Tent for Wine Festival in place at the K1 Gondola Base 

Work is just about completed to prepare for the Seventh Annual Killington Wine Festival which is to be held this coming weekend. Overall, at last count, 261 wines were scheduled to be poured at the industry and public tastings scheduled for Thursday and Saturday respectively at K1...and that does not include the wines selected for the Reserve Tasting on Friday Night at the Killington Grand Hotel.

On Wednesday, a large tent was erected in the base terminal area of the K1 Gondola. 90 or so wines will be served in the tent during the festival. In addition, the tent will also feature a cash bar, and live music with performers from the Killington Music Festival.

But the tent is not the half of it. Work was also completed on Wednesday at the restaurant on the top of Killington Peak. Multiple bottles of 171 different wines were loaded on the K1 Gondola in preparation to being poured during the event. With the weather forecast indicating a nice weekend, with any luck I will be able to find several nice new wines to add to the inn's wine list.

If you can't make it to Killington this weekend to sip some of the grape, then at least keep it in the fairway... and don't forget your sunscreen.

The Killington Wine Festival returns for a 7th year. 

The 7th annual Killington Wine Festival returns to Killington this summer from Thursday July 17th through Sunday July 20th. Vermont wine distributors have invited over 30 wineries from around the globe to participate in one of the summers signature events produced by the Killington Chamber of Commerce. 300 different wines will be sampled over the course of the event.

The festival begins with an Industry Tasting on Thursday the 17th. Hotels, restaurants and bars from all over Northern New England have been invited by their wine sales reps to participate in this unique multi-distributor wine show.

The weekend kicks off for the general public on Friday evening at the Killington Grand Resort Hotel with a wine tasting of Estate and Reserve wines from some of the world's leading winemakers. This event will take place from 6-8pm on the Terrace Patio. The price is $50/person and reservations are recommended. Food for the event is being sponsored by US Food Service.

Also on Friday evening: The Crush Jazz and Wine Bar unfolds poolside at the Grand Hotel at 6pm. As the sun slowly sets behind the slopes of Killington, a truly spectacular setting, enjoy sipping wine and listening to jazz. Come and meet the vintners behind some of the weekend's wines. Admission is free, wine is being sold via a cash bar. Appetizers for the event are sponsored by Sysco Food Service.

The Grand Tasting at 4241' starts Saturday afternoon at 1pm at the base of K1 gondola. A huge tent filled with wineries from around the world will be set up at the entrance to K1, where about half of the wines for the event will be sampled. After circulating through the tent, take the gondola and rise 4,241 feet to Killington Peak and the Peak Restaurant, where the rest of the wines will be sampled. $45/person, price includes K1 Gondola ride. Reservations recommended as this event has sold out in past years.

Through out the festival, wine tasting dinners will take place at many Killington restaurants. Hemingways is on tap for Friday evening. On Saturday evening, we (The Birch Ridge Inn) will be holding our wine festival dinner. (You can take a look at the menu here.) The Vermont Inn in Mendon will also be hosting a wine dinner on Saturday Evening. Peppino's Italian Restaurant will offer casual wine tasting dinners throughout the week.

Saturday night is not the end, however. Wake up slowly on Sunday morning and make an appearance at the Bubbly Brunch. Chef Frizzie will be serving his amazing brunch at the Birch Ridge Inn, while I will be pouring sampling portions of sparkling wines from around the globe. The Bubbly Brunch will run from 11:00 AM through 1:30 PM. The price is $10 for a "Bubbly Sampler" plus the normal cost of brunch items.

After Brunch, we are all heading out for a leisurely round of golf on a Sunday afternoon at Killington's Green Mountain National Golf Course. The Killington Wine Festival wraps up the weekend with "Nine and Wine", a 9-hole golf outing with specially selected "golf friendly" wines. The price is $35 and it includes wine, dinner, Nine and Wine golf tournament (with cart) and award ceremony. Sign up individually, or better yet bring your foursome.

It should be a nice weekend in the mountains. You can contact the Killington Chamber of Commerce for more information on reservations for each event at 802.773.4181. And of course, you can also contact Mary and I at the Birch Ridge Inn for more details too!

Green Mountain National Golf Course
in the fog. 

Although this post has a date of July 6th, to me it's still July 5th. I write this at 3AM after a busy night in our restaurant. It's been a long day....so it goes.

"Hey Billy......How are you hittem today?"

This morning when I got up there were 3 people in the world who call me Billy as an adult...my mother, an ex wife, and John OD...I speak with my mother every few weeks or so...it's been years since I spoke with my ex-wife. But I would see John every couple of days at the golf course or around town.

When we first moved to Killington, Green Mountain National hosted a ladies professional golf tournament each year. The "Futures Tour" is the farm club so to speak for the LPGA. John was on the organizing committee for the tournament. Being new to town, Mary and I volunteered to help out with prizes for the Pro-AM. From then on, John became a friend of ours. Not a share your deep dark secret's kind of friend, but more than just a casual acquaintance.

The first few years we were in Killington, our restaurant was a secret...perhaps a little too secret. John worked as the host to the restaurant at the Wobbly Barn. They would get a 1 or more hour wait for tables on Saturday. In would walk someone who was just a little too dressed up for the Wobbly and John would whisper in their ear about this nice little restaurant just across the street in this new inn. John was just like that for us. For the last 11 years we would hear many times a month from people who were told by this bartender that they needed to come and eat dinner at our inn. Sure enough. OD had sent them to us. That was just John's way.

We got the call this morning. Our assistant's boyfriend works at Green Mountain National Golf Course. The details Mary got when the phone call came in were sketchy, but the news was dreadful. Sure we baby boomers are all getting older. Sure Killington has lost people since we moved here 12 years ago. But the call just sent a shiver up our spines.

In the summer time, I almost always end my message with "keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!" I can't tell you about John and sunscreen, but OD had the fairway down, with his signature sweeping left to right fade. Keep it in the fairway good friend....

The White House, Washington DC 

In early May, Mary and I had the opportunity to get away from Killington for a few days for a vacation of our own. This is the fourth and final installment of a 4 part article on our experiences.

As most of our friends and repeat guests know, Mary and I usually get away from Killington during early May. Killington in early May can be rather messy. Snow melt off the mountains is in full swing. Muddy soil conditions, combined with running water and sunshine cause the area to erupt in small insects of many different varieties. Many local golf courses are open, but the surrounding countryside is still devoid of color, as most trees are barely in the bud stage, still hibernating from the winter cold. With all this in mind, our vacation planning each year starts with 1 requirement....How far do we have to travel so that we encounter "Leaves on the Trees". On most even years we tend to limit our travel to North America. On odd years, we have been known to wander outside the country to see other parts of the world. This year we focused our vacation into parts of North Carolina in search of leaves on the trees (and green on the fairways).

In writing this series of articles, I have divided our trip into 4 parts: Heading South; Asheville NC - The Biltmore Estate; Pinehurst NC - A little golf; and Heading North via Washington DC.

Being basically driven out of Pinehurst North Carolina a day early because of the torrential weather, Mary and I set our sights on spending a couple of days in Washington DC before heading back to Vermont. While clearly you should be planning to take your vacation this summer in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Washington DC is a pretty nice place to visit too if it is along your route.

Much to my surprise, as we are traveling on the highway from Pinehurst to Washington (about a 6 hour drive in the rain), I discovered that Mary had never "visited" DC. She had been in the area on business several times in her pre-inn days, but she had never been a tourist in our nations capitol.There are so many things to do in Washington it can be somewhat overwhelming. We decided to keep it simple. When we arrived, it was raining buckets. Originally being a city kid, I knew we needed to park the car and forget it during our stay. I picked a rather non-descript chain hotel across the street from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, right next to a Metro stop, so we would be in a very central location.

Afer checking in and drying off a little bit, we headed to the Metro station. Our destination was what passes for Chinatown in DC, figuring we would keep dinner simple. The DC Metro was spotlessly clean, but living in Vermont for 12 years, presented a few challenges to get the right tickets to get on the trains. Like many city subways, DC has gone to automatic turnstiles which require you to enter a card with a magnetic swipe. That was easy enough to understand. What was hard was the automatic machine you needed to use to purchase the ticket. For someone who uses it everyday, it is probably a non-issue. However, as a casual visitor...ugh...it had an awful human interface with loads of buttons and gobble-de-gook to enter to purchase a $1.00 ticket. No matter, there was a Metro employee who saw Mary and I struggling with and laughing at the machine. He came over and very nicely helped us. We felt really good getting on the the Metro because of the polite manner in which the Metro employee worked with us.

When we got up the next day, it was still pouring buckets. We headed over to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum for the morning. We got there just before the doors opened at 10:00AM. The Museum maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. From an historical perspective, it is truly a trip though the 20th century, exploring everything from the first flights with what were basically hang gliders right up to present day space exploration. It can definitely bring out the little kid in someone who has been steeped in technology for most of his days.

Bill at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (Click to enlarge.)

After Air and Space, we decided that a little culture was in order. We quickly walked thru torrential rains across the Washington Mall to the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery has an extensive collection of works ranging from classical to modern. It was created in 1937 as a result of a gift from financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. During the 1920s, Mr. Mellon began collecting with the intention of forming a gallery of art for the nation in Washington. When he died, in 1937, he promised his collection to the United States. The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust funded construction of what is now the West Building. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America.

Mary at the National Gallery of Art (Click to enlarge.)

Wandering around the National Gallery of Art, after being told how the Gallery came to be, I found myself in awe at the scope of the magnanimous gift left to the country. I can not think of any current organization, with the possible exception of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has a entirely different focus, that comes close to the scope of the public donation made to create the National Gallery.

When we woke up the next morning, we were greeted with beautiful blue skies. Perhaps nature was paying homage to our return to Killington. Before getting on the road for a 10 hour drive, over breakfast I had discovered that Mary had never seen the White House. So off we went for a sunny stroll down the Washington Mall. Past all of the branches of the Smithsonian...past government offices like the FAA and the Department of Commerce...we strolled right up to the Washington Monument. And there to the right, about 1/2 mile away, was the South Portico of the White House, resplendent in the early morning sunshine. We walked up to the fence on the south lawn and played the requisite country bumpkin tourists, holding hands, snapping pictures..etc...you know the drill. All the while, in our post 9-11 era, we were under the watchful but non-invasive gaze of security officials from only God knows how many angles.

In walking around Washington, and taking in the splendor of all of the buildings, and at the White House, this kid from Boston can't help but think about larger things. As a country, and especially in this Presidential election year, we can argue politics. We can take various sides on various issues. But after traveling several thousand mile on our vacation, and seeing the White House glistening in the sun, I was left with the thought that the sum total of the parts which make up the United States will always transcend any temporary occupant who presides over our government and that great building. The symbolism of the institution embodied in the White House projects the reality that any occupant is temporary. And that no matter your point of view on the issues of the day, that this too shall pass. (Pardon the waxing quasi political)

After our walk about ended, we got in the car and pointed it north. 10 hours later, we were greeted with a snow covered Killington and gardens full of daffodils. We were home!

With our restaurant opening this weekend, the Birch Ridge Inn is now fully operational for the summer season. We hope that you have a chance to visit with us in Vermont. In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

2007 Check Ceremony at the Birch Ridge Inn. Team Killington member Dr. George Lyons, team organizers Noel and Dick Gluck, Innkeepers Mary Furlong and Bill Vines, and team member Charlotte Lang. (L-R) 

The restaurant at the Birch Ridge Inn at Killington re-opens for the summer season on Friday June 27th. As part of the re-opening festivities, Birch Ridge once again will be hosting a special Sunday Brunch to benefit "Team Killington" and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation on Sunday June 29th.

Each year, local residents Dick and Noel Gluck organize Killington area residents, second homeowners, and guests to form "Team Killington" to participate in the Susan G. Komen Foundation's Vermont "Race for the Cure". The 16th Annual Komen VT-NH Race takes place this year on July 27th.

Mary and I at the Birch Ridge Inn have been contributing to Dick and Noel's effort for many years. For the third year in a row, we will be hosting a "Team Killington Brunch" this coming Sunday. For this special day, our Chef, Stephen "Frizzie" Byrne, brings back his legendary brunch menu. Brunch favorites made famous by Chef Byrne will be paired with additions from our restaurants award winning menu for this special event.

The "Team Killington Brunch" will be served from 11:00 AM to 2:30 PM at our Inn on Butler Road at Killington. All proceeds from the Brunch are donated directly to "Team Killington".

If you are in the Killington area this week, stop in if you have the opportunity. In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

Magnolia Inn, Pinehurst, North Carolina 

In early May, Mary and I had the opportunity to get away from Killington for a few days for a vacation of our own. This is the third installment of a 4 part article on our experiences.

As most of our friends and repeat guests know, Mary and I usually get away from Killington during early May. Killington in early May can be rather messy. Snow melt off the mountains is in full swing. Muddy soil conditions, combined with running water and sunshine cause the area to erupt in small insects of many different varieties. Many local golf courses are open, but the surrounding countryside is still devoid of color, as most trees are barely in the bud stage, still hibernating from the winter cold. With all this in mind, our vacation planning each year starts with 1 requirement....How far do we have to travel so that we encounter "Leaves on the Trees". On most even years we tend to limit our travel to North America. On odd years, we have been known to wander outside the country to see other parts of the world. This year we focused our vacation into parts of North Carolina in search of leaves on the trees (and green on the fairways).

In writing this series of articles, I have divided our trip into 4 parts: Heading South; Asheville NC - The Biltmore Estate; Pinehurst NC - A little golf; and Heading North via Washington DC.

As Mary is into flowers, I am really into golf. I started playing the game while I was 9. My father had this old set of random wooden shafted clubs in the basement. I would go to a local field and hit old golf balls around for hours. I was a pretty good player in high school. You may remember from prior blogs that I worked as a caddy for years at Belmont County Club just outside of Boston Ma. Because of that, I got a Francis Ouimet Golf Scholarship to go to college. By the time I met Mary later in life, my golf handicap had drifted up to 7. I had an unfortunate accident skiing years ago, resulting is a separated right shoulder. My handicap frustratingly ballooned up to the low 20's as I litterally had trouble holding the club in my hands for several years. But I worked through that. Now it's down to about a 15. There are still moments of brilliance...but when your swing mechanics are not quite right...well let's just say I mostly know where the ball is going these days. At any rate, my personal roots in the game go pretty deep. Hurt or healthy, golf to me is much more than just a walk in the woods.

As most golfers know, Pinehurst NC is a golf Mecca. From the championship Pinehurst Number 2 course, to the hundred or so other courses in the area, when you visit Pinehurst, you play golf. Needless to say, I was excited that we would have a chance to visit and play some of the courses in the area.

Pinehurst itself is a nice little village set in the sand hills of southern North Carolina. Most of the named accommodations in the area, other than chain hotels, are owned and operated by the Pinehurst Resort. Mary and I, preferring smaller, independently owned properties like our inn, choose to stay in Pinehurst Village at the Magnolia Inn. The Magnolia Inn is located in the center of Pinehurst Village. It has 11 guest rooms, a fine dining restaurant, and a nice bar/pub (sound familiar). It is owned and operated by Jackie and Dan Berry, refugees from the Northeast who fled to the south to get away from the snow. They, together with golf coordinator Maggie Sager and executive chef Ryan Payne delighted us during our weather shortened stay in Pinehurst.

The dizzying array of golf courses in Pinehurst presented a challenge for us in planning our trip. Fortunately, a fellow Killington innkeeper, Paul Steel of the Grey Bonnet Inn, provided us with course advice. Paul's brother recently sold an inn he operated in Aberdeen NC, just outside of Pinehurst. Paul recommended several courses including Legacy in Aberdeen, and Bayonett at Puppy Creek south of Pinehurst in Raeford NC.

Mary hitting a tee shot on Legacy (Click to enlarge.)

Legacy is a Jack Nicklaus designed course cut into the sand hills and pine forest of North Carolina. At a par 72, from the blue tees it's rating is similar to Killington's Green Mountain National Golf Course with a rating of 70.8 and a slope of 124. (Green Mountain for comparison purposes is rated at 70.2 with a slope of 133 from the blue tees.) I actually found Legacy to play a little easier than Green Mountain. The fairways were somewhat wider. The pine forest (I know..I am not supposed to hit it into the woods...) was reasonably forgiving as there was minimal vegetation underneath the pine trees.

The Legacy course was a good find, relatively inexpensive for a resort course, with a nice club house and practice range. If we travel back to Pinehurst in the future, I would definitely consider playing another round on Legacy.

The following day we decided to play Bayonet at Puppy Creek. It was a little bit of a ride from Pinehurst; about 45 minutes south around Fort Bragg (hence the name Bayonet). And yes there is a Puppy Creek which winds it's way around and through many of the holes. Unlike the resort courses in Pinehurst, Bayonet at Puppy Creak had a decidely local flavor. From the blue tees it checks in as a 6472 yard par 72 with a rating of 71.1 and a slope of 134. Because of the creek, the course was tighter than Legacy. You also did not want to chase your golf balls too hard either. On one shot, Mary failed to clear a small pond. When the ball hit the far bank, it triggered a very large snake to jump into the water and head towards the sound of the ball landing. Needless to say, Mary let the snake keep that ball.

Being a local course away from the resort, Bayonet was less expensive than Legacy. But while the drive through the North Carolina country side was interesting, if we travel to Pinehurst in the future, we would probably try a different course nearer to the center of town.

Mary on Bayonet at Puppy Creek (Click to enlarge.)

While Pinehurst in the day is all golf, in the evening it is still a lot of fun. One night we decided to "stay in" and ate at the Pub at the Magnolia Inn. We then wandered off to the legendary Pinecrest Inn a half a block from the Magnolia inn for a night cap. The Pinecrest Inn was wild with a bar full of golfers being entertained by a piano player. The following night, we went back with some friends who have a home in Pinehurst to the Pinecrest for dinner. It is a grand old dining room with nice food and excellent service.

On what turned out to be our final night in Pinehurst, although we did not know it at the time, we dined in the formal dining room of the Magnolia Inn. The meal was very nice. If you visit Pinehurst and don't stay at the Magnolia Inn, I do recommended that you try it one evening for dinner.

On what was supposed to be our fourth and final day in Pinehurst, we had tee times with some friends at the Forest Creek Golf Club. Basically a private course, we were looking forward to playing on the Tom Fazio designed loop. But it was not meant to be. Early in the morning a very heavy band of thunderstorms moved into the area. You may remember in the news about tornado's hitting parts of North Carolina...well that was the storm we were in. We wound up canceling the tee times, (we would not have been allowed to play anyway) and packing the car to head north a day early. Because we were still in vacation mode, and were not looking forward to the trek back to Vermont, we decided to stop in Washington DC for a couple of nights, which I will write about in the next installment about our vacation.

In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

New IMac running Windows Vista on a Virtualization Window at the Birch Ridge Inn 

Between seasons, Mary and I do a number of projects around the inn. They range from simple maintenance, to major investments. This posting discusses one of the improvement projects recently completed at the inn. Warning...contains geek speak.

Running a modern inn these days takes a surprising amount of technology. Some of it is very visible to guests and is designed to enhance their experience while visiting with us. My blog a couple of weeks ago on the inn's WiFi system is an example. A lot of technology, and computer horsepower, is dedicated to support back office functions. From the "glam" side of the software industry including web development and photo/video editing production suites, to databases with customer information, the pbx to provide inn guest telephone service and calling records, to accounting programs to track business performance, to payroll processing, to tax reporting to Uncle Sam (don't forget your uncle... he wants his due!)...all of it requires computer platforms which need to be kept up to date with equipment and software from a myriad of technology companies.

Early on at the inn, we had settled upon an Apple environment. For years before the inn while at Motorola, I had used Apple Mac's. I lugged Apple laptops hundreds of thousand of miles in my travels around the world. Even in 1997, when Apple was a shell of it's once and future self, Mac's just worked. And, at the time, all of the software packages we needed ran perfectly on the Mac....

Our compute environment has been fairly stable since we began. We have been cycling new computers into the mix at fairly regular intervals as one would expect. I have a PowerMAC G5DP at my desk for web, graphics and video work. We have an IMac in the lobby for inn guests and staff. And then there is the machine on Mary's desk for the finance side of the business. When we started in 1997, this machine was also a Mac. And now it is again...but we did have a little diversion in the intervening years.

In simple terms, one very important software vendor, Intuit, maker of Quickbooks, decided in 1999 that they did not need to provide full support for Apple products. Quickbooks, if you don't know, is is pretty much the universal accounting software package used by small businesses. Their are other programs on the market, but Quickbooks is the dominant program. Intuit still sells Quickbooks for the Mac, but in 1999 they stripped out payroll processing from it, farming out that function to third party programs. Quickbooks on Windows still had, and continues to have, integrated payroll processing. And for a small business like ours, that is important.

I know I am rambling, but a little historical perspective is important. For the second time in 8 years, our small business has wound up purchasing new computer equipment in order to meet Intuit's changing requirements. In 1999, we migrated Quickbooks from a Mac environment to a Windows 98 - then Windows 2000 environment on a Dell desktop. In 2007, we were notified that Intuit would no longer support Windows 2000 and only support Windows XP or Visit. Since the 7 year old Dell on Mary's desk would not run either, a new computer purchase was in the cards for 2008.

I can bore you with payback analysis of purchasing new computer systems versus outsourcing to outside accounting services. But I won't. Suffice to say, it's cheaper for our small business to keep it in house. Which brings us to the adventure of the last couple of weeks.

Just prior to our vacation, I looked at a variety of computer systems. It would have been very easy to purchase a new Dell, or and HP platform, and stick with a full Windows genre for the new computer. But 18 months ago, Apple made the transition to Intel hardware as the underpinnings of their new platforms. This opened up some new and interesting opportunities as well.

The system we eventually got was a new Apple IMac with a Core 2 Duo processor, a 20 inch screen, 250 M hard drive, and 3.5G of memory running Apple's Leopard (OSX 10.5) operating system. Like our other Apple machines....It just works! To handle Windows programs we need to run the inn, I have loaded virtualization software (VMWare Fusion) on to the IMac. Inside the virtual environment, we run Windowss Vista and Intuit's Quickbooks. Again....It just works! Of course, doing all of this is not for the faint of heart. I have a strong technology background so I can set all of this stuff up without spending extra money hiring outside contractors to maintain our systems. And I like to do it too!

My experiences in migrating platforms and transitioning programs between operating systems, has reinforced my belief that our choice of an Apple environment 11 years ago is still valid. In migrating Windows programs from a Dell PC running Windows 2000 to a IMac with a virtual environment running Windows Vista, I can understand some of the trash talking that has gone on in the market about Vista. Some of the decisions made by Microsoft which resulted in gratuitous changes in the user interface for Vista without marked operating improvements over Windows 2000 or XP were somewhat daunting to get through for a couple of days. But now that the system is set up, it is actually quite stable. Of course, it's all quite comical when you think about it... Windows Vista being basically reduced to another program operating on a Mac under OSX. But then again... Mac's just work.

As we get ready to enter the summer, where ever you may be remember, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.