Faithful Hound

Meet the newest Texpatriate!  Although his name is still in testing phase, he is definitely already a part of the family. A great pyrenees/blue heeler mix with a noted oral fixation and fear of his reflection, this lil guy has already increased our sense of responsibility and "parenting" anxiety by 1000% in just a few days time.

On the his first night, we broke out a wine we had been saving for the occasion, "The Faithful Hound" by South African producer Mulderbosch.   Rated 4 stars by wine guru John Platter, it paired perfectly with our low brow pizza and helped us try to forget the wailing pup back at the apartment suffering from a bit of separation anxiety.

So bienvenidos to our new companero on the journey and feel free to send more good wine our way to help us cope with the joys of training our faithful hound...

J'Adore Paris!

That's right folks, that's me, in the shadow of one of the most famous buildings in the world, shivering, with frozen toes and a steely reserve not to wait in line to ascend to the top of the tower to gaze upon the snow covered city below.

My week-long trip to Paris to visit Michelle and Joseph, students of the French language and tour guides extraordinaries, was too short to say the least. Despite Michelle's ability to keep me awake for longer than I had ever thought possible, I still feel as though I barely scratched the surface of the culture-packed French capital.  Visits to major museums, shows, excellent restaurants, cathedrals, monuments, and innumerable wine bars only left me with the feeling that I must come back.  And that I must learn a bit more French before doing so. 

Here are a few photo highlights from the trip:

Les amoureux at the Arc de Triomphe

The IM Pei pyramid at the Louvre

Checking in with some of the 6 million residents in the Paris catacombs

Running on pure adrenaline (and a bit of champagne) after lots of traveling and little sleeping

Too hungover for more champagne the next morning at Moet & Chandon?

Never!

Le Moulin Rouge

Feeling the love in the City of Lights

Jimmy Cup 4: Retribution

Retribution has been acheived. No longer is a Galvin ceremoniously drinking out of the 3 foot chalice of ancient lore. After two long years, a Drakeley again owns the Cup and there are no plans to relinquish the crown for years to come.

Here are some images of how it all went down:

The former champ enjoying one last drink out of the Cup.



 Yep, we get celebrities. Bobby Carpenter was in full effect at Jimmy Cup 4.

Mack made his presence felt by taking home the Chutch in his first appearance while Marie added some tough East Coast flavor to the event in her debut.

All smiles from a former champ and her competition.  Glad they had a good time, but they should consider adopting Mike's more focused intensity if they want to regain the title next year.

 The face of a bald eagle fueled champion triumphing over Mom Galvin.

Jimmy Cup 5 should be interesting...



Texas Two Step

I've been lucky to have had not one but two trips to la patria in the past month.  The first trip was strictly a ladies weekend, full of wine drinking, outfit changing, and artistic photos.

The second visit was to celebrate the wedding of two of Jared's MBA pals: Sam Brown and Melissa Sprinkle.  Being an MBA event, the party wouldn't have been complete without a theme and corresponding costumes.

 

The Texas-themed rehearsal dinner had more than a few interpretations of what a "Texan" might wear, but I still feel pretty confident about our choice to go dressed as the "Jean King and Queen."

 

Down yonder in Texas town, we ran into few familiar faces and had a few laughs.

Sometimes Willie just puts it best, so to Texas we say: if you've got the money, honey, we've always got the time...

Dinner and a Movie

Although we had always known it was pretty awesome to live right on one of the most popular parks in town, the stars aligned on Saturday night and its awesomeness was skyrocketed to a whole new level.  To make a perfect San Francisco evening follow the following recipe:

Add 1 brand new mini-grill

 A very excited and often well prepared crowd

An awesome movie

and a handful of good pals

Mix well with a generous portion of alcohol and voila! a perfect Indian Summer night!

White wine extravaganza

Cute picture, huh?  I thought so too. Unfortunately it is the only picture from the Sauvingnon Blanc festival in Costantia last weekend that is acceptable to post. 

We have truly found friends here that fit our style, there is no doubt about that.  Not content to accept the unlimited offers of free tastings from the 30+ wineries on site that day, we decided to make it a competition to see who could con the hapless winery representatives into giving us full bottles instead.  Now we have quite a charming group, so when we stumbled walked away from our area after the sun had set that evening, approximately a dozen empty bottles littered the ground.  Add that to the unlimited tastings, the pre-event cocktails, and the totally necessary after party, and you get one excitable group. 

So, if any of you readers were nervous that it was all work and no play here in Cape Town, think again. 

Life, as advertized

When booking our champagne sunset cruise in Knysna during the Drakeley's visit, I have to admit that I got a bit nervous when remembering how the previous sunset cruise had turned out.  Luckily, this nautical journey was less "A Perfect Storm" and more like this Grey Goose commercial which demonstrates clearly how awesome is to have a lot of money and drink straight vodka.  Just kidding.  What the commercial actually shows is how awesome it is to be out on the sea on a lovely day with good company.  It doesn't hurt to throw in a little bit of bubbly and some live oysters either.  Luckily, our cruise around the Knysna lagoon supplied both. 

Although for a short moment, it did look as though things were going to get a bit rocky as the captain steered us toward the crashing waves of the open sea, we remained in the lagoon for the duration of the journey, with not a drop of water splashed.  Easily the highlight of the trip was learning about the oysters from the captain: how and where they are grown, and how to tell if they are good to eat.  I was happy to know that there was actually a way to tell if an oyster is bad or not.  Up until that time, it had previously seemed a bit like russian roulette for me when choosing that particular menu item.  Jim, on the other hand, did not seem reassured that your gastrointestinal fate was in the hands of a kitchen staffer.  Whatever your stance on the indulgence of bivalve mollusks, I have a feeling that just about anyone would have enjoyed this cruise. 

Ringing in 2010

For me, New Year's Eve was truly a celebration as I was given a break from my planning duties and the only thing I had to organize was transportation for our party of 10 to and from John and Liz's house in Camp's Bay.  Our ever-gracious hosts had organized a lovely soiree to bring in the New Year and were happy to include my entourage of 9 in the festivities.  Not wanting to be ungrateful guests, we arrived with no fewer than 9 regular-sized and 3 magnum-sized bottles of champagne.  Tack on a bit of white wine, some vodka, a bottle of bourbon and 10 good-timin' Americans and I think that pretty much any party would have been happy to have us. 

The evening started out pretty normally but later devolved into a strange hybrid of costumes (see Modern George Washington and Kim Jong Il, left) and blooper-filled dance routines.  But then again, I guess that is actually kind of normal for our group....

Happy New Years to all that were not able to join us and if these pictures are not enough to convice you of the fun times that await when visiting us, I am not sure what will.

Champagne Sunset "Cruise"

Champagne? Check.

Sunset? Check.

Enormous waves soaking all passengers in freezing sea water? Check.
Prayers to return to shore ASAP? Check.
Experience that is funnier once it is over and the anger and trauma have died down? Check.

To me, the champagne sunset cruise was a no brainer.  Our group would get to go on a boat, drinks would be taken care of, and everyone would get to see the city from a unique angle while watching the sunset before we rushed off to our dinner reservations. All for about $25 per person.  Perfect Christmas present that would result in memories, rather than material items. 

And, boy, did it result in memories.  This was easily one of the funniest events of the trip, with everything going terribly wrong and calling into question my (thusfar) flawless planning skills.  First we were late. Then they made me trek all over the stupid waterfront harbor in my carefully selected (champagne casual but boat practical) wedge heels. Once we got on the boat, we were, of course, last aboard and there weren't enough seats.  Certainly not together.  Nevertheless, we were all on board and I began to relax and look forward to the champagne and lovely views.

Unfortunately, things did not work out that way.  As soon as we got out of the harbor, the wind and waves picked up dramatically.  The little sailboat began to lean perilously to one side ("totally normal" says the captain) and the first waves began to crash onboard.  Luckily, Joseph secured some of the few available blankets for our group.  Tara, Kelly, and I huddled together and tried to "turtle" inward to create a warm, dry shelter.  Jared and Mom got to bond a bit under a shared blanket as Michelle, Joseph, and Michael clung to the more perilous, but drier top level.  Somehow, between Kelly trying to calm herself by repeating, "this is fun, it is just like Six Flags" and moving the blanket just enough to stick our glasses out for more champagne, we spy Dad examining the bubbles in his champagne glass from the warm, dry boat cabin.  How he became the only passenger to secure this position is unknown to us, but lets just say that it didn't create any warm feelings in our turtle shell. 

Exiting the boat, everyone was soaked to the bone and shivering.  Nevertheless, this was easily overshadowed by the hilarity of a Champagne cruise gone terribly wrong.

Christmas in Cape Town

For Christmas, our fellow ex-pats invited us to join them for a lovely Christmas lunch at Backsberg wine estate in Paarl. Although it wasn't exactly what I would normally think of as a Christmas lunch (traditionally for me this means mimosas and bourbon balls at Aunt Linda's), it couldn't have been a better way to spend our first Christmas away from home.

Tour d'Bubbly

Some of our faithful blog readers might think that the only thing that we do for fun here in Cape Town is go to wineries.  Well, I am here to tell you that it is not all fun and games.  We embarked on our most recent tour with a noble mission: find a suitable amount of quality bubbly to quench the thirst of the New Years Eve army.  Jared and I took this mission particularly seriously since we knew that our particular NYE squadron would consist of no fewer than 10 thirsty Americans.  Luckily, we had a random national holiday and a seasoned group of tasters on our side to ensure that the mission was a success. 

And what a success it was! One winery was even nice enough to stack all of our bottles into a Christmas tree formation!

Just kidding.  We didn't buy that many. But we bought quite a few bottles of the sparkly stuff and even walked away with three "magnum" sized bottles (take a wild guess whose idea those were...).

Looking for a scapegoat

Looks innocent, doesn't she?  Well if that is the case, why did she make us stay up drinking until 4 am at her house, yet again?  I am sure that it has nothing to do with the generosity and graciousness of her owners as hosts, the stunning setting of their house overlooking the sea, and nothing at all to do with their impressive South African wine selection...

Sorry Roxy, until I can find another reason for last weekend's insanity, you are to blame.

What Happened?

Everything started out so sophisticated and mature....  Here's Jared, reading from the famous Platter's guide while comparing notes on the lovely offerings at the Thelema vinyard.  Glasses were swirled, subtle notes detected, aftertastes lingered upon...

I would like to recount exactly what happend next, but I am not sure that I can do that very accurately as the details are a bit hazy.  I remember a lovely lunch at Tokara, complimented by two bottles of the finest Thelema Chardonnay, the successful German Wedding cup challenge, and well... sometime after two more wineries and a lot more wine, the ride back to Cape Town ended up looking like this:

Now you might notice that a certain guest from Texas is missing from this lovely photo collage.... and that is because not only was Libby talented enough to hold a camera in one hand and the wine bottle in the other, but also because she was smart enough not to turn the camera on herself!

Together Forever!

Its confirmed: Jared and Lindsay are going to be together forever.  Although the wedding was quite an important step in this process, the German Wedding Cup was a challenge that we had been putting off for fear that we might not be successful and the marriage would be cursed.  Although we were actually given one of these beautiful silver cups as a gift for our wedding by David Zwerner, we had yet to drink out of the glass.  For some reason, we decided it was a good time to try after a few visits to wineries on Friday.  Despite the wobbly start, it was a success- not one drop spilled and our union remains solid as a rock.

Our New Favorite Old Show

After two hard days of work into the week for Jared and two days of random miscellany for Lindsay, Tuesday night is a good time to settle down with a nice glass of wine and watch a bit of TV.  Lucky for us, we have found the perfect drinking buddy in Keith Floyd, British cook, author, host of "Floyd Uncorked" and all-around wino.  Jared and I stumbled upon this gem one Tuesday night on the Travel channel and have set aside time out of our week to catch his latest exploits.  Floyd is far more interested in drinking wine than learning about it and constantly interrupts his side-kick and wine expert JP as he tries to explain the impact that something like terroir can have on a wine.  Naturally, after seeing a few episodes of this classic (which seems to have been filmed in the early nineties by the look of JP's pants), we wanted to learn more about this mad genius and his over-indulgent ways.  After quickly searching the internet, I had some news. Nervous about Jared's reaction, I insisted that he have a drink in his hand before I would share what I had discovered: Keith Floyd recently passed away.  Now, we considered performing the ritual pouring a bit out of our glass "for the homies," but then we remembered who we were honoring and realized that Floyd would never waste wine in such a silly manner.  Instead, we tilted our glasses skyward in memory of a fallen great.

Cape Town – The Beginning

When Jared proposed writing a blog so that our friends and family could keep abreast of our adventures while abroad, I have to admit that I wasn't totally gung-ho about the idea. Bloggers, in my mind, were weird little people that spent all day at the computer over-analyzing political/sports/fashion minutia or self-absorbed types that thought that everyone was really interested in what they were up to today. Obviously, at some point I came around to the idea. Despite the fact that we both have facebook, skype, gmail chat, and send regular emails, there still seemed to be a bit of a gap, which we hope this blog will fill….

So to help you get an image of this foreign African city that we live in, I'll offer this simple description:

"The town and the surrounding area are SO pretty. Tons of palm trees, a massive blue ocean and big, funny shaped mountains in the background"

….but we'll tack on a nice aerial tutorial photo just for kicks:

Our new city:

So, now to summarize the first 3 weeks and change since we have arrived. Here are a couple quick-hitters:


Driving Lessons – Three 2-hour sessions with our quiet and not so assertive driving instructor Sam. The first of which we didn't learn of until 9:00 AM (1 hour before the start) after having gone out for a celebratory sushi/sake dinner into shots and beers with some new friends of ours (who happen to be from Dallas…can't get outside the bubble if you try). Happy to report zero incidents, but it was quite a painful time. Ultimately we did so well that they gave us an upgrade on our company car.

Our New Ride:

Mouille Point (pronounced Moo-lee) – This is the lucky segment of the never-ending Cape Town coast that will be our home base until March. It has an old iconic red/white striped lighthouse (for you historical landmark fans), a putt-putt golf course (no Peter Pan Mini-Golf…doesn't even have a T-Rex), a creepy hedge maze, and a jogging path that features Cape Towns fittest coeds. It isn't really a beach, rather more of a rocky, ocean plant repository, which isn't too disappointing because the Atlantic coast is insanely cold. For beaches, we just need to make a scenic 15 minute drive to Camps Bay where all the rich and well-to-do like to reside. For good reason too. So other than the ocean, we have once again managed to find a place that has construction going on next door (4th year in a row). This project is a bit more interesting though, cause it is a new golf course surrounding the new World Cup stadium. Plus the construction workers here wear cool matching uniforms: teal pants with fluorescent yellow vests, red pants with yellow vest (a.k.a. the ketchup & mustard) or my favorite, the all-orange jumpsuit.

Our Apartment Views:

Chevron – so in case you guys really just don't listen very well, this is why we are here. My job is going well so far. Nothing of great appeal to discuss, but I will say that even working in a predominately English-speaking work environment can be confusing. Just because my co-workers speak English doesn't mean they want to. Most would rather chat in Afrikaans (Dutch-originated, sounds rough at times like German), Xhosa (a tribal language for an African subset that features the stereotyped 'pops' and 'clicks', and grab-bag (could be anything, bottomline is I don't understand it). Another challenge for me has been remembering and understanding names. With the two aforementioned groups and a large Indian/Malay cultures here, your Johns, Mikes, and Daves aren't as common. Other than that, I am just working on digesting how my hugely complex company operates and enjoying it thusfar. 

Lindsay's Boot Camp – Basically she works out in paradise so please don't feel too sorry for her. My office building is not quite this nice. I don't even have a window, actually I don't even have an office to have a window in.

Lindsay's Gym in Camp's Bay:

Food – They have it all. Seafood is the easy standout, being near the ocean and everything. But, they also churn out mean hamburgers, pizzas, bread (kind of random, but they make fresh loaves everywhere and they are really good), and most interesting of all: the game meat. So lets talk highlights: Namibian oysters (huge and crazy delicious), Kudu biltong (the most complex and multi-flavor-dimensional jerky I've ever encountered), Royale Cheeseburger (top 3 all-time burger despite Euro ketchup), Pinotage wine (cheap South African red wine that never disappoints). 

What is a Kudu you ask?:

Heritage Day – So week two of work I learn that Thursday is a national holiday, which was an awesome surprise. Combined with the fact that I had four days off my first week and I have every other Friday off work as part of the local Nine Day Fortnight policy, this allowed me to keep my streak of not yet working a full 5-day work week alive. It appears that the streak will end though during Week 5, but I am still holding out for another surprise. So what did we do on Heritage day you ask? Well if you noticed Mexican food wasn't really on the list of food highlights above, so we decided to celebrate our Texican heritage by whipping up some breakfast tacos and homemade salsa while jamming out to Buena Vista Social Club (do yourself a favor and pick up their greatest hits….the album is uber choice). Overall big success. So well in fact that we are going to self-cater our Texas/OU party in a couple weeks. We just need to find some margarita mix and good tequila.

Wine Country – For our first weekend jaunt out of town we drove to Franschoek to do a little bit of rigorous R&D on behalf of our upcoming visitors. As for location it is about an hour west of Cape Town and maybe 15 minutes southeast of the better-known Stellenbosch. It's a smaller more quaint town with a fewer number of wineries, but this makes it easier to maximize your wine intake. It was quite cloudy and rainy when we were there which allowed us to focus more intently on examining the wine. All together we sampled 27 wines, and left with 10 bottles as to run further tests on.

Research Team:

 

Whale Country – On the way back from Franschoek we decided to go through a town called Somerset West and visit Monkey Town (a megaplex of monkey madness from what I hear), but due to some horribly placed construction, we couldn't figure out how to actually enter Monkey Town so we called an audible and drove an extra hour in the opposite direction of Cape Town to catch the end of Whale Fest in Hermanas. Again, David Finfrock's nemisis was against us as we arrived in a cloudy downpour. There was lots of traffic and it was really hectic getting into town so with that and the rain we just ran into the first hotel/restaurant we saw, which happened to be this over priced white table cloth place.  As much as we weren't in the mood for a fancy meal, we decided to just wait out the rain and traffic there, knowing that lunch would take three hours.  Luckily, the hotel totally redeemed itself when we learned that Brad Pitt had stayed there a few years ago.  Moreso, it redeemed itself because it had huge windows looking down on to the ocean and we could see whales from there!!   We saw a mom feeding a baby (or what someone told us was a mom feeding a baby because we could only see the fins and backs rolling around next to each other), and about 5 or 6 other active types that were flipping their tails around for us.  It was pretty crazy….they must have known it was whale fest. To make things even better, on the drive home we were able to see a troop of Baboons running down the highway effectively filling that monkey void created from the Monkey Town tease. All together it was a pretty solid weekend.

Hermanus, a.k.a. Whale Territory:

Football – So I know that the suspense has been building the whole time you have been reading, asking "when is he going to address the fact that despite the scenic backdrops, exotic food, and all around badassness, that they are missing out on an entire NFL and NCAA season?" Well here it comes. So thanks to the miracle workers that invented the Slingbox (slingmedia.com … look it up) and African DVR technology I am proud to report that we have missed zero Cowboys games and only 2 Texas games (only because they weren't on DirectTV in Dallas). Yeah so we know that Romo is playing like a chump right now, Wade's man boobs are looking good, Jason Garrett is not a hot commodity anymore (sweet double quick fades on the 1 yard line), and everything is good so far with the Horns. 

Animal Watch – So being in Africa it wouldn't be right if we didn't keep a running tally on the animals that we have seen while we are out and about. So far here is what we got so far:

• Whales – No big deal, just a couple mom/child Southern Right Whale combos
• Mongoose – quite a tail on those little guys (no pix, dude was way too quick)
• Cape Hyrax – Evil looking fella, kind of like a fat groundhog
• Baboons – these guys are like a creepier, roided-out Chimpanzee

Cape Hyrax:

Baboon: