I firmly believe that nice guys don’t always finish last and the loudest one in the room does not always win the conversation. However, sometimes even nice guys needs to raise their voice, put douchebags in their place, and make a stand.

A few years ago, Union Wine Co was the first on the scene with their line of Underwood cans. It had a slow start. People were skeptical, consumers were rather confused, and shop owners had no idea how to highlight such a product on the shelf. "In what world could wine taste good out of a can?" they thought.

I LOVE when people tell me I can’t do something, when people are convinced I am less than, and when people have no qualms about saying shit like that out loud to my face. I love it, because I love proving people wrong.

One particular night I found myself waxing downright poetic about NYC and why it’s amazing and awesome and insert other overly positive adjectives here. It made me realize that even though I’ve traveled all over the US, I just can’t help but write about New York first.

This return road trip from California to New York definitely got the better of me and I completely without-a-doubtedly slacked in keeping up with my blog posts. But fear not!

I regret everything I thought about doing but was too chicken to do. Everything. All because I doubted myself in that moment for whatever reason and had that little voice in the back of my head that said “you can’t do this” or “you shouldn’t do that” or “you don’t deserve this” while trying to work out the pros and cons. You know what I think? Fuck that voice.

And for god’s sake, on the ingredients list of literally everything they sell, how could they not list “Idaho potatoes” instead of just boring old garden variety “potatoes” from wherever.

There are so many things that I take for granted as given. Having a warm bed to sleep in at night, seeing the future as full of possibilities for my career prospects, knowing that if I wanted to I could live almost anywhere and find a way to make it, but also knowing that if I happened to fail I always have family that would help me to pick up the pieces.

Working a 12-hour night shift in a wine cellar is bound to make anyone temporarily insane. I’ve been living the 7pm to 7am night shift life in Napa as a wine harvest intern for the last few weeks now and I have a few tidbits to share on how to make it to the other side with your wits in tact.

They involve telling the truth, or at least my version of it, and being totally and completely and brutally honest with a bunch of people that I wouldn’t normally bare my soul to on a regular day. Sometimes they involve fantasies - what you wish the world could be, your life could be like, or what the next 24 hours could hold if Covid wasn’t a thing anymore…

So you’re working your first wine harvest! You’re excited and doe-eyed and can’t wait to (figuratively, hopefully) get in there and stomp those grapes with your bare feet. If you Google “wine harvest attire” it will return a plethora of semi-useless results. Take some lessons from me, a current first time harvest cellar worker, and learn from my infinite wisdom aka all the mistakes that I made in packing.

At the risk of being berated for encouraging travel during the time of Covid when we are all supposed to be social distancing within our little corona-bubbles and stopping the spread, here is what I learned on leg one of my cross-country road trip from New York to Cali.

After a long day of traveling and being uncomfortable and not getting enough sleep I have very few fucks left to give until I’m finally in the place I’m trying to get to. It doesn’t matter how awe-inspiring and unique these places are, or how excited I am to get to my final destination. Eventually, I just hit a wall.

Who knew that a rock carving started almost a century ago would give me all the feels about this country, where it is today, and what it means to be American in the Trump-era.

To reiterate: I’m here, by myself, eating dinner, watching loads of people maybe 50 feet away from me having a great Saturday night out. But honestly, the being alone bit doesn’t bother me in the slightest right now because the people watching here is absolutely nothing short of amazing.

So I know I said I would be posting regularly on here and clearly I lied. Let’s just say that making a cross-country road trip stifles the ability to think clearly and formulate words into sentences at times.

My US road trip Covid-edition 2020 from New York to California officially began at 6:15am today! The real plan was to leave at 5:30am to miss all the city traffic but you know what they say about best laid plans and all that…

There I was at the far end of the kitchen, foot just barely touching the kick pad of the flip-top garbage can. My friend was standing a mere five feet away, ready to pass me a cork that would ultimately (hopefully on this attempt) end up in the garbage.

I have a plan! For those of you who are new here, I’m embarking on a semi-crazy summer-of-Covid adventure to the West Coast and back. My new and significantly improved plan has two exciting changes…

For those of you not in the wine world, workwiths are essentially forced day-long blind dates where you are expected to take a supplier representative from a winery or producer around with you to all your best accounts so they can present their wines and hopefully (fingers crossed) make some sales so they can go home happy.