Ah, Miss Yalie

What a pleasure it was to talk to my great friend Yalie all the way in Paris, France. Through the amazing and free technology of Skype. I even saw her smiling face and watched her talk. Until it froze in a zombie like pose at the end. Clearly technology has come a long way with still further to go. :-)

(She said she would check out my blog, so I had better write more and more often.)

It's a beautiful California winter day. Blue sky and sunlight and 55 degrees. My best friend Mike and I are going to go hiking along the Cozy Dell Trail near his house. It's a few miles long and climbs to the top of a mountain that overlooks the valley. I will try to bring back pictures. It rained yesterday so I hope it isn't muddy, but if it is it won't stop us.

After living in the flat lands for the last 11 months these mountains make me especially happy. I was telling my brother Kevin about driving differences here and there. In Michigan, the land of seemingly infinite flat land, driving is straight and direct and takes time to get from place to place solely from the distance separating places. More than that though, you have no feeling for progress as you drive. You could fast forward the drive two hours or rewind it two hours and it would be hard to tell where you were, it looks very similar. In Cali there are mountains, hills, valleys, ocean. As you drive you get closer to the mountains, you feel like you're going somewhere.

I have more to tell you, but I have to go hiking.

So, lets do this again sometime soon. Remind me to tell you about showering at home and driving in LA after 11 months of michigan driving, and the definition of cold.