A wedding in wine country

Took a trip into the heart of Niagara's wine region over the weekend to attend the wedding of a niece. Weddings are big business in wine country. Every other vineyard has some sort of wedding-themed venue available for rent; ours was one of six weddings held on the same estate that day. My hunch is there's way more money in weddings than wine. For many folks the region is obviously a wedding destination, in spite of what I would have thought a fatal flaw; that in order to successfully grow grapes, you need to keep birds and other wildlife away. As soon as we parked we were greeted by what sounded like shotgun blasts. Must be duck season in these parts, I figured. But no, that's random fake explosions designed to scare the birds away. This continued throughout the ceremony. The officiant joked this was not in fact a shotgun wedding. I'm guessing that joke came up at every one of those six weddings. It works though. No birds or other wildlife were seen during our hour and a half stay on the property. The thousands of acres of vineyards must play havoc with migratory birds that once passed through. As a society, we've prioritized the manufacture of mediocre wines over the welfare of our wildlife and natural environment. After the ceremony things moved to a reception in the nearby town of Jordan. This is the third wedding in a row wherein a woman from the Neumann clan is marrying an Italian, and I gotta say those people know how to do it up right! The problem I encountered was filling up on the appetizers and then wondering what to do with the fine-looking strip-loin that showed up in front of me. No way was I gonna leave that on my plate when Bruno the Italian mastiff is starving at home, but I didn't want to look too obvious smuggling it out. I was ready to wrap it in a cloth napkin when I discovered a doggie poo-bag in my pocket. Perfect! On the downside, my $400 waterfront room at the Ramada couldn't do better than lukewarm in the hot water dept. That's a lotta cash to me, but apparently that's the low end in the area, and if you want a hot shower you'll have to move up-market. Also, being somewhat of a digital retard, I had to call the lone front desk employee at 1 am because I couldn't figure out how that fancy tap and go door card worked. The uber ride from the party to the hotel provided fifteen minutes of fascinating chit-chat with a middle-aged Albanian dude who'd arrived in Canada via Germany in 2011. His German language fluency is way ahead of mine! He was bellyaching about how Canada used to be a great place. His first job was trucker in Vancouver. He used to make enough to not only send money home, but save money himself, such that when he moved to the area to be closer to family, he was able to buy a modest house in St Catherines. Today, he's not sure how much longer he can keep it. Trucking jobs clear across Canada mostly go to Sikh drivers today, because Sikh owned companies are handily winning contracts all over the place by undercutting all competition. Immigrants are wrecking that business, according to this immigrant! Meanwhile, his uber income keeps shrinking as the billionaire owners put the squeeze on their 98% immigrant workforce. A few years ago his Uber job paid his bills. Lyft used to pay better, he said, but not anymore. An utterly enjoyable weekend by any measure... chock-full of a really impressive generation of youngsters I'm proud to support, but the absolute highlight had to be the beaming grin on my 91 year old mother's face as she's bustin' a move on the dance floor! As we were well on our way home, I realized I'd forgot Bruno's strip-loin in the fridge back in the room. Bet the cleaning staff were wondering why anybody would put a bag of dogshit in the fridge. Hopefully some min wage cleaner realized nobody ever would, and found a fine-looking strip-loin without so much as a bite out of it.