Night Shift

Happy Easter everyone!

Harvest has officially begun at Oyster Bay. Today we received the first grapes, Sauvignon Blanc, at the winery. It's 2:09 AM and I am eating dark chocolate, drinking instant coffee and thinking about how I intend to stay awake until 7 AM. Our 12 hour shifts began today, but I was assigned the day off--we get one day off every 14 days and I was lucky enough to get the first day off. So to prep myself for my first 12 hour shift tomorrow night, I am trying to stay awake until 7 AM. I have already painted my toes, plucked my eyebrows, went for a run, went to the local pub for a few drinks with a couple of my housemates and now I am wasting time on the computer.

Today I went for a nice 5 mile run around the countryside of Renwick. I love running here because I am surrounded by vineyards and hillsides. On a side note, it is quite funny to see how the kiwi's manage birds in the vineyard. They actually drive around on a gator/tractor and shoot shotguns to try to scare them away. There are funny signs posted "Shooting in Progress". I have witnessed these shootings firsthand and honestly the birds just fly from one side of the vineyard to the other side. It is quite entertaining. I have signed up to run a half marathon in Christchurch, New Zealand after vintage ends on June 1st. Between working long hours at the winery and running and training, I should keep myself busy and get back into shape so I will be ready for this year's Chicago Marathon in October.

I am thinking about doing another vintage in the United States this fall. I am looking at either Oregon, Washington or somewhere in the Midwest. I would like to be an intern at a smaller scale winery so I can have more responsibilities and variations of job duties. I have applied to a few wineries and will see what happens over the next couple of weeks. If anyone has any connections, please let me know.

Well, I am going to work on captioning my photos so I can post them here and on Snapfish.

Good night!
Becky