We decided on December 17th that it was time to head south again. One of Mike’s colleagues had a place for us to stay in Baja, Mexico, so that became the plan. We posted our apartment on craigslist, moved out on New Years Eve, and booked tickets to Denver, Los Angeles, and Baja.

We took off from Pittsburgh International Airport on January 5th starting our 10-day treck towards Mexico. Why did it take us 10 days to fly to Mexico? Well, we had people to see! On the flight to Denver, we spotted this quote about New Zealand in a travel magazine.

With the country’s unparalleled beauty and easy-going attitude, it was easy to understand why they’d come, but we reasoned that, in turn, the high number of immigrants contributed to the joyful culture. Mere birth hadn’t determined their geographical outcome; they were living in the place they chose.

That’s what we’ve been saying about Denver all along. It was delightful to be reminded of this on our way there. Once in Colorado, we stopped in Fort Collins, Parker, and Denver. All of this was facilitated by the rental of a silver Chevy Impala — coincidentally the same car we had rented after our car was stolen last winter in Denver. Oh Impala, you have served us well. Okay, it’s really the seat warmers that excite me.

We had dinners, we had lunches, we had sleepovers, we had epic ping pong (photos coming soon, I hope!). It was fantastic to spend time with everyone again. This is the thing we had not even considered when we left a year ago. We were so focused on our outward adventures that we were not expecting to miss our friends so much. Lessons learned. Part of the adventure in Denver involved renting our own little house in Curtis Park, just north of downtown. Oh man it felt like home.

After a few days, we left Denver for the warmer weather of Los Angeles. Or so we thought. Simply assuming it would be the usual balmy southern California weather, we didn’t look at the forecast before we donated our winter coats to the Salvation Army on our way to the airport in Denver. In fact, we kind of went out of our way to donate them. Whoops. When we arrived, the weather was 50F/37F with high winds. Yes, a coat woud have been very nice indeed. As it turns out, the people of LA were not expecting this weather either. Fortunately, our AirBnB hosts had some extra jackets, which they referred to as “costume jackets” and lent them to us for our blustery evening walk around West Hollywood to fetch some dinner. We warmed up at a diner on Beverly Blvd and then squinched our shoulders and faces against the cold headwind to a bar to catch a cocktail before turning in for the night.

The next day, it was time to deal with the problem that cropped up the morning before: my computer died while at the Denver airport. To save you an excruciatingly boring story, here’s the nut shell: yadda yadda yadda, seven hours later, my computer was not fixed and a part might be arriving the next day. Well the next day, we spent doing client stuff at a trade show followed by a dinner with 15 others. So I only got to waste an hour of my prepaid cellphone minutes (and a day of time left in the US) struggling with Apple Care people over the phone. In the end, after spending 7 more hours in an Apple Store the next day, I bough a new computer, transferred most of the files, and sent the old one off for repair.

“So Mike and Anne, how did you spend your time while you were in Los Angeles?”
“In the Apple Store.”

Now with my new computer in tow, we’re checked into a hotel by LAX, being zapped by the electrodes of travel size muscle massager we bought at the trade show (yeah!), and enjoying some cheap California wine in our travel wine glasses, and taking a moment to r e l a x. aaaaaah.

Tomorrow — we’re off to Baja — finally! After 9 nights in 7 beds, we’re looking forward to getting settled in for a couple of months.