When the Southwest jet touched down and I saw the Sandias, the tiredness dropped away. I was home. Home. Green chile and brown landscapes and dead volcanoes and open mesas and red zias on yellow fields. Home.

And then I got into the cold coldness of the cold and started asking myself what I was even doing here. But that's traveling, right?

It was a good break, the emergency vacation with the emergency-vacation-within-the-emergency-vacation. I worked my way through four books, continued working on my own thing, hung out on the beach, annoyed turtles and tourists, drank a lot of coffee, avoided getting a sunburn and just felt the lift of the grind from my shoulders, just for a minute.

We met a lot of cool people during our travels; Pearl Jam fans are really kind, good hearted folks. One of the treats of the trip came when fans would spot us in our PJ t-shirts and come over for a chat. Didja see the show, are you gonna see the other one, where ya from? Did you see that one? That's a fantastic boot.

Seriously, y'all are good people.

It ends tomorrow when I go back to work, which is making me sad. I've been looking forward to this trip for ages and ages and now it's over. About all I can do is load up the bootleg on the iPod (and it sounds great, by the way) and look at pictures and try to keep in contact with as many new friends as possible, as trite as that sounds.

Anyway, I'm back now. I'm sorry I left y'all alone for awhile.

And hey! Sometime in the next couple of days, we're going to hit 10,000 visitors since I started keeping track with a sanctioned counter earlier this year. Maybe we'll celebrate!