We picked up Madi's boyfriend Koji at the El Paso airport on the 26th. He works for UPS, so there is no taking a break until Xmas is over. He brought on the plane several Japanese cakes and other deserts for us to try. Koji in turn was re-introduced to the wonders of green chili. We had another stocking opening that night.
After a few more days of eating and visiting we had to take Madi and Koji back to the El Paso airport on the 30th. I had to take them in Chris' car because the Land Cruiser was stuffed with Chelsea's makeup table and bench, an office chair, a small trampoline, and as Steve Martin would say, some dumb stuff too. At least it wasn't in our storage unit anymore. To make it all fit I had to remove the third row seats, perhaps permanently. I could only see out a small sliver of the back window, but that was still better than a trailer.
Having just driven Chris' car to El Paso then immediately back to Las Cruces, we left Las Cruces for the second time that morning, this time headed a little farther east to San Antonio. Heather and my sister Rebecca were both born at the Lackland AFB hospital a few years apart. I hadn't been back to San Antonio since the 60s and had very few memories of the area, and none of the Riverwalk. It's been on my list for a while to get back. The plan was to stay for a couple of days so we could be at the Riverwalk for New Year's Eve.
Poor planning on our part in a couple of ways. First of all, before we arrived we were unaware that this was also a tricentennial celebration. I'm glad we had made hotel reservations some time ago. On the other hand, we didn't make any dinner reservations, and it was damn cold. After wandering into a couple packed restaurants and shown the door we ended up at the Hyatt Regency bar, which worked out just fine. We shared a table with a couple of interesting locals celebrating some cancer victories.
As a longer term note, after living 15 minutes from a major hub for a few decades, being up to an hour away from a secondary airport was not awesome. Not a dealbreaker, but I think that goes on our list of issues when we're looking to land somewhere more permanently.
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