Behind the Scenes
...And it all came together...

There were so many times Johannes thought that the weekend would never come together. So many things went wrong and there were so many obstacles that at times, he almost decided to forget the whole thing. But he persisted. Yay!

Johannes started planning in July, went I was touring Vietnam for a month with my family. He called the Gaige House Inn first because he had had their website bookmarked for a year under the category, "Things to do with Chris." They had an availability calendar on their site, and Johannes was shocked to see that their weekends were booked solid until the end of November. He originally wanted to book a Friday-Saturday night stay because he didn't want me to have to miss work, but there was nothing available, so he took the only Thursday-Friday booking they had. He immediately contaced John, the VP of business development, whom I reported to, and asked if I could have that Friday off. That made John the only other person who knew about the plan.
Since we could only stay at the Gaige House Inn Thursday and Friday, Saturday was still unaccounted for. Johannes knew that he wanted to go hiking, so he bought a California hiking book and read descriptions for over 100 trails. He finally decided on a Saturday day hike on Mt. Saint Helena, because it was Sonoma's highest peak and

would give us the best view of the valley. Mt. Saint Helena was only 8 miles North of Calistoga, which his friend had told him was a spa city, so that's when the whole plan came together. The idea was that we would do the long hike during the day, then, exhausted, we would get a mud bath and massage at Lavender Hill Spa (in Calistoga) to wind down and relax.

Johannes was so relieved! The end of the planning was in sight. The only thing left to do was make reservations for Saturday evening in Calistoga. He looked up lodging for Calistoga on the web and came up with 40 places. He grouped

them into "most desired," "moderately desired," and "undesirable" lists and started calling the most desired ones first. Everyone on that list was completely booked; the few places that were not booked had two-night minimum stays, which he didn't want. Moving on to the "moderately desired" list, he sadly found that they, too, were either sold out of rooms or had a 2-night minimum. Cringing, but not seeing any other choice, Johannes moved on to the least desired list, which included hotels like Best Western and Motel 6. Even they were all sold out!!!!

Johannes couldn't believe it. He had called everyone on his lists, and there was nothing available for Saturday evening. He decided then to just bite the bullet, pay for two nights, and only use one. He got the number of the number one choice on his list, Hideaway Cottages, and called them asking for a 2-night reservation for Saturday and Sunday. The reservation assistant, Jia, went to check the schedule and came back on the phone saying regretfully, "We're sorry, but we only have the room for Saturday evening. We have a couple who reserved it for Thursday and Friday, and another who reserved it for Sunday and Monday, so I'm sorry we can't help you out his time...." Johannes didn't let her finish. He couldn't believe it. It had all finally come together, and things couldn't have worked out better.
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