Hello everyone and a very Happy New Year to you all. This is obviously a great time of year for reflection on the year gone past and planning for the year ahead. 2022 had a lot of ups and downs in my world, but at the end of the day, I would consider it to have been a very good year in my life. I spent the first half of 2022 traveling across the country, exploring, taking photos and trying to get myself back in the mindset of having a regular job for a while. I learned a lot about the desert southwest, the indigenous people who call and called it home and the colonial powers which have moved through the region over the last five centuries. Shadow Catcher and I made it all the way to the Pacific Ocean and it was great to finally get there on this particular journey. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life on the west coast, but it may have been my van’s first time and it was good to be there together.
In May I started working for a new company in a new place. Getting back into a career which has spanned 15 seasons over the last 22 years wasn’t quite like riding a bike. There were pitfalls and stumbles which weren’t helped any by the pandemic, floods, fires and earthquakes. But my management team was incredibly supportive and my passengers were almost all wonderful people who had learned to roll with the punches pretty well over the last couple of years. My first trip brought me back to Hawaii - which was like a dream for a few days until Covid finally caught up with me there. I had to try and deal with it on the road, something I had tried so hard to avoid. I got through it, but Covid would poke its ugly head out several more times over the next few months.
It wasn’t all work though. In August I got out to a five day reunion for my old company, Trek America, which was to celebrate the 50th anniversary which never came to be. It was an amazing five days out in the redwoods of Northern California, catching up with some really old friends and making new ones it seemed I had known forever. I also got out to spend a long weekend with some other friends and our historical society The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus. I’ve known some of those guys for 22 years (one of whom I trained with as a tour guide back in April of 2000) and it was wonderful to catch up with them as well. I even dated someone for a few months this summer, which was fun right up until she met someone who lived in her town and would be a more stable fit. It was a familiar story for me, but I wish them all the best. I’m grateful for the time we had and it was nice to have some companionship for a change. I also got to catch up with several of my west coast friends this summer who I haven’t seen since before the pandemic and it was amazing to see them all…