More errands to get done in a different part of town today so I set out to do that. Since being back in Denver I’ve been surprised at how it really hasn’t even felt like I’ve left at all. Being back and going about my normal Denver routine before heading back out has just felt like business as usual. That started to break down around lunch when I met my friend and her new baby. The last time I saw her she was sans babe and meeting her baby for the first time six months into her life was a big reminder of how quickly things change. That lunch was one of those moments where I wavered about heading back on the road. I had more errands to run after lunch and then on the way home I swung by my other favorite place, Teller’s. The radio in my rental car had been on a country station all week and it was really putting me into a country music mood. I texted my fellow country music loving friend and it just so happened she was going to see her friends band that night at the Grizzly Rose so on the spur of the moment I joined up for her with that which was excellent. I’m not a wild country music fan but I do love it and that has been one thing I have yet to encounter in the rest of the world and I was missing it!

There’s a lot of stuff that’s just plain simpler to do or to obtain in America than abroad so today was dedicated to running errands and gathering some more supplies for the second half of my trip. In the evening we went to dinner at another one of my old haunts, Gordon Biersch. After that we saw Rogue One. I like Star Wars but I wouldn’t characterize myself as a wild fan by any means. That being said this movie is for sure going in my top 3-5 of all time.

Christmas is one of those things that definitely becomes a smaller production as you get older. A far cry from the days of waking up at dawn to tear into presents, now we get a much more leisurely start to the day. Have to make sure everyone has their coffee before we can tear into gifts. It was a pretty low key day and for the remainder of it we just lounged around the house.

Over the course of my childhood my Parent’s Christmas Eve open house became a greatly anticipated party. As we got older and started traveling around Christmas more and more the regularity and intensity of the party has ebbed and flowed. There was a small revival this year just for the simple fact of my being back in Arvada so some of my other Arvada/High School friends stopped by for a bit to catch up. It was great to see everyone but it was also Christmas Eve so folks had to move on to other family engagements before too long.

I keep falling off the wagon on the whole daily update thing. I was doing so well there for a while. Alright, first full day back in Denver. What’s the first thing I should do? Go get more Mexican food obviously. It’s off to Santiago’s to pick up a pile of breakfast burritos. Days when I’m on the go always present a real setback for my productivity so I had to use the rest of the day to get caught up on the work that I was supposed to be doing yesterday when I flew back to Denver. As luck would have it some of my friends from business school were back in town for Christmas as well so I met them in the evening for a drink at the old standby Charlie Brown’s.

It was an early start today. My roommate and I were both heading back to America this morning so we headed to the airport around 4am. Her flight was leaving right away but I had some work to do before mine so I posted up at the lounge to get some work done. During a lull I tried to go to my gate which was one of the more frustrating experiences of my life. Every time I passed a gate board by gate seemed to change! I walked up and down the whole terminal probably four times before finally seeing Denver on a gate sign just by luck and stopping there. On the upside the experience in Denver was excellent. I downloaded the new mobile passport app and submitted all my documents right as the plane landed. When I arrived in the line at the express lane a girl even sought me out and brought me to the front of the line in front of everyone. I think I waited a cumulative 30 seconds at customs and that was the time it took for them to scan me in.

Naturally I had some political/work meetings scheduled for as soon as I landed so I headed over to my favorite Elway’s for that. Then afterwards I had dinner at Fruition and finally made it home to see the family around 9p.

Preparing for a hectic day tomorrow. I went over to Panaderia Rosetta to work for most of the late morning and afternoon. After that I had some errands to run and then I stopped by The Beer Box to finish up the last of my work. I went to pick up my clothes from the cleaners and sadly learned that they only take cash so I had to go wander and find an ATM before I could gather those up. There was a killer sunset happening at the time, wish I’d have had a better angle for a picture. Then went home and packed and went to sleep early for a 3am start to the day tomorrow.

Back on the up and up after being food poised I had some work to catch up on but thankfully not a great deal. I headed over to Valentina in the morning for breakfast and worked there for several hours. It’s a really nice little cafe that wasn’t crowded and featured reliable wifi. After a while I started to make my way back to my place but I was listening to The Economist on my headphones and got engrossed in an article so I ended up just sitting at the Monumento a la Independencia and listening to that for a while. As I was about home I got distracted by this place right across the street from my apartment called The Beer Box. It’s a little tiny place that sells craft beers, plays classic rock and has what looks to be (I haven’t tried them yet) really good wings. I stopped in there for a bit and wrapped up work before heading home.

In the evening my roommate and I had a little roommates dinner at The Capital Grille which is right near our place. That’s the interesting thing about this experience. I came into it thinking that 75 people (and now less) was a pretty manageable size for a group but here we are in our seventh month and there are still people that I really don’t know at all. The fact that this is actually one of the neat things about our arrangement first occurred to me in the Sahara Desert. I ended up out there with three people who I hadn’t really spent much time with and who I probably wouldn’t have ever made an effort to spend much time with. It was a total blast, we ended up having a ton of fun and it will probably be one of the more memorable experience of this whole year.

There have certainly been times when I have wavered about sticking things out until the end. As amazing as all this traveling is it’s also exhausting. But really it’s those experiences that keep me sticking around. You never know when something as simple and as random as a roommate assignment can lead to great evenings and friendships. Already I can say that had a quit at any point there would be people that I would have really missed out on getting to know. And I’m sure that will be the case right up until our last day.

Successfully defeated yesterday’s bout of food poisoning but also didn’t sleep at all last night so I literally did nothing today. Oh, except for sloppily back fill two weeks of daily blog updates. I really fell off the wagon here in Mexico City. There’s just too much going on in this town!

An almost perfectly awesome day today. Early start to drive out to Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán where we went hot air ballooning over the Aztec (technically the pre-date the Aztecs so they’re Teotihuacán) pyramids. This included breakfast and a champagne toast afterwards and was a great time. Then we went over to the ruins and hooked up with this tour guide who took us around to some other temples, to a co-op to see how crafts were made (and buy them obviously) and then to lunch. This guy was super fun and so dedicated to making sure everyone had fun that he bought us a whole bottle of tequila at lunch. Then we went over and walked around the ruins. Right at the tail end of this I got hit really hard by food poisoning. Literally just out of the blue, was walking and next thing I knew I was throwing up on some ancient ruins. I managed to rally but had to abandon plans to go see animals with some of the others in favor of going home and being miserable all night.