Do I feel lucky?

A few years back, 2004 to be exact, The Wife (then just friend) and I were thinking of something to do for President’s Day weekend, which included Valentine’s Day as the first day of the long weekend.  We are the anti-Valentine’s Day crowd, not that we are opposed to the sentiment but rather it is opposition to the price gouging consumerist event it has become.  After some discussion we decided to spend the three days in the Napa Valley.  We decided that if the weather was good we would do it as a bike tour, and if the weather looked like it was going to be bad we would just drive up for the weekend.

As that weekend approached the weather forecasts kept switching between rain and no rain, and our plans kept shifting with the forecasts.  By that Friday the forecasts had narrowed down to a good start of the weekend, but increasing clouds on Monday with a storm coming in on Tuesday.  Armed with that information we decided to take the bike tour option and prepared our bikes, packed the panniers, and mapped out the route.  After a final check of the forecast on Saturday morning we departed from my place in Mountain View and rode to Millbrae to catch BART to San Francisco where we could catch the ferry to Vallejo.  The weather was wonderful, sunny and bright through this part of the trip.  From Vallejo we rode north to Napa, where we ate lunch, then continued on to the northern part of town where we had room reservations, all while a few high clouds starting to move in to the picture.  After checking in at the Inn we checked the weather forecasts again; it had changed slightly, now with the storm coming in late on Monday rather than Tuesday.  Not what we wanted to hear, but still not a problem since we planned on returning home by mid-day on Monday.

Sunday we spent riding (aka dodging cars) through the main part of the Napa wine country, heading north along roads through the hills west of the valley, then down into the Highway 29-Silverado trail corridor of vineyards and wineries, with short ride up towards the Pope Valley after lunch.   It was overcast all day, that is until we left the last winery we visited and headed south back towards our accomodations in Napa.  During that stretch we started to get a light drizzle, but nothing we could not handle.  And by the time we left to walk out and find dinner that had stopped, so still no major weather concerns.

In the middle of that night it became apparent that the weather forecasters had missed the mark, as I woke up to hear a steady rain outside.  Oh well, we had come prepared with rain jackets, water proof socks, and enough experience to know that a little rain was not the end of the world.

By the time we awoke on Monday morning the main part of the storm was starting to move in, and by the time we had some breakfast and were ready to leave it was right on top of us.  This was not your garden variety storm, though.  Later news reports were that the rain that morning was coming down at the rate of 2″/hour, which turned out to be quite a bit more than the storm sewers or the river could handle.  In hindsight, I should have gotten a taxi to someplace where we could rent a vehicle large enough for us and our bikes.  But we were crazy enough to ride in that mess.  We had to wind our way through flooded streets, detour around road closures, go through water hub deep in places, and then brave a few miles of Highway 29, to get to the Vallejo ferry terminal.  Of course, rain gear was all but useless in those conditions and we were soaked within minutes of leaving the dry and warm refuge of the Inn.

This coming weekend will be the five year anniversary of that trip.  And, by coicidence, we have decided to head north again, this time to Sonoma County.  The primary objective determing the location is we want to see the Tour of California Women’s Crit on Sunday, the 15th, in Santa Rosa.   So we will do our small Valentine’s Day/President’s Day weekend in wine country once again.   I wonder if I should suggest that we do it as a bike tour?