So in response to being overwhelmed We took a road trip over the last day or so - riding to Paso Robles, having a brilliant dinner there and riding home.
We stayed a great B & B (nameless at the owner's request - but email me and I'll tell you all about it), had a great dinner at Justin Winery, and had one hard leg up - riding the freeways to get to Paso after work on Thursday - and then a brilliant ride back on back roads.
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The B & B was where TG and I stayed on our abbreviated honeymoon, and the owners remembered us - we'd ridden our motorcycles up and walked to all the wineries within three or four miles of there. When TG and I rode up, they remembered us - as well as the story of one of the other couples staying there who had coincidentally been heading to a concert at Disney Hall the afternoon we were married in the garden there, and had seen the end of our wedding.
What are the odds? It's a 3-room B & B...
We discovered Justin by driving randomly around the roads a few years ago on a trip we were taking in the car. Wine tasting is difficult on a bike, since we have an "eight hours bottle to throttle" rule we've borrowed from some of our pilot friends.
Justin makes great blended reds, and all of their wines are far more than well worth drinking...we wound up joining their club (we love wine clubs...great wine just shows up!). They have one of the most beautiful wineries on the Central Coast...here's the view from our table.
So dinner was beautiful and great food...hospitality warm and comfortable...and it feels like the angst of the last two weeks has been pretty well washed away.