A Little Travelling Music, Ray

I haven't posted in almost a month...much of my disposable energy has gone to being stressed about being hounded by a disgruntled client who threatens, on a daily basis, to sue me for malpractice and take me before the state boards. Couple that with the angst involved in getting ready to travel and it has been all I can do to keep my head above water.

Tomorrow I leave for two weeks trekking in the volcano region outside of Quito, Ecuador, travelling without Her but with an organized group, almost all of whom will be younger than me, and will look upon me with mixture of curiosity at the old guy trying to keep up and amazement at the fact that I'm sooo much cooler than an old guy should be. The trek means two weeks of relative quiet, minimal ambient noise, time for reflection and regeneration, and just getting high (altitude-wise).

Say a prayer for me, as these trips always have some element of danger. I plan to be back just after Halloween.
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OK, I meant to post the above just before I left, but the franticness of departure meant that it stayed as a draft, at least until now.
I'm back after two weeks at serious altitude (when I departed, I looked up at the screen in the airplane that tracks altitude, distance, etc., and wondered how the plane could climb so fast, only to remember that I was starting at about 8500 feet.) The trek was harder than I had planned on, and I submitted only about half the volcanoes, although I did get good altitude on all of them, including Chimborazo, which is the highest mountain on the planet, despite being only about 20,000 feet, owing to the curvature of the earth. I made nice new friends, mostly Brits, had lots of personal thoughts and relative quiet for two weeks.
One interesting thing musically...I didn't take an ipod and so had no music other than what was stuck in my head. And so, when I've come back and started up the ipod again for the gym, it's as though everything was in HD. I'm hearing things in the music that I never heard before, and with greater clarity. I've retained some of the benefits of being at altitude for two weeks, and can manage better on the treadmill and stairmaster.
I've thought a lot about postings for here over the two weeks, and just need to find the time to write...when you're self-employed, nobody does the work for you when you're away from the office, and so catchup has been a bitch.
The next trip is with Her, either to Barcelona/Bilbao or Tunisia/Paris. My next trek is not until 2011, but I'm looking at the NYC Marathon again, after an absence of 15 years.
And can someone explain to me why Jackson Browne is soooooo stuck in my head, Here Come Those Tears, The Pretender, In The Shape Of A Heart.