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12/14/04 - Albuquerque, NM Happy Holidays 2004! |
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Seasons Greetings to everyone! Hope you’ve had a happy 2004, and are enjoying this holiday season. 2004 began our sixth year in San Francisco, and although it’s been an enjoyable experience and we’ve made many lasting friendships, we decided early in the year that it was time to move on. As such, much of the year was spent taking the necessary steps to prepare for our latest Brooks adventure, including putting some finishing touches on the house to get it ready to sell. Things really started to heat up in September, when we listed and accepted an offer on our house in the booming San Francisco sellers’ real estate market. We quit our jobs, put our things in storage, and are planning to take the next several years off to do some traveling, visit friends and family, and generally try to enjoy life out of the office. Timing seemed to work out just right, as we were both ready to leave our jobs, and also ready to sell our place. We closed on our house on November 24th, and have been on the road since then. The first leg of our trip involved dropping off our few remaining belongings in a storage facility in Southern California, then driving up to Lake Tahoe to spend Thanksgiving with our friends Tod, Jen, and Kris, and to enjoy Tod’s excellent deep-fried turkey. After making our way through a western Nevada snowstorm, our next major stop was Moab, Utah, which was stunning, if a bit cold. We also spent four days in beautiful, snowy Colorado, where we had the opportunity to catch up with family friends before scurrying across the plains and on into Michigan. Since we’ve been so focused on our goal of leaving SF, we didn’t have much opportunity for traveling this year. In fact, our only real trip out of town was our week in Tucson and Southern Arizona, where we really enjoyed seeing the huge, sometimes endless-seeming stands of saguaro cacti and other beautiful desert landscapes. Scott also had a great time participating in RAGBRAI this year (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa), which tested his endurance, determination, and his liver. What’s next, you ask? Well, we’ll be spending most of our time at Caroline’s sister and brother-in-law’s place in Lake Orion through the first week of January or so, while splitting time at our parents’ places as well. After that, we plan to drive down the eastern seaboard and on into Florida, stopping to visit a few friends and family members along the way. Then we’ll drive along the Gulf, and into Mexico. We plan to find a place in Mexico to settle down for a couple of years, where the weather is warm and the living is (relatively) cheap. We’ll make it our base from which to take other traveling adventures around the U.S. and the world. Happy
Holidays! |
