Yesterday, for our anniversary, we took a trip up to the Lake County wine country and then back to Healdsburg where we had a great dinner at Cyrus. (Except my scallops were over-cooked, boo!) Anyway, in thinking about what makes a successful marriage, I want to share some of what we talked about during the ride in the car.
1. We started off we discussing the energy shortage in California a few years ago and how it was partly true and mostly manipulated by energy suppliers like Enron.
2. This brought us to the topic of Ken Lay, recently deceased. Or is he? John thought maybe he was offed by his friends in the oil industry and politics – a permanent gag order. I thought maybe he isn’t dead at all.  You know, private funeral and all. Way to keep the profits in the family.
3. Then we had a little quiet time while we negotiated the crazy drivers on the freeway.
4. As we are passing Robert Louis Stevenson Park, John asks, do you think his friends used to call him Bob-a-Lou? I countered with whether Bob was a nickname for Robert at the time. John rejoined with the fact that Robert Peel founded the London police force in 1829 and the policemen were nicknamed “Bobbies.” Okay, but maybe Rob was more of the nickname. Possibly true, John said, since Elizabeth I’s paramour, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was nicknamed Robin.
5. Along the stretch of road where the park is, I noticed some rocks jutting out of a cliff. I said, “You don’t usually see rocks in this part of California because, (and we said this together), they are part of the “incompetent Franciscan formation.” And we laughed. Okay, this is geeky to the max. John and I have traveled the West with our set of Roadside Geology and are always referring to rock types, escarpments and subduction.
6. To follow this up, we wondered, as we passed by,  if Mt. Konocti were volcanic and whether it was part of the Cascades or whether Mount Shasta was really the most southerly.
7. Over lunch, we noticed a fellow with a McDonnel-Douglas T-shirt with the Delta I, II & III rockets on it. This evolved into a discussion of airplane engines and the energy efficiency of high bypass turbine fan engines.
8. Then we got a great nugget of info about a racehorse named Stymie at the Steele Winery. Apparently, the father of the guy who founded the winery moved his family to California on the riches he received on a bet placed on a horse named Stymie. (He was a bookie) The son was able to buy the winery after finding boxes of cash after his father passed away. We talked about that for a while.
9. That kind of led to, how much money is rich? It used to be that a millionaire was a really rich person but now they’re a dime a dozen, so to speak.
10. We also asked the woman at the winery if Mt. Konocti ( see no.6) was indeed volcanic. It is.
So I guess this is why we are married 34 years. We still find talking to each other endlessly fascinating. No tunes, no talk radio for us. We are still enamored.