February 7th:
About 5 years ago, Susanne was out of town and I was sitting down in the basement with my guitar just randomly strumming some interesting chords. I started to hone in on a sound that seemed to really capture some intense emotions. One night, we had some people over and I started playing the basic structure of the song that was developing and it was really interesting to see the reaction. People were chatting away, but once the key chords hit their awareness, the conversation stopped and I could see them all get very reflective. I kept working on the tune and was trying to decide whether to call it “Postcards from the edge of nowhere” or “postcards from patagonia” . In the end, I decided to call it “Postcards from Patagonia”. Susanne described the song as “cinematic” which I took as a great compliment. Mark Derryberry, the recording engineer, said the same thing. Windy, barren, mountainous, remote; soulful, with a sense of awe and melancholy. Audio to be posted at some point that I can figure out how to not have to pay the $20 freakin’ dollars to WordPress.
About 14 months ago, Susanne had the idea that we should take an amazing trip to Patagonia. We laughed, but then said, “what the heck”. We made some plane reservations knowing that we could cancel at any time.
It has been a very, very hard last 6 months. I lost my mom at the end of July and I miss her dearly. I loved taking trips with her and it does make me melancholy when I travel to cool places. She definitely lives within.
Life always seems to throw you curve balls just when you are expecting a fastball. Having just launched myself into a full time career in philanthropy, it really makes you start to appreciate the people and things that we have. There are so many people and animals that live in situations that, shall we say, are not adequately described on Fox News. I feel very blessed to be able to take a trip that most could only dream about, and do it with someone that I have been sharing highs and lows with for 28 years.
Now, our next big adventure starts on Wednesday when we leave Denver for Buenos Aires. We have a big weekend of packing getting everything ready. I bought a really nice camera to capture some of the beauty of Patagonia, and our friend Greg (who is an amazing photographer!!) gave us some lesson so we can actually take some decent photos of the penguins and what not.
Side note: Greg called the $750 lens I bought a “cheap” one. Ouch.
It is always really hard to leave the dogs for so long, but we have a house/dog sitter set and I am sure we will miss them more than they will miss us. sigh
We are flying in to Buenos Aires and picking up a Sprinter van equipped for camping. I had found this company online, and Cris, seemed like an amazing guy. He lives half the year in New York and half in BA. I thought I was booking crazy early, but we got the last one……13 months early!!! If you want to start a business, RV rentals in Argentina is crying for more competition.
We will be gone for 32 days. The initial ideas was to fly to Ushuaia in Tierra Del Fuego and drive up the spine of the Andes. However, after finding out the cost of the one-way delivery to Ushuaia, we decided to do a loop in and out of Buenos Aires. See below.
Argentina is ridiculously big. The skinny part takes about 10 hrs to drive across. In total we will be covering about 3700 miles and a huge variety of environments. Susanne asked me the other night what I was looking most forward to; I said “Torres del Paine”. Google it. You’ll see why. We are doing a hut to hut trip there. But first we drive down the windy, barren east coast hanging with the penguins. Google Earth is amazing. I have flown our whole route. However, the reality will be soooo much better. ciao for now.
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