Whenever I visit wineries and wine warehouses, I find it impossible not to marvel at the skill of the forklift drivers. Have you ever noticed the same thing? For one, they have to manouver around in tight spaces. (I have trouble simply backing up a car on a straight line.) Two, they are lifting and carefully placing incredibly heavy loads (cases, full barrels) on top of stacks or barrel racks sometimes 30 feet high. One slight error in judgement and it could  mean losses of thousands of dollars worth of wine or, even worse, death to the driver.

In fact, it appears so risky that I was wondering if  forklift driving would be on of the challenges slated for the contestestants of PBS' reality show, The Winemakers, which features contestants from all over the country (including several from the Bay Area) competing for the chance to have their own wine label funded. If this isn't one of the challenges, I submit that it should be, although rather than stacking thousands of pounds worth of full barrels, maybe they should just be working with styrofoam or something.

Anyway, all of this came to mind when I saw this shocking video of a forklift accident in a Moscow spirits warehouse. Ouch!

Maybe that's why there are so many forklift jobs available in Napa Valley. If you're interested, it appears that you can receive your training here in SF or here, up in Napa. I, for one, will just keep practicing my parallel parking.