Here's some more black and whites from my drive north on Highway One.
Pastoral bliss.
The day ended up really funny. I went to the Japanese enzyme baths per an Alaska friends recommendation.
It is shaved cedar and douglas fir fermented in these large vats. The fermentation naturally makes the temperature 130 degrees.
I was lead to a zen little room to drink tea over looking a gorgeous Japanese garden and after twenty minutes, I was naked and covered in fermented mulch.
It was interesting. I prefer the sauna. Twenty minutes of sweating in this stuff that others have sweated in was a little disconcerting. It was more that feeling of being on a sandy beach on a hot, humid day in Florida where you are all sticky and gross and the sand sticks to you.
In the dressing room I met a woman and asked her where to go to dinner. I was thinking of going to Sebastopol as I had heard good things but she recommended a place in a small town up north.
4.5 years ago, I had come to Napa to do the wine harvest just days before my 30th birthday. I knew no one but my housemate/co-worker, Victor, made sure I had a proper birthday. Victor was a U of Chicago educated lawyer who decided he wanted to be a wine maker. I hardly knew him than, but he is one of my favorites now. The fact that he took me out and made my 30th special even though we were strangers was a testament to what a good friend he is.
I walked in the recommended restaurant, the only restaurant in this small town and it was where Victor took me to celebrate my 30th. Small world.
Then I met and connected with fellow instagramer. Oh and early that day, the owner of the yerba mate cafe bought me a mate because we knew the same people. I swear, kismet occurrences everyday here in California.