2020 In Review

I haven't been faithful to write stuff over here like I always tell myself I'm going to be.  Looking back, I've posted 3 things this year.  I should try to do better.  If nothing else, so that I can justify paying for this website since I'm not hosting it on my own.  So, what has happened this year?  Let me list some highlights.  Or at least highlights as I see them.

Everybody's big thing this year is probably the virus going around.  Whether you believe it's real or not, whether you believe we should be wearing masks or not, no matter what you believe, it has put a crimp in everyone's style.  I've known folks that have run the gamut with it from people that tested positive and just thought they had a few bad allergy days to people that didn't make it out the other side of it.  Personally, I believe the virus is real and that we should all be masking up in public in effort to help out those around us.  That's all I'm saying about the virus other than I am grateful to have a job that was quickly able to adapt to the "new normal" and remained gainfully employed and working from the casa all the time.

I did a bit of a gear purge back the end of summer.  I thought about doing the usual and selling a lot of it online like I usually do, but opted instead to pack it all up and take it to the local GC and see what they would offer for it.  I figured that they would offer me as low as they could on it.  I exchanged some emails with the local store manager, and he told me their offering percentages, so I did some dirty math to come up with what I thought they would be offering me.  I was ok with it since it would save me the hassle of having to sell it online and ship it around the country.  

So I masked up and loaded the ride with a couple of amps, several guitars, and a box full of pedals to see what they would offer me.  When I rolled the cart up to the counter, the eyes of the sales person I was working with got really big, and he commented several times about how he was glad to see such good gear in such good shape, so he was sure they would be able to give me a good offer.  They ended up offering me nearly twice what I was expecting.  So I had them subtract the amount of a really nice guitar that I had spotted pre-lockdown and that I had been playing while they had been working up my offer.  Then I grabbed the check and ran before they could change their minds.  I still believe I made out like a bandit on that one.  Turns out, with the money that I got in the purge, I got 2 new guitars, several new pedals, a pedal board, some hiking/camping gear, and still was able to donate a good amount to a Guitars for Vets.

On my birthday in the fall, I set out on an epic hike.  I usually get out and try to go 5 or 6 miles when I'm out.  For this one, I hiked around 12 miles.  There's a 20-something mile state trailway associated with one of the state parks in the area, and I did the eastern half of it, from one town to the next one.  By the time I got to the end, I had never been so glad to see the my ride in the distance.  It was a LOT of fun.  Exhausting?  Absolutely.  My feet, especially, were so sore that I couldn't walk normally for a couple of days after, but I am so glad I did it.  I don't know many people that can say that they've walked from one town to another.  It really makes me want to try some real backpacking on one of the national trails someday.

For Thanksgiving, my wife and I decided to do some social distancing and headed out to a state park in the Panhandle and do a couple days of hiking.  We camped out a mile and a half from the car, and, over the course of a three days, we hiked 22 miles.  Beautiful scenery.  It really reminded us of the area around Moab, UT.  Neither of us realized that Texas had that kind of scenery.  We now have a new favorite state park.

That's it for big highlights for this year.  Since everything has either been locked down (back in the spring) or we have kind of been doing a self-imposed lock down, we haven't been getting out much.  We'll probably hold that course for the next few months at least.  Hopefully, the vaccine will do the trick, they can get a handle on this thing, and we can all go back to normal before too long.