BBC online has a good Photojournal about a porter on the Inca Trail. Ah, Peru. I so want to go back to South America…and it’s looking possible! I had dinner with Nick, Melanie and Becca last night, at which point Becca informed me that Emily is going to be studying in Ecuador from August to March. We must go visit her! In Ecuador! Awesome.
I’ve already been reprimanded a couple times this morning for not having blogged since Thursday. So here we go. I was up early Friday morning to drive to Atlanta. I made fantastic time as there weren’t many cars on the road, and arrived at Carter’s new condo literally two minutes after he got there (he’d been in Athens the night before). Kent arrived an hour or so later and we hung out for a couple hours, then Chris arrived and we all headed to Maggiano’s to meet James and Chrissy for a New Year’s Eve dinner. It was delicious. I mean, YUM. We went back to Carter’s and played Scene It (James and Chrissy won), exchanged calendars, and played Trivial Pursuit 90s Edition. I am so buying that game, because I totally rock at it. James, Chrissy and I easily beat Carter, Kent and Chris, who couldn’t even answer the question “Shannon Lucid set a new American record by spending 188 days aboard this” despite the fact that Kent is an aerospace engineer. I was personally offended.
Carter, Kent and I spent New Year’s Day quietly. I got up “early” at 9 a.m. for a lovely run in Carter’s great neighborhood. The ~2 mile stretch of road leading to his condo has generous biking/running lanes in each direction and goes past beautiful million dollar homes along the shore of the Chattahoochee, so I just looked at all the pretty houses while I ran almost 4 miles. It was foggy when I started out, but the sun had burned it all away by the time I finished. Kent and I had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts while Carter was still asleep. We played a game of Settlers/Seafarers (I won), a game of regular Settlers (I won), a game of Risk (we stopped out of boredom so Kent and I shared the world), and took a walk on the 2 mile trail way down yonder by the Chattahoochee. I think it’s so incredibly cool that Carter lives next to the river and has daily access to a pretty trail.
James came over on Sunday morning to play another game of Seafarers (Carter won, I think) and another game of Settlers (I won). Yeah, we played a lot of games, but it was fun. I headed home on Sunday afternoon and made fantastic time again; I just went with the flow of traffic, but the flow was almost 80 mph. Awesome. I enjoyed driving Katie’s Corolla and once again having the zippiness of a small car. My Xterra is a lot of things, but it is definitely not zippy.
I got back to Charlotte in time to have dinner with Mom, Dad and David. Yesterday I hung out around the house and managed to squeeze all my things back into my suitcases. Despite all the trouble USAir had over the Christmas weekend, they were operating smoothly yesterday and my flight took off and landed on time. I was first to the baggage claim thanks to my seat in row 4, so I had to wait for a while till the bags came out. But soon enough I had all my stuff and was in Nick’s car on my way back to Clear Lake.
The weather here…is sucky. Overcast. Humid. Yep, for better or for worse, I’m back in Houston.
Jen says
Gavin’s going to disagree with me here, but…
I’m not sure you can really call a Corolla “zippy” either.
Sarah says
Well, it’s zippier than an Xterra!