringing an air horn, so it'll sound like lots of fans.