Perhaps the single most important thing to remember when you arrive in Gramogliano, the village you’ll be staying at in Friuli because the Corno di Rosazzo Agriturismo is too lovely not to, is that, if you did just fly all the way from the Western side of the United States, you’ll be tired. Your host will be wonderful, and your room will be better than you’d imagined, but, still you’ll be tired. So, when it comes time to rinse off and refresh in the shower before beginning the week’s activities, keep this in mind.

click on comic to enlarge

Cause, here’s the thing. When you get into the shower after the water has gotten warm enough, and you haven’t slept for over 24 hours, and you’ve been sitting off and on in that same period for 20, suddenly in the warmth of the water a red handle will call out to you. You’ll smartly see it is dangling there at the end of a long cord, and your eyes will follow that cord up to an attachment in the wall that shows the cord is some kind of switch. That is, when you pull the cord, it DOES something. But in your fatigue you won’t be sure WHAT IT DOES and so you’ll pull the red toggle handle. You’ll grasp that red toggle handle tenderly in your palm, wrap your fingers around it and then pull down. Then, when nothing happens, you’ll pull more. Then, when STILL nothing happens you’ll pull again, and then again, standing there in the steam and relaxing heat of the warm water, so relaxed, just pulling down steadily on the cord. Eventually you’ll be tired enough that your absent minded attention on the red toggle handle and the attached cord will fade, and you’ll slip out of the shower and into the king size bed. And you’ll sleep as if you’re dead it is so deep.

Then.

In the midst of the death sleep.

There will be banging. Heavy banging on your door. Panicked steady banging. Banging that will not go away though you try to dream it off again.

It will turn out in your comforting relationship with that red toggle handle you will have been pulling steadily on the “I died in the shower and you cannot revive me but please god you will try cause I am a wine blogger” emergency alarm.

So, again, just remember: you are tired.

***

Thanks so much to Alfonso Cevola for connecting me with Jeremy Parzen for this trip, and for Jeremy for first inviting me, and now putting up with me on it. I really will try not to get so enticed by that lovely red toggle handle again this week.

To keep up with the group blog writing about our adventures through Colli Orientali del Friuli check it out here: http://cof2012.com/