Week 51- Napa with Quinn and Friends

On Monday 2nd July, in the morning, Quinn and I had more frustrations with trying to watch the tennis at Wimbledon and we also watched the world cup with great commentary from Donny as he didn’t care who scored only that there were goals. Alfred popped by and we decided to go to brunch at ‘Southside’ -a café where Quinn’s friend Sito works. We collected Nakoa and his weed-smoking younger brother and went to the café. Some people ordered food and then suddenly the café started to give us a whole load of free sample-food! Cheese, honey, jam and toast and tomatoes and then also carrot cake, peaches, scones and a cookie for us all to share. We couldn’t believe their generosity so we made sure to tip handsomely.

From there we went to hike ‘Table Rock’ in Robert Louis Stevenson National park. I appeared to be the most prepared with my hiking boots considering there were a number of people only wearing flip flops. The walk to the lookout was nice but not spectacular and I had to be careful of the poison oak. I enjoyed talking to Quinn’s friends but I feel my standards for natural beauty have risen! At the lookout we could see an American flag so I tried to persuade people to bush-bash out to it with me. Quinn and a shirtless Nakoa decided to join. Thankfully we didn’t see any rattle snakes and we got to the flag. Nakoa works in the navy so played the national anthem at the flag, we also debated about freedom in the USA and guns. He decided to try leads us back but he didn’t have a great nose for it and I ended up having to get us back to the trail and safely down. We wanted to go to a pool so got in touch with Samantha. In the end we had no luck and ended up having food at Quinn’s. Quinn, Samantha and I threw the frisbee while Alfred and Nakoa tried to put up Nakoa’s hammock. Quinn and I both got bee stings on our feet so that put an end to our game.

We wanted to go watch the Incredibles 2 with Nakoa’s mum so we went to their house and met the dogs. She decided it was too late so we went to Jamie’s instead to play cards. We first played Tulla and Samantha was particularly bad. When more people joined we played ‘president and Scum’ until we headed home for bed…. To find Heidi having a party!

Tuesday July 3rd, The world cup and Wimbledon continued as England somehow beat Columbia on penalties. Alfred was round once more. After the sport, we all did a bit of a workout before Alfred returned and we set off with Heidi to do a walk up where the cross country team used to run. I think it was called ‘Skyline trail’. We discussed reptiles and planets and all sorts on the way, doing our best to avoid tics. We had plenty of fun and ended up not returning until 20:00 so the gate was locked and we had to climb the fence to get back to the car. After a bite to eat, Quinn and I watched some funny Irish comedy. At some stage Samantha, Jamie, Adrienne and Evy arrived but they didn’t stay long and soon we went to sleep.

Wednesday 4th July, There was no soccer on the TV so I solved the 3 god riddle (with some help from Quinn). This is the most difficult riddle I’ve ever tried to solve and goes as follows:

Three gods, A, B, and C, are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is completely random. You must determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-or-no questions, and each question must be posed to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language. In their unknown language, the words for "yes" and "no" are "da" and "ja". You do not know which word means which. How do you go about identifying the gods?

Feel free to send me an email if you want the answer!

Pleased with ourselves, Quinn and I watched some tennis and worked out. We played some high quality table tennis before going to Trader Joes for basically no reason. We returned and a German friend, Jan, arrived so Quinn and I barbequed some homemade burgers and shared lunch together. Our next stop was Safeway to get food for the evening as it was the big day in America.

We went to Livy’s, a childhood friend of Quinn whose family owns 20 cars and a pool. The party consisted of Quinn, Alfred, Samanatha, Livy, Jack, Evy, Nakoa, Jan, Sito and two of Jack’s friends and Jamie. Quinn and I were undefeated in Beerpong which we played either side of enjoying the pool. Alfred was head of the BBQ as we cooked burgers, courgette and asparagus though I did have to nudge him to take them off. We played a round of hearts where I came second as I stopped someone from shooting the moon. We then played two rounds of Stack cup (one with beer and one with water) which was quite violent. As Alfred lost he had to jump into the pool.

We all wished Jamie a happy birthday and settled down to play kings. It’s a drinking game where a card is drawn and then an action is taken. There were several rounds of never have I ever before Quinn made a rule that if you said the word ‘Like’ you had to jump in the pool. He fell foul of this himself first so headed down in the dark for a swim. This all but ended the game but not before I was caught saying like (admittedly in the correct manner) so had to go swim. Livy then gave us all a tour of her huge house (including the ashes of her pets and mother). I was sitting outside watching the stars when I had to leave to drive Quinn and Jan home. At this point Quinn had managed to rip off his shirt thanks to a combination of music, alcohol and excitement. I was nervous driving home late at night because of checkpoints but thankfully we didn’t pass any and got to bed safely.

Thursday 5th July, It was a slow start for Quinn but I was up at my usual 07:30 to see the tennis and write. Sabine cooked French toast to rival the blueberry pancakes from the day before. Once I had worked out we drove to the beach. Quinn slept while I read and then we went for a long walk and threw the frisbee. At the end of the walk, I was the only one who went for a swim. Having avoided paying for parking, we had to walk a little distance to get back to the car. We stopped to climb some big rocks before finishing home to Napa to eat left over pulled pork. We played some more intense ping pong before seasoning the chicken and making BBQ sauce for dinner. We were so stuffed from eating lunch at 17:00 that at 19:30 we had little room for food. The dinner was delicious (as has been the tradition here). Quinn and I decided to get an early night so we watched some Dara O’Briain before retiring to sleep.

Friday 6th July, We were up to watch France play Uruguay and Belgium play Brazil, along with the tennis. I went running in between the matches and correctly predicted France and Belgium would win. Quinn also decided that his favourite player was Romolu Lukaku. When all was said and done, Heidi, Jan and I went to collect Heidi’s friend Rory to go blackberry picking even though it was far too early in the year for that. As it was somewhat of a fruitless adventure, we went to the Oxbow market. It felt pretty hot out so I decided we should go swim. We met Quinn and Alfred back at Quinns and decided where to go. We found a nice river, changed into swim gear and paddled up stream. We discovered a rope swing and had fun swinging off it and throwing the frisbee but I didn’t swing for risk of my shoulder. After dropping Rory home we had to get ready for the Dolinars coming for dinner. Admittedly Sabine did most of the work as you might expect but we helped. Quinn introduced me to the game of die which involves throwing, bouncing and catching dice on a ping pong table. We had fantastic salmon, corn on the cob and steak for dinner and I also got to meet Jack’s girlfriend Makenna.

At about 20:00 Alfred decided he was going to go and watch the sunset at a nearby park (where they used to have the cross country running races). Suddenly we were all out the door and headed for the park. We missed the actual sunset but it was still pretty and I threw the frisbee for the others to catch. It was briefly lost in a hedge. When the stars came out we started back to the cars. The Dolinars left us and Jan went to bed early. After Jan went to bed, Quinn , Heidi Alfred and I went to a local hotel to hangout with Samantha, her parents and Livy Hynote. We did not dress up enough! While I chatted with Samantha’s parents Quinn and Alfred couple watched with Alfred banging his bare stomach (I'm not sure why but it kept the boys entertained). To make the couple even more uncomfortable, we were in the same lift as them on the way down. We walked home and I got some funny looks for walking bare foot. Once home, I had to say goodbye to Donny as he was heading to Hawaii early in the morning to work with a client. Quinn, Alfred and I hung out for a while until Jan reappeared with an upset stomach. Concerned for him, Quinn helped him out before we settled down to sleep.

Saturday 7th July, In the morning Jan thankfully felt significantly better and after getting a big group picture we said goodbye. Quinn and I watched a little tennis before Samantha came to collect me to go visit her horse Buddy. Everything seems so dry and hard. She loosed him in the big arena first, which was actually quite impressive, before riding for a little while.

When I got back to Quinn’s we had lunch and then collected Quinn’s friend Dom to go to Lake Berryessa where we planned to jump off a big rock into the lake. We collected Dom from Nakoa’s though Nakoa wasn’t there as he was with his girlfriend. Nakoa’s mum showed us what we were to look for and we set off. Eventually we found our spot, walked to the rock and climbed up. When we reached the top we were lucky to find a rattle snake having a snooze in the rock and we were wise enough to leave it alone.

Looking from the top it seemed very high and three of us were pretty nervous about jumping. Thankfully two regulars came and jumped first and then we all followed suit. As I was holding my arm to protect my shoulder I managed to wind myself but it was exhilarating! There was two full seconds of free fall which made it about 20 meters high. I decided to have a have a bit of a break after my first jump but Dom went again and Quinn tried to, but failed. Soon Nakoa and Katie joined us. They were thinking of jumping off the bridge which was even higher, but they wisely decided not to. They joined us on the rock and Katie stepped up to jump straight away. We were impressed. Nakoa and Quinn stuck to a smaller one for the rest. We headed home, dropping Dom to Nakoa’s before Samantha joined us for homemade taco’s for dinner. We talked about going to some Autumn rugby matches and then we did some easier riddles though Sam just fell asleep and didn’t really solve them.

You can see all the photos and videos from my time in Napa here. This album also includes some photos from week 52!