By Sharyn Jackson
From Star Tribune
Our driver waved the car behind us to go around. We were chugging up a slight hill in a little white tuk-tuk, past blooming fields of mustard flowers that looked like they’d been caught in the line of fire at an all-yellow paintball game.
Our open-air electric vehicle had only been rolling a few minutes out of downtown Napa before we hit the picturesque countryside, with the kind of California Wine Country vistas that visitors come to expect: manicured vineyards, dazzling green knolls and peaks poking up in the distance.
Windmills and red barns dotted rolling hills that heaved larger as we drove along, with the rickshaw revving to take us up to one of Napa Valley’s oldest family vineyards. The landscape kept our speed in check, but there was no reason to go any faster. We were barely leaving Napa city limits.