1990 was not a great year for me. A year earlier, in August of 1989, my first wife had done up and left me. The year before that--1988--we had spent Christmas in Santa Fe, vowing "never to spend Christmas at home again." After my personal apocalypse, I spent Christmas and New Year at the end of 1989 at home, my truck sitting on the driveway with a cracked block or something (I'm not sure; I never did understand cars). Not a great way to "ring in the new."
We filed for divorce in 1990, and I was teaching junior high, which took a lot more oomph than I really had. So I made another vow: "I will end this year on a high note."
And so, at Christmas, I found myself driving south, a thousand miles below the Mexican border to the tip of Baja California.
Baja Bound
