Making wine for real

As many of you know Lori and I have been making wine at home for many years, however, the reds that we make have not been all that exiting. So, we have decided to up our ante and make it at a facility close by called the Cherry Hill Wine Room.
At the wine room they provide all of the wine making equipment and ingredients (crusher, destemmer, wine press, yeast, grapes, etc.) This year we are making a combination wine called a Trilogy (cab. sav., merlot, and cab. franc) After the grapes were crushed and destemmed we pumped them into this giant container were the yeast will be added for fermentation; here Lori is stirring it up.

Rides at the stratosphere

While in Vegas the four of us decided to ride the rides at the Stratosphere hotel. The unique thing about these rides is that they are set up on top of the Hotel which makes them over 1100 feet high. In the videos you will see Rob and Rod riding the Big Shot and also riding the X-scream. Then you will see Rob and me riding the big shot. We didn't get any video of the third ride with us on it, only a quick vid of someone else. Note: I know our names are confusing but keep in mind there were #3 Robs and #1 Rod on the trip. last note, you will notice a bit of arm swaying/dancing, this was a signature move create by Rod.

Vegas

Rob, Rob, Rod, and I are in Vegas for a few days. Here is a picture of them standing out front of the Pawn shop from Pawn Stars from the history channel. It however, was not as cool as we were expecting, for those of you who know the show Chumley was there. We then went to the Stratosphere but due to the wind the closed the rides, maybe tomorrow.

Bermuda

We just got back from a five day cruise via the Explorer of the Seas that left out of Bayonne, NJ. We hit a lot of rough seas which caused Lori a little extra time in the room, but once we reached Bermuda the weather was perfect. We didn't actually have a lot of time in Bermuda, but we choose to fill up our days by going on two excursions. The first one was a tour of the dockyard on our own personal Segway.

If you have never had the opportunity to try one- DO IT. They were extremely easy to navigate and only took a few minutes to master. The only drawback was they maxed out at 12.5mph!


After the Segway tour we decided to rent a single scooter and tour the island at our own pace. We have heard plenty of daunting stories regarding scooters, but we went for it anyway. Driving on the opposite side of the road was a little challenging, but I had Lori constantly in my ear telling me "STAY LEFT, STAY LEFT" We rode up the coast and made it to Hamilton, which we learned ever so quickly why we didn't want to stay due to the overwhelming traffic. We turned and hightailed it back to Jobson's Bay for a little romantic walk on the beach- sorry no skinny dipping for us!

The next day we arose very early to reach our next excursion which was the Hartley's Helmet Dive, after a 30 or so minute boat ride, we got in the cool blue water (and our heavy helmets) and descended into the coral reef. Under 10-12 feet of water there was a strong current, but our guide kept us tethered and showed us around the reef pointing out the sea life and allowed us to handle his "trained" local fish Stormin' Norman. The neatest part was when I was given a piece of coral to hold and Lori was given bits of squid on her fingernail and she held the squid just over a hole in the coral and a little itty bitty blue crab came out and snatched his snack from her. (all the while I was being nipped from the other side of the coral buy the rest of his clan!)

The Ship- Awesome dinner companions!! We sat with three other couples, we had such a good time with them that it seemed we ran to dinner and the staff was pushing us out to make room for the next seating. The casino wasn't nice to us, it was a bit smokey and we had more fun in the arcade playing Galaga! We did manage to have some free champagne by attending the onboard art auction and we did purchase two small pieces and a third as a present. We did have a smoother ride home for the most part, but they tell us we encountered a very strong storm, yet due to our wine coma we didn't feel or hear it.

Any cruisers here is a tip- Sign up for the express check out. It was great, we were off the boat within minutes and in our car within 15.