Week 7: Light on the horizon

The winemakers know it. Everyone can feel it. The end of harvest is coming. There is a combined sense of hope that all of these 12 hour shifts have not been in vain, that we all have contributed in some way to making decent wine, and that someday soon, we will return to only working full time (that is, only 40 hours a week.)

It has been an interesting week. I have still been helping out the yeasties on inoculations and ferment rounds, but it only took one week for the novelty of ferment rounds to lose its appeal. Inoculations are still fun though, you never know what the yeast are going to do, since every tank is different; some yeast go crazy, while some yeast only slightly bubble. However, I am happy to say that none of the tanks that I have helped inoculate need to be re-inoculated. It’s good to know that with all of my new responsibilities that I am doing something right.

This last week, some of us were fortunate enough to have a day off. I say “fortunate,” because the moment that the head winemaker found out that the winery manager was giving us breaks, she put an end to it. And as it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones.

What did I do with my one day off? To quote facebook: “first day off in 3 weeks. The plan: pack a lunch, grab my swim trunks, and bike until the map turns blue :-).” Damn right, I went to the beach.

It turned into quite the adventure. I rented a bike from Duncannon, and hoped the beach would only be less than an hour ride to get there. It turned out that getting to the beach took about two hours, and even then I was not supposed to swim there, due to the steepness of the beach. When I rented the bike, I was given directions to “White’s Bay,” which is the closest beach to Blenheim that you could swim at. The directions I was given at Duncannon mentioned that I would need to bike over a very large hill to get to White’s Bay, and as I was biking, I can remember not seeing a large hill, but remembered a small mountain getting closer as the kilometers passed by. By the time I got to the base of the “large hill,” I was completely exhausted, and was no shape whatsoever to bike over it (especially not on the bikes that Duncannon loaned me, the seat on my bike was quite uncomfortable and I didn’t want to spend any more time on that thing than I absolutely had to.)

Even though I didn’t make it all the way to White’s Bay, it was far from a wasted trip. On the surface, it was a great ride through some very beautiful country (yes, the weather was cooperating yet again.) The valley that Blenheim resides in is unlike anything I have ever seen: It is completely flat (and I mean table-top flat) all the way up to the mountains which surround it, and it seems like the vast majority of it is covered with vineyards (the rest of it is cow and sheep pastures). My bike ride was almost completely uninterrupted after I turned off of Highway 1; it was nice to have the road to myself. There was an unusual amount of police car traffic that day for such an unpopulated area; I never found out what they were all doing out there, though naturally my mind immediately flashed to the movie Fargo.

I even made a discovery. Just north of Rarangi (I’m not sure I spelled that right, but I spelled it how it is pronounced), the town bordering the small mountain I was supposed to bike up, is a place called Monkey Bay. I seriously debated sharing this all with you, there are some places that I feel that the fewer people know about the better, in order to preserve them. Monkey Bay is probably only known to the residants of Rarangi and any local rock climbers, the reasons are obvious if you ever find yourself there. I’m not sure why this place in particular struck a chord with me, maybe it was the combination of the beautiful day with the arduous bike ride and my need to simply get away and be alone for an afternoon. Maybe it was because I found a low cliff shaped like a chair in that I was able to climb up to and eat lunch, while I stared out at the Pacific Ocean. Maybe it was the cave in the back of the bay, which at low tide could be explored. Maybe it was all of the seashells, or the trees, or the fact that on a clear day you could see the north island of New Zealand from the shore. Maybe it was because the Pacific Ocean is turquoise, I don’t know. All I know is that in my seven weeks here, and of all the places that I have been thus far (not too many mind you, but still), I want to go back there the most. I want to go back and see the sun rise on the Pacific. I'm excited at the prospect, I think I may have to work that into my master plan.

There is something very significant about sun rises for me, “spiritual” isn’t the right word, but it’s the only one that comes close (yes, that was a Chuck Palahniuk reference). I truly believe that every day is a new adventure, or can be if you let it. That may sound like a line out of a motivational speaker’s routine, or something out of a preschool sing-along, but hear me out. It doesn’t matter if you have had the same job for ten years, or are backpacking abroad with no real plan to return home, at any point during an otherwise ordinary day, a novel event may take place. In fact, these events happen every day. This event could mean nothing, and you would ignore it like you would a bird in the sky. On the other hand, this event could mean everything: it could challenge you, make you question everything you thought to be true, could alter your perspective on the world around you, and color your perceptions every day henceforth, and so on. When the later happens, the only question left to ask is: What now?

You need to make a choice.

Your actions at that moment, your choice, will become part of you.

Then life as you know it will change.

And so the sun rises on your new adventure.

When I sat down and started writing this blog, I did not expect it to get this heavy. But this has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and there is only one reason as to why: It has been close to four months since I finished my applications, and I have yet to hear a positive response from any of the PhD programs that I have applied to. At the moment, I just want to know for sure if I am going to be in school for the next 5 years, or if I am going to need to fill my time some other way; I’ve been hanging in limbo for what seems like an eternity and I’m sick of it. My head is in all sorts of crazy knots when it comes to graduate school; I hinted a bit at this in my last entry. It’s almost as if life will be simpler if I get into graduate school: sure it will be difficult and all-consuming, but I also get to put off “adulthood” for another 5 years. If I don’t get in, I will have to get a job and become a full time productive member of society. The strange thing is that I am actually looking forward to the later; it’s the former that I’m on the fence about. It’s a big mess.

But for now, all I can do is wait.

Take care everybody!

-DK