Hello, Goodbye!

On the eve of my last day outside of Fun-Land for the next who-knows-how-long, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Lately I have been finding myself out at 0200 driving down dark country roads, miles from anything or anyone, my body seemingly trying to catch up to my wandering mind.

It has been an absolutely wonderful three weeks of R&R and this taste of “life” seems to make it more difficult than ever to go back to my adopted reality of 90 hour work-weeks, dust, heat, idiots, etc. But I had a lot of time to just sit and think about things, especially the future, and through all of my good times coupled with the quiet times over these past few weeks, I have come away with a renewed sense of optimism and gratitude for how blessed I am.

I am especially grateful for the intangible things to which I give credit for everything that is good about me; the God-given talents and abilities, but most of those are pretty personal and boring for everyone else anyway. I just feel so lucky to be alive right now, it’s like Gordon B. Hinckley was always saying about being optimistic, “There is no better time to be alive!”

I’m pretty sure he was speaking of things on a higher level than I am right now, but we both obviously love life. I was wondering what it would be like to take an old pioneer and toss him on a jet-ski, or take one of the guys who ran a silver mine in the lost canyon in Salida and send him down the 500 foot zip-line that goes over his old mine these days. It always blows my mind to cross the Rockies in a matter of hours, in the comfort of my truck with music, A/C, and good company. How great is it to be alive?

I keep saying it but this was such a great vacation and it was just what I needed. I met some new friends (and some old ones again), I went camping a bunch of times, played with lots of little kids, went swimming, hiking, climbing, shooting, ziplining, and just drove for hours with no particular destination in mind. It was wonderful!

But the time has come and I need to pack my bags and get ready for my 20+ hour nap on the plane back to Dubai. Yay. Let me know who wants souvenirs!