Hello again! I’ve renewed my urgency to keep up this blog so those in my life can stay up to date with what I’m up to. Our nomadic journey has no end in sight (spoiler alert), so I’m hoping to get better about keeping in touch with people remotely, and that is much easier to do if the first 30 minutes of each conversation isn’t spent rehashing what we’d know if we were active on socials (ew) or kept blogs (yay!).
I began this as another huge rundown akin to my 2021 recap, but decided to take advantage of Substack’s email feature (and go easy on ya’ll’s attention spans) and syndicate it a little bit. So I’ll drop a 2 month update each week until I’m caught up, then go into what’s next!
January: Austin
The year was (mostly) chopped up conveniently into one location per month. Picking up from where I left off last time, we spent January in Austin, TX. After spending the holidays with my family in Zionsville, IN, we wanted to head someplace warm for the Winter and then work our way out West, then North for the Summer.
Austin was an anomaly among destinations this year for being more about the city than nearby nature. We had both heard great things about the city itself, and location wise it was perfect: straight South. Instead of packing weekends with out of town trips, we spent most of our time exploring the city, which was a nice change of pace.
We wrung (wrang? wraught?) in 2022 with Jen’s sister, Maggie, and got creative with making space for 3 people to work in 2BR. We explored the hot spots of town and Austin’s famous murals and food scene, a beautiful confluence of BBQ and Tex-Mex with some Asian influence from being a new, hip tech hub. Austin is indeed a very cool city, with an awesome waterfront full of parks and young people. I got to see much of it running: I was back to running most days, exploring the city on my runs and trying to hit as many unique miles in as many neighborhoods as possible. That definitely beat seeing the city by car: the roads were beat up and crowded from the massive influx of newcomers. Austin was lightyears ahead of California in terms of building new housing to meet new demand, but it lagged far behind in terms of any public transit infrastructure.
January saw our first wedding trip of 2022: we flew to Key West for long weekend to see Hailey and Mike get married! We had a blast there, picking up lots of tips for our future big day, and enjoying a proper vacation from our heavily planned and semi-over stimulated first few weeks of Austin. Upon returning, our friend Damon came to visit as well, leading to another whirlwind of taking every advantage of happy hours and the food scene.
February: El Paso
El Paso was our shortest stay of the year; we opted for 4 weeks instead of our (not yet) customary 5 because we viewed it as something of a stopover destination, staying South and warm on our way out West. While the city itself wasn’t much to speak of, we were pleasantly surprised by the nature nearby, and we went international for the first time on a day trip to Ciudad Juarez.
The first weekend, we just explored town a bit and hunkered down in a coffee shop to start our blogs and plan our weekends. There wasn’t much to see in downtown: El Paso had gone against the grain of millennial urban revitalization and remained a very sleepy town. We eventually discovered that most of the new 5-over-1s and craft brewpub/latte/burger/Asian-fusion joints associated with our class/generation were in another neighborhood, where we were used to being able to find them conveniently next to downtown. We also saw snow on a palm tree (and you have now too in the title image)! Despite being in the southern desert, we were at 3,000’ of altitude, so it remained somewhat chilly.
Our second weekend, we made a day trip to White Sands National Monument, an incredible experience. I wouldn’t quite call it underrated; everyone who has been there seems to rate it highly, it just isn’t what well known! Not much hiking per se, just wandering around the beautiful white dunes. If you ever go, be sure to borrow a sled from the visitor’s center for the downhills: we eventually learned that it’s not just for fun, but actually by far the most efficient way to get around!
The next day, we made another day trip to another very different world: Mexico! We actually walked across the border from our AirBnb, as driving there would have been a lot of unknown hassle. The area just on the other side of the border was a very fun street market, though we didn’t seize the moment enough to stop and change money to buy anything. We had a hell of a time trying to catch Ubers there, but eventually made our way to a restaurant we had picked out for an early anniversary meal (we try to celebrate each month), where we had a seafood feast that would have cost an incredible amount in the US but was just another restaurant meal when converted. We took a long walk through a residential area after getting cancelled on by one-too-many Ubers, and made it back to the bar where they apparently invented the margarita (I bet within a year of inventing the ancestor of tequila, pulque, some Aztec thought to mix it with lime juice) to unexpectedly find the Super Bowl on! We had forgotten one of the most sacred American holidays, so we celebrated it from Mexico with cheap margs and tacos, as I’m sure many of our compatriots across the border did as well. We unfortunately had to watch the second half from my phone in a 90 minute long line at the border, as CBP was understaffed and/or did not seem to value the time of the people crossing the border.
The following weekend we made an overnight camping trip to two next-door national parks, Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns. We did a hard hike in Guadalupe, but did not enjoy the unsteady footing of the rocky desert and were somewhat underwhelmed by the views. Carlsbad, however, was something else. After setting up camp in a primitive site in the dark (hardships of winter’s short days), we got up and made it to the hilltop at Carlsbad’s visitor center to watch the sunrise over breakfast (benefits of winter’s short days). We hadn’t done much pre-research on Carlsbad, and were met by miles of caves of other-worldly rock formations out of a fever dream. It certainly isn’t the typical national park or the prettiest, but I would include it as a must-see if only to round out one’s understanding of what amazing things nature can make.
February also saw a milestone in my career: my first direct report! Sumiran joined my team from Gurgaon, near Delhi (in India). It was a challenge learning how to be a manager for a new product and a fresh graduate with just an hour each day of time overlap, but it’s been rewarding to see everything through someone else’s eyes. I’m learning to be a lot more process focused now that it’d be someone else’s time I’d be wasting if things were inefficient.
That’s it for these two months! Stay tuned for my first marathon distance, more cool visitors and nature pics, catching covid, making friends, and more!
Hi Jake! I’m glad I stumbled across your blog (who says there’s nothing good on FB?)! Brought back memories of our years in southern New Mexico- did you know Andy was born there? Enjoy all that blue sky and fresh mountain air!
Mrs (Michele) Mattice