Of Lodi

I actually got back from Lodi on Saturday night, but I haven't really gotten a chance to write about it until now.

Now, I know you're going to ask, so I'm just going to get it out of the way. The interview went about as well as it probably could have. I honestly don't know my chances of actually getting the job, and I'm not going to offer speculations in this medium. I'll just say that they should be letting me know in the next week or two.

Back to Lodi. Lodi is located about an hour south from the Sacramento Airport (which is on the north end of the city) in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley.
On my way down I passed through Elk Grove, a burgeonung suburb of Sacramento which reminded me a lot of Maple Grove back here in the Twin Cities. Lot's of new construction and shopping centers typical of American suburbia.

Lodi is a relatively small town of about 60,000 people. They have a cute little downtown area (pictured above) filled with all kinds of restaurants. The outskirts of the town are lined with the same suburban-like shopping centers, which includes just about everything one would need. This includes an In-N-Out Burger which was a new experience for me. Fairly decent burger and extremely fast.

Once you get out of town it's vineyards as far as the eye can see (the picture was taken from my car while heading down the highway, so I apologize for the crappy quality). Lodi is home to about 85 wineries, most of which offer tastings either for free or for a nominal charge. I visited one that was recommended to me called Michael & David. I went in to taste a couple of their white wines and ended up tasting just about everything they had in stock. The girl just kept giving me samples. She was really helpful though and I ended up buying their three-pack which includes the 7 Heavenly Shards (Chardonnay), 7 Deadly Zins (red zinfandel), and 6th Sense Syrah, all of which I approve of. And I don't normally even like wine. I also bought a bottle of a late harvest symphony from the Lodi Wine & Vistors Center, which was promised to be very sweet and very good.


So Lodi is a nice little town. Pretty quiet, though I am told it has the second highest incidence rate of car thefts in the state of California (the highest being Modesto not far to the south). It is fairly close to San Francisco and really close to Sacramento where the Govenator lives, though. It also isn't too long a drive to the mountains or the ocean. And despite the pictures depicting clouds and rain, I was told that it is actually very sunny most of the time. Sounds nice.