Souvenir's

In recent barossa happenings, I'm starting to put together my Souvenir's from Australia. Now I know i'll be here for another 2 months plus, but its never to early to start to get organised. I'm going to be bringing exactly 14 souvenirs home from Australia. I know what your saying, "14, what, thats so many you damn american consumer". 12 of them are bottles of wine. I'm focusing on wine from my winery and from smaller but still of great if not better quality than the bigger production facilities. A lot of the wines I can find in the US if i look hard enough and contact their disrtibuters. So it makes sense to ship home a case of wine that I could not for any reason get in the states. besides, it will be great having that wine for years to come as a reminder of this time in australia. souvenir #13, and rightfully numbered 13 is going to be a coopers t-shirt. I'f you have ever had coopers, you would understand. #14 is one that needed a bit more justification and the right timing. I'll set the stage for you. Matt and I are having a lovely day driving down to Adelaide. 25 (75 f), a few sporatic clouds. All of the vineyards sense the impending fall and have begun their sunset like color transformation into dormancy. We stop in at our favorite brewery for a pint of pale.  Adelaide is no different, people happily bustling about, jogging, biking, consuming, drinking, strolling, purchasing, chatting, and living: the best are doing up to 4. Matt's intentions in adelaide was to get a big ass cuban cigar for his harvest party, mine intention was of similar financial value yet not nearly as enjoyable as crossing another task off my bucket list. (already crossed the cuban cigar off, I mean, why not) I was finally going to make it to a store which might help me with my computer problem, and by problem I mean that is probably dead. 3rd store later i find the one that can help me with a mac, the only thing they tell me is that for 75 dollars they can send if off and have it diagnosed. I'm not going to pay them 75 dollars to tell me what I think I already know, that being that the hardrive is shot. So I have resigned to having it looked at once im back in the states. Thank you apple for providing me with a trendy, (typically) userfriendly, slightly overpriced and currently oversized paperweight to lug around australia for the next 70 days. The irony is that i'll take it in to the apple store and some genious will wave his hand over the top fixing it instantly. However, aside from maybe not being able to recover all my data, not having a computer as a constant pull is kinda a nice thing. I'm not neccisarily being more productive, but i'm not sucked in to its vortex pull all the time. An hour on the computer is an hour on the computer, whether your in australia, austria, or austin matters not. back to the main topic at hand, consumer spending for nostalgias sake. Upon deciding not to spend the 75 on what I think is a failed endevour, I walked down the road to Adelaide Hatters and purchased souvenir #14, An awsome Akubra Hat.  This is my awsome Akubra
Now for those of you who dont know Akubra, It is the Stetson of Australia. here you will find a link the Akubras Wikipedia page, and Akubras home page. take a minute of your time rediscover envy.

The Coorong, by Akubra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akubra

http://www.akubra.com.au/


For those of you not wanting to click further, Akubra hats are made from rabbit felt (if my hat gets red paint thrown on it I swear I will eat nothing but meat for a week). Being made from rabbit felt they are water proof, and offer great sun protection, which if you know me, I need all the protection I can get. Another easy justification for purchasing this hat is that I will be spending an increasing amount of time out in vineyards. So why not get a great souviner that serves me a functional purpose back home. I anticipate that I will get a lot of good use out of this hat. 2 cool facts about this Akubra. As I wear it the band inside the will shrink and fit to my head. Cool fact #2 is that this style is made specifically for the Adelaide Hatters where I purchased this hat. Any store that has a large enough stock gets to stock their own style. this the Coorong, is named after a large lake/estuary at the end of the Murry river seperated from the ocean by a very long sandspit. I have seen the Coorong. So its an Australian hat, purchased in south australia at a store only selling that syle named after a famous south australian natural landmark that will go to great use as my vineyard time increases. Great Souvenir.
As for other happenings, work is fine, still doing a lot of cleaning and post vintage rackings and wine transfers. It will be nice to see a winery relax after vintage and what the "normal"workload consists of. The beer that Matt and I are making is progressing along nicely. we set out to make a cascadian dark ale and ended up with more of a hoppy porter. to quote my mother, "oh darn right". We are calling it Heaps Good Beer because South Australians say the word heaps heaps. Its somewhat of a running joke. Couple more weeks and we will be sharing it around, so more on that later.  Also i'm formulating travel plans, like for real this time. The only epiphany is that I'm looking to take the train from destination to destination, might take a little longer, but i could potentially bring my bike, its a more oldschool way to travel, and I would get to see a lot more of the countryside. I'll make my next blog topic about what the travel plans are in more detail.
I'm off to bed, raving for breakfast again tomorrow near from 166 year old shiraz vines. should be fun. I'll leave you with a sweet video that Cam sent me not so long ago. Its all people from burning man reciting different lines from the good Dr's "Oh the Places You'll Go". enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahv_1IS7SiE