It's almost over. 2004 is almost in the can. Never to be repeated only to be relived through history books and our flawed memories. I think that 2004 was good for me, or at least it is ending on a good note. 2004 started with me getting over K. I was mad at God and seeking a way to get over the pain that I had. My understanding of what happened back then has deepened and I don't blame God anymore and don't think that I will if my heart gets broken again. As winter bled away into spring, I reconnected with some old friends and my attitude changed and I began to travel for work. The travel and the wonder of seeing so much of America helped me to avoid any problems I might have at home. I think it was the perfect time to go out and see the world. In my travels I flew down to Atlanta. I drove around western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Wheeling WV. I flew out to Chicago and visited Milwaukee. I flew out to Portland Oregon and spent two weeks driving up route 5 to Seattle. I even had a chance to visit Victoria, British Columbia. This place is so cool, I might have left my heart out there. I drove down to Charlestown West Virginia, flew down to Greensboro North Carolina and Columbia South Carolina. I took a mini-vacation in Jacksonville Florida. I visited Tampa Florida, Albuquerque New Mexico, Norman Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Oklahoma, San Francisco California, Cincinnati Ohio, Columbus Ohio, Denver for vacation and Anchorage Alaska. That is a lot of traveling in one year. At least it has been to diverse locations. My first trip of 2005 will be a personal one to a little town in Oregon. My year might turn on that singular event, or it might not. God knows, and I keep asking, but I'm having a hard time hearing the answer. He's brought me this far. As 2004 is fading, I'll go ahead and recap the month of December.

    By the time November closed I was in Alaska. I was fortunate enough to have first class tickets for the entire trip out there. What's amusing is that they were the cheapest I could find. I was glad though. I remember stopping in Salt Lake City and a kid ran by coughing and hacking. The second half of my trip out there was with a dry throat and an upcoming sickness. That and T made me call her to make sure that I landed OK. Well, that's not exactly true. She called me because it was so late in her world. I'm going to have to be honest about my trip to Alaska. It kind of sucked. It was totally the wrong time of year to be there. When I arrived there was about 6.5 hours of daylight and no snow. They say that it's actually better with snow because everything is a little more illuminated. Light reflects off of the snow. On the first morning that I was there, I went to eat at a place called Gwennie's. I had reindeer sausage for breakfast and it was delicious! I ate Rudolph! What can I say?  He was tasty. The breakfast was so large I couldn't finish it. If you go to Anchorage, it's not a place to be missed. These first few pictures were taken on the roof of the postal facility overlooking the airport. The problem is that there was so much cloud cover that it really made it hard to grip the full majesty of the region.

Gwennies	Too much fog

    After finishing work, we took a day to try to see the area. It was overcast and kind of miserable. I tried to take some pictures of the sites, and this is the best we could get based on the weather, my camera and me. This is Turnagain arm. My friend R told me that the mud flats out there are extremely dangerous. Apparently a woman got stuck out there and they brought a helicopter in to save her and ended up splitting her. She survived but lost her lower half. That's how much suction that mud has. Scary! The last picture in this set was taken from within the car. I saw something that I liked and took a picture of it. It's a better picture than it deserves to be.

Plow Train	Turnagain Arm				Mountain

    We then went to see Portgage Glacier which has melted so much that it was hard to see. We had a hearty discussion about global warming after that. The fog was so bad, I can't actually say that I saw a glacier. Like I said earlier, it was a miserable day to go sightseeing. One of the cooler pictures to come out was the visitor's station. Several people who have seen it, say that it looks like I'm on the Moon. The white dots are snow flakes. Captured in mid-flight.

Portage Glacier - If you can see it					Leaving	Station

    Since we hadn't seen any wildlife yet, we decided to stop at a wildlife preserve. All of these animals have been hurt or otherwise abandoned and are being nurtured back to health. Many interesting pictures. The first picture is of a big cat. Actually it's a Lynx. It was behind glass and my photos kind of suck. We saw Buffalo, Moose and Musk Ox. A Fox ran by our car while we're taking pictures of other stuff. Caribou are also known as Reindeer. They are very tasty! Yum! The porcupine didn't look as dangerous as it should have.

Lynx	Buffalo	Moose	Musk Ox	Red Foxx	Caribou	Porcupine

    The Eagle was pretty cool to see, although it was pretty much missing one of it's wings. I don't think that's ever healing. Forever caged I guess. Did you know that bears climb trees? You do now. Brown bears I believe. As we were driving out, we got a few more pictures of the Caribou, this time from closer up. Check out the rack on that one!

Eagle with clipped wing			Bears	Nice Rack!	Caribou

    After we finished touring the preserve we stopped by a meat packing place. It was interesting because the first thing we saw were dozens of peacocks. Then I saw a bucket of meat, waiting to be packed away in some form or another. I'm actually not that familiar with the butchering business. I grew up in the suburbs of a southern state but have never been hunting. Anyway, we stopped there primarily to pick up some reindeer sausage for co-workers back home. On our way back we drove through Turnagain arm, again and we saw some sheep up on the mountain side skittering about. We walked through some bitter wind to get a picture and if you squint real nice, you can see some white dots. No, that's snow. The other one's are sheep. Man was that not the worth the wind to get. I turned around at one point and took a picture of the bay, or river or whatever it was. Looking at the pictures now, I realize how dismal it really was at all. The only pictures that lie are the one's where I had to lighten them. About half of them, I left alone because the blue mood was appropriate. I can say one thing on behalf of Alaska, I did eat well while I was there. One night we ate at The Sourdough Mining Company. I had a fish sampler of some sort. The Salmon and Scallops were good, the crabs, not so much. Too dry. Food can be kind of expensive there, so I was trying to make the most of it. Prior to going to eat there, we went to a chocolate shop. They boast the world's largest chocolate waterfall. We stood in front of it with a large bar of chocolate and got our pictures taken. I need to talk to my boss and get a copy of that one.

    The last night I was there we packed it in pretty early. I was trying to connect up with my cousin, my friend T and my friend R's brother who lives in Anchorage. I felt so isolated there. I had no internet and my voice mail wasn't accessible and my text messaging was either sporadic or non-existent. I felt trapped. So to pass the time, I went to the hotel bar for a couple of drinks and saw a woman that I had met earlier that day. She worked in the Postal facility. Just as I was about to pack it in for the night, the topic of U2 came up and I found out that she was a big fan! So I ran up to my room, grabbed my U2 iPod and played her some choice rarities. That conversation spawned a Salmon swap, where they would send me home with Salmon in exchange for  a bootleg DVD of U2 concerts. I told them to mail it me. I got one email requesting my address, but I haven't gotten a response. So, my last night was a lot of fun.

    The last day was kind of torturous for me. I woke up expecting my cousin to call for breakfast and he didn't. Well, he did, but my phone never rang, so I had no idea that he had called. I should have called, but since he had just gotten back into town, I didn't put a lot of pressure on him to meet me. I'm smacking my forehead now. I should have called. So after that, I had to leave my hotel room and I still had about 10 hours to kill before my flight. Note to self. Never leave that late again without lodging. It sucks not having a base of operations to return to when you've been out. I had the same problem in Tampa. I was trying to maximize my tourist time, but instead, I just burnt time. One of the last pictures I took was from the Post Office. It had snowed the night before and it was clearer out. I had just finished mailing out various cards to T and family members and I wanted to get a shot of the sun over the mountains. Later on, I called R's brother and we arranged to meet for dinner. He was a tremendously nice guy and a good host. It was fun to hang out with him and his girlfriend. By the time I left, I was grateful to be gone. I slept for nearly the whole flight to Denver and that's where my vacation really began.

Peacocks	Meat Packing	Sheep	Turnagain Arm		Post Office

    My friend R picked me up at the airport and we immediately began to formulate plans for attacking every record store in the region. We started with breakfast and then hit about 8 record stores that day. We drove to Boulder on Sunday and hit another 4 or so in the Denver area as well. We went to Albums on the Hill and Pearl Street Mall. We even hit a little coffee shop with the most beautiful co-eds. R wants to visit more often. Ha Ha. R and I are very good friends and as a result we were able to get down to the nitty gritty about relationships, girlfriends, music, religion and politics. It's good to have a friend like him. We tried to eat well, wherever we went and one night we ate at Rodizio's which is a Brazilian restaurant. It has a very unique dining system. If you get the buffet people come around with skewers with meat on them and then they cut off a piece with a big knife! R has a monster appetite. I on the other hand, got full quite quickly. Still, it was my chance to treat R and he did his best to put those suckers out of business. After that, we went to Paris on the Platte a coffee shop in LoDo. I went there for the first time in 1994 I think. With a girlfriend who lived in Denver, still lives there I think. It was a good little vacation. Low stress and extremely encouraging on some fronts. Oh shite, (It's not cussing if you throw the E on it :) I forgot that I took a walking tour of Red Rocks national Park. This might have been the highlight of the entire trip. We woke up on Monday morning and got breakfast and then decided to go ahead and do a hike. I had 4 things going against me. I had a cold, it was cold out, I was out of shape and we're at about 6000 feet above sea level. R and I hatched a great plan. We synchronized our iPod's for The Joshua Tree and began our trek. I can't tell you how cool that album is when your trekking through the west. Superb! We stopped a couple of times for pictures and natural breaks. Here are some horrendous shots of me, looking really fat. That camera sucks! The picture of the cliff is from a higher elevation, and you can see that we walked for some distance. About 3 quarters of the way through the trek we stopped and changed albums. We put on the Unforgettable Fire and finished our hike with that. On our way back down we saw some birds nesting. I took a picture of them, but it was the sky that was most impressive.

First Cliff		View to the West
It's windy!	View to the Northeast
The Cliff	Raven	Red Rocks Amphitheatre

    After finishing our hike through the Red Rocks national park, we decided to see the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I've seen a few shows there, but I've never had a chance to explore. Here a few pictures based on what Bono saw. Except that there were a bunch of fans there. I also included 3 pictures taken by R in which he tricked the camera into finally seeing me and giving the clouds the wonderful colors that appeared. Well, I'm going to have to recap Christmas after the new Year. I'm running out of time and I have to publish this. Sorry. Hi T! :wave:

Great Shot	From Bono's Perspective			Me at Red Rocks