Saturday night we were snowed in. Summit County can be a bit iffy with lots of snow: luckily, one of our fellow in-snow-ees had his laptop with him. We were able to plan an upcoming trip to Moab, grab the ski report for Sunday, and accomplish a bunch of other random tasks by using his computer. That’s the good thing about a laptop.

The bad thing about a laptop is that we all tend to use it in places and areas (hot tub!) where it doesn’t belong. If you happen to be enjoying a fine glass of wine while checking your weather for a ride, or your email for riding buddies, and an accident occurs: here’s what to do if you spill liquid on your laptop.

IN the beginning, there was cooking wine. And Americans cooked with it, and said it was good. Then, out of the darkness, came a voice. Said Julia Child: “If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one.”

I do enjoy the over(-fermented biblical) tones which introduce the other Julia’s New York Times article concerning whether or not a costly wine tastes better in a beurre blanc than simple cooking wine, and I thank her for undertaking the cost of patronage herself; however, while a verse parody is warmly welcomed (and readily grasped, to be sure), for complete saturation I would have chosen a different Rubaiyat. That is to say, Omar Khayyam’s.

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in the Nothing all Things end in — Yes —
Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be — Nothing — Thou shalt not be less.

Or, more famously:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Back to food, and less of writing or wine, I agree — cheap wine works fine. If I were a poet I’d write a quatrain, or a few hundred, about the verisimilitude of expensive drinking/cooking (gasp!) wine and cheap drinking (gasp!)/cooking wine.

Mark Anderson, 58-yrs-old from Sausalito, has been charged with arson in a fire that destroyed as much as $300 million worth of wine at the Wines Central warehouse in Vallejo. The blaze stunned the California wine industry, with over 90 wineries storing much of their merchandise at Wines Central.

What made the fire particularly devastating was the fact that many wineries housed rare, vertical collections at the warehouse. These wines are irreplaceable, and blaze put a dent in the historical production of many California wineries. In a particularly egregious example, Saintsbury lost the bulk of its older inventory dating to 1979.

Arrest made in 2005 wine arson via CalWineries Blog

There is an instructable over at Race Day Nutrition (a site I still haven’t quite figured out), which covers how to make your own bicycle light. This one looks pretty good, albeit a bit pricey ($80.00 in parts?).

Make covered this story so it has to be good.

I do have a penchant for the 180s, but if you’re not keen on shelling out the dough (psst… people with access to REI, they’re on clearance for $5.00 right now!) these “bike helmet ear warmers” seem like they fit the bill, and we here at WineandWheels.com always appreciate home-distilled versions.

Ernest Gallo, co-founder of the wine producing giant E & J Gallo, has passed away in his hometown of Modesto, California at the age of 97.

Some highlights:

Immediately after the US repealed prohibition (1933), along with his brother, Ernest established Ernest & Julio Gallo.

They found their recipe in a California Public Library

They have given millions of dollars to both political parties

Everything else you need to know is here.

Some great photos of Georgia Rides to the Capitol over at Timothy J’s Flickr page. The event is held:

[in] order to raise support for the development of a regional-scale bicycle network of both on-road facilities and multi-use-trails, and a pedestrian network focused around major transit facilities and activity centers and near schools.

Take a look at the photo set and keep riding!

In another life, many moons ago, I was a purveyor of wine for weekly dinner parties. After a while, needless to say, the cost caught up with me. Right about that time I discovered boxed wine. 5 liters! For (then) $7.99! Woot!

Now, we here at WineandWheels.com feel that there is nothing wrong with saving a few dollars. However, we also feel no need to be ashamed of budget wine. And, there are times when only a boxed (well, make that bagged) wine will do — recently back from a backcountry ski trip, we can attest to the convenience of not having to pack out empty glass bottles of wine. In short, these boxes to hold boxed wine and dispense boxed wine are ridiculous. That’s all there is to that. Sorry if you were looking for brilliance or divine intervention on this one.