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Yes. You got it. We’re cold wussies. When it starts to get cold, we migrate south. Last year, we spent the winter coasting around Florida, and this winter, we’re hanging out in San Diego. If Ben and I HAD to plant ourselves somewhere permanently, this would probably be the place. The weather is perfect all year round, and there’s lots to do. Of course that “lots to do” part usually requires you to have some sort of mode of transportation, which, for a while, we didn’t. I mentioned before that we ordered a new Mini Cooper (a Countryman, which is bigger), and it hasn’t arrived yet. We do know that it’s on a ship right now, having sailed across the Atlantic from Europe. (Is it wrong to be jealous of a car? I love big ships!)

Misty loans us “Vanna White” so we’d have some mobility while we wait for the Mini to show up.

When it comes to mobility, there are two things that saved us here in San Diego. The first is the fact that we are staying in an RV park that is close to a trolley station. With the trolley, we can easily get to downtown, Old Town, etc. It’s not as convenient as having a car, but it works. The second is that we eventually got a loaner vehicle! No, we didn’t go to Enterprise and rent a car. Ben’s friend Misty, who lives in San Diego, happens to have an old VW camper van that she only uses on occasion and was happy to loan it to us. I should actually refer to “it” as “her,” as her name is Vanna White. (can you guess what color she is? Well, you can just look at the picture.) The name is appropriate, to say the least. Vanna has a lot of character, and some definite quirks, but she’s gotten us around, which has been awesome.

So with this new-found freedom, what have we been up to? Well, there’s a few things:

Friends

First of all, meeting up with friends! As you might know from reading this blog, we have friends everywhere. We even have other nomadic friends who can MOVE everywhere. Right after I flew in from spending the holidays in NJ, we went to a party at Mike’s place. Ben has been friends with Mike since he lived in Minneapolis, so they go way back. The next morning, we went to an excellent hiking spot right on the beach. Perfect way to start a day! It’s so nice to be able to hike in short sleeves in the dead of winter Before we went back to the bus, Mike took me for a ride in his Tesla roadster. Now, I have to say, in all honestly, that I have never experienced anything like this before… at least not in a car. In a plane about to take off, maybe. This thing accelerated like a damn fighter jet. 0-60 in something like 3.6 seconds. My eyeballs were pretty much sucked to the back of my skull. If you’re not familiar with these cars, do check out LifeWithTesla.com. They’re pretty wicked cool.

Earlier in the post, I mentioned Misty, who lent us some wheels for the time being. Well, her mom, Beverly, is also a great friend (and we frequently park the bus in her driveway) and she was in town for a few days, so we all met up for some dinner and drinks in Old Town. It’s funny… even though Beverly lives in Las Vegas, we have also seen her in Florida, New Mexico, now California, and next month we’ll also cross paths in Hawaii! That’s just how our lives work. I love it!

A fun nomadic meetup in San Diego!

Another couple we got to knock off another city with was Sam and Tracy. They also live on the road and were en route to Slab City when they stopped to meet us in San Diego. We went to lunch with them and then went to see the Martin Luther King day parade downtown. We’re generally not parade people, but any excuse to get together with friends is worth it! At the parade, we also met up with Ayo and Jair. They also live in an RV and camped with us at Burning Man. It was nice to get to know them a little better in more of a one-on-one situation.

Food

I got a front row seat in my Thai Curry cooking class at the Great News cookware store and cooking school.

I love to cook. It’s a great way to get out from behind to computer screen (where I generally spend most of my day) and do something creative in the analog world. I’m a pretty decent cook, but I want to be really good. Like REALLY good. So I decided to look up some cooking classes in San Diego. One of the things I’ve always had problems making is Thai food. Ben and I LOVE Thai, and could eat it every day, but every attempt I ever made at cooking it seemed a bit lacking. Well, I found a class that taught four different curries. We even learned how to make the pastes from scratch. It was AWESOME. I learned that there are some key ingredients and steps to get that magic flavor, and I just didn’t know them before. After the class, I was gung ho on making curries and ended up making four in one week! I even made the curry pastes, from scratch. That’s quite a process, and I can see why most people buy them in the store. It’s like baking your own bread just to make a sandwich. What’s funny was seeing me in the Asian food store trying to find all this stuff I had never heard of before. I felt like I was on another planet, and I probably looked like an idiot. That’s ok though, because the curries came out awesome … just like having them in a restaurant.

Testing out my new skills in the kitchen on the bus. A LOT of ingredients go into these curry pastes!

Work

Aside from cooking and hanging with friends, I’ve spent a lot of time getting work done. We’ve been working on an e-book we hope to wrap up by the end of the month, and we’ve also been re-vamping Ben’s web sites and merging his three sites into one. I’m learning more about WordPress than I ever thought I’d know, and have spent countless hours making graphics, writing text and making tweaks. We hope to launch the new site sometime this week, and man, will that be gratifying!

More to come…