Today's column is not a lot about sports, unless you consider that every place visited on vacation found an incredible enthusiasm and interest in the World Cup, at least until the USA was eliminated.
The USA was playing while your trusty scribe was visiting Healdsburg, Calif., in Sonoma County, and it is truly a beautiful little city with an absolutely great town square.
It has an eclectic collection of shops and some very nice eating places. On that day of visiting, if they had a TV, it was packed and no one was going back to work, at least not while the match was in progress.
We found a table almost in a corner with a not-great view of the television, and the people sitting around us were not Americans, yet, they were pulling for Team USA and not because they feared for their lives. Healdsburg is not that type of town.
On the previous Saturday, we watched Colombia win from Boudin's on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and the table next to us was a celebrating group of Colombians who were on vacation. Boudin's makes perhaps the world's best sourdough bread and the bread bowls come with some of the world's best clam chowder . Visitors devoured the bread bowls to make more room on the table for glasses of locally brewed beer. The more glasses, the bigger the celebration.
We had taken the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) in from Oakland and used public transportation to get to Fisherman's Wharf. From there, we decided to walk to Lombard Street, allegedly the most crooked block in the world with eight hairpin turns. It is not open to local traffic.
The problem was we walked up Hyde Street, which was like climbing Pike's Peak on your hands and knees. It put the "S" in steep. At the top, a policeman looked me in the eye and asked, "Are you crazy dude?"
Actually, I had asked myself that on the first day when I voluntarily drove down Highway 1 from Monterey to Santa Maria. Let me put it this way, I'm afraid of heights and had no business making that drive. I pulled over six times to let traffic pass and to take pictures. It took me four hours to drive 83 of the 175 miles. A guy driving a motorhome blew his horn at me to go faster.
We went to Santa Maria for one reason, to tour Presqu'ile Winery, which exceeded our wildest expectations. It was not only the best wine and tour, but all the others had nowhere to go but down. But the one in Napa that had a tram ride to the visitor's center was fun.
If I ever decide to go to California again for wine tours, I will just go to central California where it turns out 58 percent of the grapes grown are shipped to Sonoma and Napa. You could start in Santa Ynez and then have easy drives to Santa Maria and Paso Robles and not find better wines.
Be sure and visit the Hearst Castle and take Highway 46 from 101 to 1, it is a breathtaking 22 miles.
Also, it is a lot less expensive for food and lodging.
We did all the touristy things like Muir Woods, where there are beautiful redwoods, the Golden Gate Bridge and, of course, a trolley to San Francisco's Chinatown. We saw tons of homeless people in San Francisco, and it seemed like everyone of them had a dog.
It was walking from Chinatown to the BART station that we overheard a man sitting on plastic box talking to a young guy say, "I'm thinking about trading the hotel room I've had for six years for an accordion."
No, we had not been to a winery that day, just seeing the sights and watching the World Cup with new friends from all over the world.
Sports on 07/08/2014